Directory

Step inside the TED Fellows community

Each year, a new group of TED Fellows from around the world, and from every discipline, are welcomed into this international community of remarkable thinkers and doers.

TED Fellows
2024 Cohort

TED Fellows 2024 Cohort

Photojournalist, visual artist

Daro Sulakauri

Photojournalist Daro Sulakauri chronicles social and political issues in the Caucasus. By focusing on issues that are considered taboo, such as early marriages and the impact of Russian occupation, she defends against the erasure of Georgian culture, history and borders.

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TED Fellows 2024 Cohort

Equity bioengineer

Erika Moore

Biomedical engineer Erika Moore Taylor researches how ancestry and sociocultural data affect disease development. Unlike many researchers, she accounts for diverse populations when building regenerative tissue models to create more equitable disease models

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TED Fellows 2024 Cohort

Visual artist, poverty researcher

Huiyi Lin

Huiyi Lin is an economic policy researcher and one-half of Chow and Lin, an artist duo using statistical, mathematical and computational techniques to address food insecurity and poverty. Chow and Lin combine research, design and photography to raise awareness about global inequality in visually arresting ways.

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TED Fellows 2024 Cohort

Medical mythbuster

Joel Bervell

Joel Bervell is a medical student educating people about health care disparities and biases through viral social media content. By sharing stories and studies with his audience of more than one million about the neglect of marginalized groups, he advocates for change in the health care system. 

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TED Fellows 2024 Cohort

Ocean navigator

Lehua Kamalu

Lehua Kamalu is a captain and navigator of traditional Hawaiian ocean-voyaging canoes. She preserves and teaches these ancient sustainable navigation practices by integrating them into digital storytelling and daily life for future generations.

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TED Fellows 2024 Cohort

Health systems entrepreneur

Mohamed Aburawi

Mohamed Aburawi is a surgeon and founder of Speetar, a digital health platform reshaping health care in conflict zones across the Middle East and Africa, especially his native Libya. Through this work, Speetar is helping to dismantle barriers to quality care and advocate for health care as a fundamental human right.

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TED Fellows 2024 Cohort

Mechanical engineer

Norah Magero

Norah Magero is a mechanical engineer and creator of VacciBox, a cold chain solution saving lives in rural communities. She is working to build an Africa that manufactures and produces its own climate-health care technology.

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TED Fellows 2024 Cohort

Chemosensory researcher, nurse

Paule Joseph

Taste and smell researcher Paule Joseph explores how conditions such as COVID-19, obesity, neurodegenerative disorders and substance abuse affect the chemical senses. Her lab combines clinical research, behavioral neuroscience, genomics and molecular biology, offering insights on how taste and smell affect our daily lives.

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TED Fellows 2024 Cohort

AI scientist, entrepreneur

Ramin Hasani

Ramin Hasani is cofounder and CEO of Liquid AI, where he helped invent liquid neural networks: a new AI technology inspired by living brains and physics. These revolutionary networks are more flexible and efficient than current AI solutions, shaping the future of machine learning and artificial intelligence research.

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TED Fellows 2024 Cohort

Wildland firefighter

Royal Ramey

Royal Ramey is the cofounder of the Forestry and Fire Recruitment Program (FFRP), a nonprofit providing career opportunities to formerly incarcerated firefighters in California. A 12-year wildland firefighter veteran, Ramey draws on his own lived experience, rethinking job training for the formerly incarcerated and addressing the challenges they face re-entering the workforce.

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TED Fellows 2024 Cohort

Composer, artistic director

Sahba Aminikia

Iranian-born composer, pianist and educator Sahba Aminikia is the founder and artistic director of Flying Carpet Children Festival, an annual mobile arts festival and artist residency for refugee children escaping conflict zones.

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2024
Cohort

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Fellows Directory

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TED Fellows 2010 Cohort

Dominic Muren
Dominic Muren writes and lectures on industrial and interaction design at the University of Washington. He founded the popular industrial design blog IDFuel.com, and served as a contributing writer for Treehugger.com – dubbed “The Green CNN†– for more than 5 years. His writing explores the interconnections between designed objects, the environment, and society – the tricky, complicated factors that make products "work" within different systems. His most recent book "Green's Not Black & White: The balanced guide to making eco-decisions" has been reprinted in 6 languages. His latest project, Humblefacture.com, explores new opportunities for more environmentally, socially, and functionally positive manufacturing by bringing factories down to a local, accessible scale. In addition to his writing and teaching, Dominic is an award winning industrial designer, and principle of The Humblefactory, a design consultancy in Seattle, Washington with a works-in-progress blog at Humblefactory.com. He attended TED Global 2010 for the first time as a fellow.
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TED Fellows 2009 Cohort

Dr Bola Olabisi
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TED Fellows 2018 Cohort

Dr. M Jackson
Geographer, adventurer, environmental educator, 2018 TED Fellow and National Geographic Society Emerging Explorer Dr. M Jackson studies and writes about glaciers and climate change. M earned a doctorate from the University of Oregon in geography and glaciology, where she examined how climate change transformed people and glacier communities in Iceland. A veteran three time U.S. Fulbright Scholar in both Turkey and Iceland, M currently serves as a U.S. Fulbright Ambassador. M has served as an Arctic Expert for the National Geographic Society for nine years, holds a Masters of Science degree from the University of Montana, and served as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Zambia. She’s worked for over a decade in the Arctic chronicling climate change and communities, guiding backcountry trips and exploring glacial systems. Her 2015 book While Glaciers Slept: Being Human in a Time of Climate Change weaves together the parallel stories of what happens when the climates of a family and a planet change. Her second book, The Secret Lives of Glaciers, will be released in 2018. She is currently working on In Tangible Ice, a multi-year project partnering with explorers, filmmakers, and scientists examining the socio-physical dimensions of glacier retreat in near-glacier communities within all eight circumpolar nations.
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TED Fellows 2022 Cohort

