In the spirit of ideas worth spreading, TEDx is a program of local, self-organized events that bring people together to share a TED-like experience. At a TEDx event, TEDTalks video and live speakers combine to spark deep discussion and connection in a small group. These local, self-organized events are branded TEDx, where x = independently organized TED event. The TED Conference provides general guidance for the TEDx program, but individual TEDx events are self-organized (subject to certain rules and regulations).

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Arjun Mendhi

Arjun Mendhi is an accomplished engineer, entrepreneur and artist. As the CEO of MTonomy, he leads research, development and adoption of decentralization technologies for the media industry. Before MTonomy, he has led product, technology and business at various organizations, from public corporations such as Danaher to startups such as Infinite Analytics. He is a two-time winner of the MIT $100K Web/IT Track Award, and has an MBA from MIT Sloan and CS undergrad from Anna University. When not working with researchers and artists on MTonomy, he enjoys rock climbing.

Benjamin Alarie

Co-founder & CEO at Blue J Legal, Osler Chair in Business Law, University of Toronto

Co-founder and CEO at Blue J Legal; Osler Chair in Business Law, tenured faculty member, and Associate Dean (2011-2015) at the law school at the University of Toronto. Completed graduate work at Yale Law School. Served as law clerk to Madam Justice Louise Arbour of the Supreme Court of Canada (2003-2004). Expert author in taxation law and in constitutional law with respect to issues of taxation and fiscal federalism; scholar of judicial behaviour and politics. Main research interests include tax law, tax policy, judicial decision-making, law and, economics. As chair of the JD Admissions Committee (2012-present), targets the most promising students in the world for admission by pairing good old-fashioned committee review with the judicious use of statistics.

Benjamin Von Wong

Motivated by the desire to be creatively challenged and overcome impossibilities, Benjamin Von Wong has become notorious for his epic photography. His hyper-realistic art style captures viewers in a fusion of special effects and innovative concepts. Benjamin’s background in engineering gives him a unique edge for creative problem solving, where technical challenges become friendly competition. Fuelled by his passion to connect people, Benjamin has an affinity for finding unique talent to bring his complex stories to life. He is also highly engaged in the photographic society by sharing his experiences and techniques through blogs, social media, workshops and videos.

Daniel Hashimoto

Daniel Hashimoto obtained his B.A. in Biology with a specialization in Neuroscience from Boston University. He earned his MD from the University of Pennsylvania. He also obtained an M.S. in Translational Research with a focus on technology and surgical education for which the majority of his research was conducted at the Imperial College London. His research has previously focused on investigating methods of improving the efficiency and quality of technical skills acquisition. He has published on using virtual and augmented reality to assist in the acquisition of surgical technical skills, curriculum development for surgical skills, and the utilization of wearable technology in the operating room. He co-founded the MGH Surgical Artificial Intelligence and Innovation Laboratory and has been collaborating with MIT CSAIL to design and develop a computer vision system for real time analysis of laparoscopic surgical video. The goal of this system is to augment surgical decision-making by providing clinicians with real-time, intraoperative probabilistic estimates of complications. He is the co-founder and a co-course director of the Harvard Surgical Program in Innovation (SPIN), which aims to educate surgeons on the innovation design process. He has conducted research with grant funding from the NIH, the Society of American Gastrointestinal and Endoscopic Surgeons (SAGES), and the Natural Orifice Surgery Consortium for Assessment and Research (NOSCAR) among others. He has helped VC and technology firms evaluate surgical applications for VR, AR, and AI technologies. He holds leadership positions in several national organizations, including the Board of Directors of the Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC) and the Board of Governors of SAGES. He previously held an ex-officio position on the Board of Directors of the Association for Surgical Education (ASE) as the ASE representative to the AAMC Organization of Resident Representatives (2014-2016).

