Theme: Event Horizon

The "Event Horizon" of a black hole is often called 'the point of no return'. TEDxYouth@RadleyCollege aims to create a platform where students can learn about the fast-moving world around them. Our distinguished list of speakers will offer insights into the prospects and uncertainties of the future, as we are engulfed by the 'black hole' of the future. Let's pause. Gather our thoughts. Then, we'll start to shape a future full of innovation.

Licensee and Lead Organizer, Hyunjo Kim.
Co-organizer, Charlie McKegney.

Radley College Theatre
RADLEY COLLEGE
RADLEY
ABINGDON, Oxfordshire, OX14 2HR
United Kingdom

Aleksandre Khundzakishvili

Student Author

Aleksandre is a (Republic of) Georgia-born boy, aged 17, who studies at Radley College on full scholarship since 2021. Under the pen name of Alex Kh, he has written two sci-fi novels: “The Unique” and “The Anarchy” at the ages of 14 and 15, respectively. Through his works, Aleksandre offers thought-provoking reflections on complex issues of modern society. More than three thousand worldwide readers have enjoyed his self-published books on numerous platforms, including Amazon

Amy Dickman

Conservation Biologist, Director of WildCRU

Professor Amy Dickman is a conservation biologist, with a particular interest in the maintenance of threatened wildlife populations on human-dominated land and how to resolve human-wildlife conflict. Her work focuses mainly upon understanding the drivers of conflict between humans and large carnivores, and how those issues can best be addressed. She first became part of the Wildlife Conservation Research Unit (WildCRU) in 1997, and worked there for six years before conducting her Masters and PhD, and then returned full-time in 2009. WildCRU’s aim is to undertake original research on aspects of fundamental biology relevant to solving practical problems of wildlife conservation and environmental management. Under her Fellowship, she established the Ruaha Carnivore Project (RCP) in southern Tanzania. She is a member of the IUCN Cat Specialist Group and the African Lion Working Group. For more information, see: https://www.wildcru.org/members/dr-amy-dickman/

Amy Sheldrake

Studio Manager

Amy didn’t go to university. She has the kind of CV that her Father would once have referred to as ‘hoppy’. She started out in construction, then tech companies, a film studio, produced an open-air Shakespeare festival, took an award-winning show to the Edinburgh Fringe, ran her own events company, and now she is the Studio Manager at Atmospheric Studios, a design studio creating inspiring, human-centric spaces in VR. We keep humanity at the centre of our technology, not the other way around. The golden thread that connects Amy’s work is the desire to bring people together, remove access barriers between people, and foster inclusive environments where humans can connect deeply and meaningfully. Alongside her work at Atmospheric, Amy is training as a women’s circle facilitator and is a committee member of The Oxford Circle, a network of global feminists.

Bradley Wickens

Founding Partner at Broad Reach Investment Management LLP

Bradley Wickens founded Broad Reach in 2016. Previously, he spent 17 years as a founding principal of Spinnaker Capital Limited (“Spinnaker”) and served as a member of the Global Investment Committee and the Risk Committee. He was the partner responsible for credit strategies, systematic strategies, and macro special situations. Bradley worked in both London and Brazil, and as the Fund Manager of the Spinnaker Global Emerging Markets Fund, he managed a team of up to 20 investment professionals and 4 risk managers. Prior to that, Bradley was Vice President in the Emerging Markets division of Credit Agricole Indosuez where he was responsible for the day-to-day trading of all Eastern European debt products as well as the longer-term positioning of special situation assets. Bradley holds a BA in Economics and Agricultural Economics from Exeter University.

Ilan Kelman

Professor of Disasters and Health

Ilan Kelman is a Professor of Disasters and Health at University College London, England and a Professor II at the University of Agder, Kristiansand, Norway. His overall research interest is linking disasters and health, including the integration of climate change into disaster research and health research. That covers three main areas: (i) disaster diplomacy and health diplomacy http://disasterdiplomacy.org ; (ii) island sustainability involving safe and healthy communities in isolated locations http://islandvulnerability.org ; and (iii) risk education for health and disasters http://riskred.org

James Arbib

Founder Rethink Tellus Mater

James is the founder of Tellus Mater, a grant-making foundation that works on issues related to sustainability, with a focus on influencing the flows of capital through the financial system. He is the co-Founder of RethinkX, a not-for-profit think tank that has developed a framework to better understand the non-linear nature of technology disruption across the economy and its broad implications across society. It aims to provide key decision makers (policy makers, investors and businesses) with insight and data that captures the potential and implications of these disruptions, to help society make better choices. He also serves in a number of advisory roles in the Investment and Sustainability sectors. Jamie is Chairman of a family office based in London and specializes in clean tech venture capital. He has a History degree and a Masters in Sustainability Leadership from Trinity College, Cambridge

