TEDxGeorgeSchool Announces New Speakers
August 22, 2016TEDxGeorgeSchool proudly announces its three new additions to an already stellar program of speakers for the Saturday, December 3, 2016 event—Dr. Timothy Block, president and co-founder of the Hepatitis B Foundation, Dr. Sigrid Adriaenssens, structural engineer and associate professor in the Department of Environmental Engineering at Princeton University, and Radhika Thekkath, CEO of the technology start-up AgiVox. Dr. Timothy Block is co-founder and president of the Baruch S. Blumberg Institute and the Hepatitis B Foundation, created in 1991 to research a cure for Hepatitis B. The institute has grown enormously and now has a global reach in its efforts to advance research across a wide range of modalities. Timothy began his career at Thomas Jefferson University in Philadelphia and while there founded the Jefferson Center for Biomedical Research. Currently, his institute has the largest number of scientists in the US working on Hepatitis B and liver cancer. He is a passionate and relentless innovator in his field and we are honored that he has consented to be part of TEDxGeorgeSchool. One of the most exciting and innovative areas of structural and architectural engineering concerns the exploration of thin shell membranes as possible alternatives to a world of shrinking material resources. We are deeply excited that Dr. Sigrid Adriaenssens, a structural engineer and associate professor in the Department of Environmental Engineering at Princeton University, has also agreed to present at George School. Sigrid directs the Form Finding Lab at Princeton. Previously, Sigrid worked as a project engineer for Jane Wernick Associates in London, United Kingdom and Ney & Partners, in Brussels, Belgium, where she created the innovative form for the courtyard roof of the Dutch National Maritime Museum in Amsterdam. At Princeton, she co-curated the exhibition “German Shells: Efficiency in Form” which examined a number of landmark German shell projects. She is first author of Laurent Ney: Shaping Forces and Shells for Architecture: Form Finding and Optimization. Our third speaker is Radhika Thekkath, CEO and founder of AgiVox, an early-stage start-up company devoted to bringing about hands-free and eyes-free mobile access to online content. The cloud-based software is a “talking newspaper” that turns news media and online news sources into audible and interactive news providers. The company combines speech recognition and synthesis developed by others with its own technology. Radhika received her PhD in computer science from the University of Washington. She spent two years at Stanford working as a Research Associate. After a stint at Equator Technologies, a multi-media processor start-up, she went on to become Director of Architecture at MIPS Technologies, Inc., where she was in charge of architectural and software products, and strategic planning. Active in entrepreneurial innovation, she is the holder of thirty-nine US patents. These speakers join those announced in June including Dr. Mario Capecchi ’56, the 2007 Nobel Laureate in Medicine and Physiology, Sarah Dohle ’01, a PhD student working on bean breeding and genetics at the University of California Davis, and Kevin Lewis ’99, assistant professor, earth and planetary sciences at Johns Hopkins University. In July, TEDxGeorgeSchool announced speakers Dr. Joseph Ravenell ’92 who pioneered the practice of taking hypertension screening out to African-American barber shops in New York City and Dr. Kanani Titchen, the chair of Physicians against the Trafficking of Humans. Applications to attend TEDxGeorgeSchool will be available in September. Please check tedxgeorgeschool.org for updates about what promises to be a program of extraordinary sophistication and diversity. About TEDx, x = independently organized event 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, TED Talks video and live speakers combine to spark deep discussion and connection. 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.) About TED TED is a nonprofit organization devoted to “Ideas Worth Spreading.” Started as a four-day conference in California almost 30 years ago, TED (Technology, Education, Design) has grown to support its mission with multiple initiatives. The two annual TED Conferences invite the world’s leading thinkers and doers to speak for 18 minutes on a diverse mix of topics. Many of these talks are then made available at no charge at TED.com. TED speakers have included Bill Gates, Jane Goodall, Elizabeth Gilbert, Sir Richard Branson, Nandan Nilekani, Philippe Starck, Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, Isabel Allende and former UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown. Follow TED on Twitter at http://twitter.com/TEDTalks, or on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/TED. |