Danny Bigel

Founder & Chief Strategy Office of The Online Incentives Exchange (OIX)

Danny Bigel is the Founder & Chief Strategy Officer of The OIX, a technology company providing enterprise solutions to all stakeholders engaged in tax credits & incentives. The OIX provides the most complete, secure, enterprise-class, cloud-based technology for tax credit & incentive management, processing, analysis, and monetization. If your company utilizes tax credits and incentives on a local or global level then you need the OIX. Bigel was formerly a Member of the New York Stock Exchange for fifteen years and an entertainment industry finance executive prior to founding the OIX. Bigel became an Adjunct Professor at New York University's Stern School of Business teaching entertainment finance (2001-2005), has been involved in several start-ups, and is a member of the Producers Guild of America (PGA), the British Academy of Film and Television Arts (BAFTA), the American Film Institute (AFI) and The Creative Coalition (TCC).

Fábio Duarte

Fábio Duarte is a Research Scientist at MIT Senseable City Lab, a professor at PUCPR, Brazil. Fábio is interested on how can we use technologies to reimagine our cities. At MIT Senseable City Lab, he manages several projects — from deploying small robots into the sewage to building a fleet autonomous boats to Amsterdam. Fábio is author of Unplugging the City (Routledge, 2018).

Francisco Aguilar

Francisco Aguilar is CEO of Bounce Imaging, a Harvard Innovation Lab/MIT startup that develops advanced 360/VR cameras for first-responders. Originally from Costa Rica, Francisco has a background in private and social sector strategy with experience in electronics, advanced materials, energy, and telecom. He has worked in the U.S., Latin America, East Africa, and Central and East Asia. Bounce Imaging’s Explorer camera system has been named a Best Invention by CNN, Popular Science, TIME, and others and offers first-responders revolutionary situational awareness in dangerous environments, keeping them and civilians safer.

Jason Briggs

Accelerating Research at Diffeo

Jason started Cloud Search after watching his Mom try, and fail, to find files on her computer. He studied Computer Science and Military History at Williams College. Diffeo grew out of the Text Retrieval Conference Knowledge Base Acceleration project (TREC KBA), which Diffeo organized for the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), and DARPA Memex. TREC KBA evaluated algorithms for helping people discover new knowledge to add to a knowledge base like Wikipedia.

Jeff Grantz

Director / Creative Technologist

Jeff Grantz is the director of Dynamic Environments at Design Communications, Ltd in Boston. He is the former owner and director of the creative technology studio Materials & Methods, as well as the founder and executive director of Boston’s Nighttime Contemporary Arts Festival, “ILLUMINUS.” Jeff graduated from Rhode Island School of Design where he later taught in the departments of Industrial Design, Interior Architecture, and Foundation Studies. A bastion of internal conflict, multidisciplinary designer, creative technologist, and corporate provocateur – Jeff has spent the last 20 years avoiding any particular field or focus, but is an expert seeker of creative pursuits, enhancer of human experience, excels in bi-directional candle burning and using business development as an excuse to have drinks with friends.

Jim Freedman

As Associate Director of the Physical Sciences group at the MIT Technology Licensing Office (TLO), Jim is responsible for managing group of licensing professionals in the physical sciences and engineering as well as overseeing a portfolio of inventions in chemistry, chemical engineering and material science. He manages the coordination of the TLO’s activities in support of many large industrial collaborations and overseas research alliances. Prior to his tenure at the TLO, Jim held senior R&D management positions at companies including Polaroid and Spectra Incorporated, and brings a wealth of industrial knowledge and experience to the MIT community. Jim holds a Master of Arts (MA) in Chemistry from Harvard University as well as a Master of Science (MS) in Chemistry from Columbia University. He received his MBA in Management from the Boston University Questrom School of Business.