John Morton

Professor of Nanoelectronics & Nanophotonics

John Morton is the Director of the UCL Quantum Science and Technology Institute. John’s research involves the development of quantum technologies such as quantum computers and quantum sensors, using spins in semiconductors. After reading Electrical Engineering at University of Cambridge, John undertook at PhD (D.Phil) at University of Oxford, to work on techniques for controlling spins as quantum bits. His awards include the Nicholas Kurti European Science prize (2008), the Institute of Physics Moseley Medal (2013) in experimental physics, and the Sackler International Prize in Physical Sciences (2016). John has published over 130 papers with 11,000 citations and has an h-index of 48. He has co-founded three companies in the field of quantum technology, covering quantum computing hardware and software. John has been active in the public engagement of science, including public exhibitions, documentaries, radio broadcasts and popular articles on quantum science and technology.

John Zerilli

Philosophy, Artificial Intelligence, and Law

Dr John Zerilli is currently a Leverhulme Fellow at the University of Oxford, a Research Associate in the Oxford Institute for Ethics in AI, and an Associate Fellow in the Centre for the Future of Intelligence at the University of Cambridge. John was the recipient of a Cambridge Commonwealth Trust scholarship to undertake the Cambridge LL.M. (2008), wrote the highest-ranking thesis of his year at Cambridge (2009), and won the Lucy Firth Prize (valued at $1000) for best publication in philosophy at Sydney University (2010). He has published numerous articles, canvassing law, political economy, philosophy, and cognitive science, and three books, of which the two most recent are The Adaptable Mind (Oxford University Press, 2020) and A Citizen's Guide to Artificial Intelligence (MIT Press, 2021). His published work appears in such journals as Philosophy of Science, Synthese, and Philosophical Psychology.

Lewis Raymond Taylor

CEO

Lewis Raymond Taylor, CEO & Founder of The Coaching Masters, who was featured by Forbes for building a $25 million business, had previously suffered from sexual abuse, mental illness, substance misuse, grief, and trauma and subsequently spent time in a young offender’s institution and was sent to prison for a serious offence at 24. Despite Lewis’ troubled start, Lewis successfully completed rehabilitation & catapulted himself into the online business arena and is now at the forefront of cutting-edge immersive technology such as Virtual Reality and Artificial intelligence. Lewis will be speaking about parts of his life experiences, having personally navigated grim prospects and uncertainties of the future, but also sharing a polarising future-focused reflection of VR and AI and how it has the possibility to connect the world in ways we cannot comprehend, and also destroy the foundations of society as we understand it today.

Rob Fender

Professor of Physics

Rob is currently the head of the Astrophysics sub-department within the broader Physics department, at the University of Oxford. His particular research interests are in the areas of accretion and feedback around relativistic objects, mostly advanced via observations with radio telescopes such as AMI-LA, e-MERLIN and MeerKAT. Amongst other highlights, he led the national collaboration via which the UK joined the LOFAR project, was awarded in 2011 an ERC Advanced Investigator Grant, was chair of the SKA Transients Science Working Group, and was awarded the 2020 Herschel Medal of the Royal Astronomical Society for "investigations of outstanding merit in observational astrophysics", mainly in recognition of his work on accretion around black holes and the connection to relativistic jets. If you would like to read more about Professor Rob Fender's research and accomplishments, follow this link: https://www.physics.ox.ac.uk/our-people/fender

Sam Tucker

Founder | Common Surface

Sam Tucker is the Founder and CEO of Common Surface, a venture-backed global startup building a hybrid working scheduling and collaboration tool for the future of work. Common Surface aims to help people better understand where and how they like to work around their colleagues, teams, meetings and space in a hybrid-working world. Allowing companies to drive efficiencies, build a better culture and optimise their office space. Previously, he worked as a software engineer at Paddle.com, working on building a tool for mapping and evaluating companies across the software market, which has subsequently been spun out into its own company. Sam has an interest in supporting alternatives to higher education, having not graduated from university himself.

Stephen Fidler

Wall Street Journal

Stephen Fidler is bureau chief at large at The Wall Street Journal in London. From 2017 to 2021, he was U.K. and Brexit editor, leading coverage of the U.K.'s breakup with the European Union, as well as politics and economics in the U.K. and Ireland. From 2009 to 2017, he was the Journal's Brussels editor, heading coverage of the EU and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. He was part of a team of Journal reporters named as a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in 2011 for their reporting on the eurozone debt crisis. Before joining the Journal in London in March 2009, he spent 22 years with the Financial Times in senior roles, including international capital markets editor, Latin America editor, defence and security editor, and U.S. diplomatic editor. In the latter role, he was based in Washington. He spent almost a decade as a correspondent for Reuters in London, New York and the Middle East. His first job in journalism was with a group of English newspapers in his native Lincolnshire.