Kevin Miller

Kevin joined LegalSifter in September 2015 as its CEO and an investor after nearly nine (9) years at Industrial Scientific Corporation (ISC), a global safety company committed to ending death on the job by the end of the century. Kevin completed his tenure as Chief Operating Officer. Prior to ISC, he helped launch an online version of Argosy University, with regionally-accredited bachelors’, masters’, and doctoral programs in business, education, and psychology. Before Argosy, he spent nearly six (6) years in a variety of roles at FreeMarkets and Ariba, its acquirer, in the global sourcing and procurement software space. Kevin holds a Juris Doctor degree from the University of Cincinnati College of Law, a Master of Business Administration degree from the Mason School of Business at the College of William & Mary, and a Bachelor of Arts degree in History from Davidson College. Kevin is also a licensed attorney in the state of Ohio.

L’Merchie Frazier

L’Merchie Frazier, fiber artist and holographer and poet, has served as Director of Education and Interpretation for the Museum of African American History, Boston/Nantucket for fifteen years, highlighting the Museum’s collection/exhibits, providing place-based education and interdisciplinary history programs, projects and lectures, most recently promoting STEM / STEAM education pedagogy. She is adjunct faculty for Pine Manor College in Chestnut Hill, Massachusetts and African American history advisor at Bunker Hill Community College in Charlestown, Massachusetts. She has served the artistic community for over twenty years as an award winning national and international visual and performance artist and poet, with residencies in Brazil, Taiwan, France, Costa Rica and Cuba. As a lecturer and workshop presenter her audiences include both youth and adults. L’Merchie is a member of Women of Color Quilter’s Network and resident artist at Southend Technology Center and MIT FabLab in Boston. She was recently chosen as a City of Boston AIR artist. Her fiber works serve to document history and memory, and often include innovative technology. These artworks are featured in a series entitled The Quilted Chronicles and Pearls for Peace.

Lanell Williams

LaNell Alexandria Williams is a current Ph.D. student at Harvard University studying soft condensed matter physics. Born and raised in Memphis, TN, LaNell graduated high school from City University School of Liberal Arts in 2011 and in 2015, she graduated with her Bachelors of Arts Degree in Physics at Wesleyan University. While at Wesleyan, she performed research under the guidance of Professor Christina Othon on further understanding the dynamics of the lipid membrane. As the founding member and chair of the Society of Underrepresented Students in STEM, she passionately advocates for creating meaningful resources to support underrepresented researchers in pursuit of physics. After Wesleyan, LaNell went on to finish her Masters of Arts Degree from Fisk University and continued on to Harvard University to pursue her Ph.D. Her current research interest includes an in-depth analysis of the physics of self-assembled systems by studying the assembly pathway of viruses.

Lucy Marcil

Lucy works to create innovative solutions buffering kids from the adversity faced growing up in poverty. Domestically, she co-founded and run StreetCred, a non-profit providing anti-poverty financial services in pediatric waiting rooms. She is a pediatrician at Boston Medical Center. Internationally, she has worked on pediatric health-systems innovation and strengthening in Namibia, Bangladesh, and Kenya.

Lynne Zagami

Lynne Zagami is the Head of Customer Success at Shoobx, a technology platform that startups use to manage corporate legal activity. She heads up the Shoobx client services team and participates in the company’s marketing and business development efforts. Prior to joining Shoobx, she created the role of Director of Client Engagement at Gesmer Updegrove, where she oversaw the firm’s marketing, business development and client service efforts. Lynne serves as Director of Community Engagement at SheStarts, an organization that supports women startup founders in Boston, is a coach for the Babson College WIN Lab, an accelerator for women-run companies, and serves as the Vice President of the Alumnae Association of Smith College Board of Directors.

Marie-Jose Montpetit

Dr. Marie-José Montpetit is a well known Internet Architect and consultant. Recently her research has focused on edge networking and computing and what ti enables in terms of Virtual and Augmented Reality, Artificial Intelligence and network performance. She currently is consulting with a leading Internet company as well as participating in research and standardisation and keeping abreast of the startup world. She was a research scientist at the Research Laboratory of Electronics at MIT focusing on network coding from 2009-2014. From 2008-2015 she was also an invited scientist at the MIT Media Laboratory teaching a class on converged video applications that got her a mention in the MIT Technology Review as a “TR 10” (the 10 technologies that will shape the future). Dr. Montpetit received a Ph.D. in EECS from the Ecole Polytechnique in Montreal, Canada. She was the recipient of the Motorola Innovation Prize in 2007 for the development of a multi-screen and multi-network video mobility system. Her work on converged video applications and multi-screen IPTV has gotten her many invited papers and keynote presentations. Dr. Montpetit lives in Boston with 2 cats and 4 computers.

Marshall Chang

Founder & CIO of A.I. Capital Management

Marshall has been trading FX markets for 5 years. As a Master in Finance graduate from Brandeis International Business school, he combines his insight in financial markets with a passion for machine learning and expertise in programming, striving to build the first game-changing A.I. trading system to disrupt the markets. He has a strong passion for quantitative trading and machine learning and started AI Capital Management in September 2016. His inspiration came from Google DeepMind's AlphaGo project, which is a Deep Learning agent that beats human Go world champions. Go, as a game with complexity at a number more than the atom in the universe, is arguably as hard as or even harder than trading financial markets, which they believe is the next game to be solved with Artificial Intelligence.

Sharon Goldberg

Sharon Goldberg is the CEO/Co-Founder of Commonwealth Crypto, a Boston blockchain startup that is making cryptocurrency trading more secure. She is also an associate professor in the Computer Science Department at Boston University, where her research focuses on securing the protocols that provide many of the global internet’s core functions. She is an inventor of the TumbleBit protocol for secure anonymous blockchain-backed payments, and her blockchain research has resulted in modifications to the BTC, ETH, BCH, LTC and ZEC protocols. She received her Ph.D. from Princeton University and is the recipient of two IETF/IRTF Applied Networking Research Prizes, an NSF CAREER Award, an N2 Women Rising Star in Networking and Communications Award and a Sloan Research Fellowship.

Steven Hassan

Director of Freedom of Mind Resource Center, Inc.

Steven Hassan, M.Ed., LMHC, NCC (pronounced HASS-en), is an expert on Undue Influence, brainwashing and unethical hypnosis and author of the best-selling book, Combating Cult Mind Control. Since 1976, media expert on brainwashing, deprogramming, mind control, cults and undue influence expert, helping people all over the world. He is a former cult member (the Moonies) which has fueled his passion to help others for over three decades. He is a Licensed Mental Health Counselor (LMHC) in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts and Nationally Certified Counselor (NCC). In July 2012, Steve published Freedom of Mind: Helping Loved Ones Leave Controlling People, Cults, and Beliefs. Steven founded the Freedom of Mind Resource Center Inc., a counseling and publishing organization dedicated to helping people to become psychologically empowered, upholding human rights, promoting consumer awareness and exposing abuses of destructive cult groups.

Taylor Milsal

Taylor is a Managing Partner at Cotor, Inc., helping corporations create technical solutions to business problems. Previously, Taylor was Co-Founder and CEO of San Francisco based innovation practice, Milsal McCaull. Under her leadership, the company's clients included a diverse portfolio, from startups to the world's largest corporations. Taylor has orchestrated over $500M in transactions for projects including megawatt-scale alternative energy installations and SaaS solutions for corporate clients and major retailers. She also founded Zephyr, a mechanical engineering and design firm, with clients including Apple and HP. She has led and collaborated on future initiatives for leading healthcare organizations. She served as a mentor for the Thiel Fellowship and Founder Institute. She is also an investor in early stage biotech companies. Her hobby is collecting the world’s brightest people around a dinner table to share ideas.

YeSeul Kim

YeSeul Kim likes being a contrarian. She is an execution-oriented business leader who also likes to brainstorm big ideas. She also loves talking to consumers as much as building efficient systems and processes. YeSeul has turned to the science of analyzing big data, the art of qualitative research, and the application of a growth mindset to fuel her passion for solving complex problems. Currently, she’s applying her connect the dot skills as VP of Strategy at the Kendall Square Association, which represents 175 organizations and over 30,000 employees in the most innovative square mile in the planet.