Medical doctor, entrepreneur

Dr. Yohanis Riek
Medical Doctor, entrepreneur and writer. Yohanis Riek has over 15 years of experience in NGO management and 10 years in private sector development in South Sudan. Currently, Yohanis is the Group CEO at Yo’ Group, Inc. focusing on business development, portfolios management, teams training and development, accountability oversight, fiduciary and governance and lead in resource mobilization for the Yo’ Group and its subsidiaries as well as technical backstopping on projects.
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TED Fellows 2010 Cohort

Social innovation entrepreneur

Durreen Shahnaz
Durreen is the Founder and Chairwoman of Impact Investment Exchange and Founder and Managing Director of Impact Investment Shujog. Durreen is Adjunct Associate Professor at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy. Durreen has a track record as a successful banker, media executive and social entrepreneur. She founded, ran and sold the social purpose business oneNest in New York. She also headed up the Asia operations of Hearst Magazines International, Reader’s Digest Asia, and Asia City Publishing Group. Durreen began her professional career as an investment banker at Morgan Stanley (New York), followed by stints at Grameen Bank (Bangladesh), World Bank (Washington, D.C.), and Merrill Lynch (Hong Kong). She holds a BA from Smith College; an MBA from Wharton, University of Pennsylvania; and an MA from the School for Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins University. Durreen was a TED 2010 Fellow and Asia Society Asia 21 Fellow. She is an appointed member of the World Economic Forum’s Global Agenda Council on Social Innovation for 2011 and on the advisory board for CASE i3 at Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business. Durreen is also the Social Entrepreneur in Residence for INSEAD’s Social Entrepreneurship Catalyst Program.
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TED Fellows 2012 Cohort

E Roon Kang
E Roon Kang lives and works in New York, and he operates Math Practice — an interdisciplinary design and research studio, with interest in studying, evaluating, and criticizing complex systems and its pursuit of efficiency. E Roon is an Assistant Professor of Interaction Design at Parsons School of Design and currently directs its BFA Communication Design program. He is a TED Senior Fellow, recently served as a board member of AIGA NY, and was previously a research fellow at Senseable City Laboratory of MIT. He received Young Guns award from Art Director's Club, and his work has selected as an inaugural project of LACMA’s Art + Technology Lab, received NSF Science and Engineering Visualization Challenge, and shown in places including the Museum of Modern Arts (MoMA), Seattle Public Library, and the Architectural League of New York. E Roon has given talks and lectures at MIT, TED Conferences and Cannes Int'l Festival of Creativity, among others, and taught courses at Bauhaus-University Weimar, SUNY Purchase, NYU ITP, and Rutgers University. He holds an MFA in graphic design from Yale University.
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TED Fellows 2012 Cohort

Ed Ou
Ed Ou (b.1986) is a culturally ambiguous Canadian filmmaker who has been bouncing around the Middle East, former Soviet Union, Africa, and the Americas. He is currently based in Jerusalem. He started his career early as a teenager, covering the 2006 war between Israel and Hezbollah in southern Lebanon, and the fall of the Islamic Courts in Mogadishu, Somalia while he was studying in the Middle East. He first worked for Reuters and the Associated Press, covering a wide range of news stories in the area. He was also an intern at the New York Times. After university, he moved to Kazakhstan, where he documented the tragic consequences of Soviet nuclear weapons testing in Semipalatinsk. Recently, he has been covering the wave of uprisings that has rocked the Arab World. Ed has been the recipient of a Global Vision Award, World Understand Award, and Photographer of the Year Award from POYi, a 1st Place Contemporary Issues award from World Press Photo, and other recognition from the Overseas Press Club, Ian Parry Scholarship, Best of Photojournalism, PDN Photo Annual, UNICEF, among others. He has been selected for a Getty Images Editorial Grant, PDN 30 Under 30, and took part in the World Press Photo Joop Swart Masterclass. Recently, he was awarded the City of Perpignan Young Reporter Award at Visa Pour L'Image and the Young Reporter Prize from the Prix Bayeux-Calvados Award for War Correspondents. He is represented by Reportage by Getty Images.
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TED Fellows 2017, 2020 Cohort

Molecular biologist

Edsel Salvana
Edsel is and infectious diseases physican and is currently Professor and Director of the Institute of Molecular Biology and Biotechnology at the Philippines’ National Institutes of Health. He is also adjunct faculty for Global Health at the University of Pittsburgh. He has been awarded an Outstanding Young Scientist from the National Academy of Science and Technology, the Ten Outstanding Young Persons of the World award from JCI International, and a Young Physician Leader Award from the Interacademy Medical Panel of the World Academy of Sciences. He was chosen as a TED Fellow in 2017 and as a Senior TED Fellow in 2020 in recognition of his work in restoring vaccine confidence and improving science communication to the public. His TED talk on the dangerous evolution of HIV (https://www.ted.com/talks/edsel_salvana_the_dangerous_evolution_of_hiv) has been viewed 1.4 million times. He was awarded the Order of Lapu-Lapu, Rank of Magalong by the President of the Republic of the Philippines for his invaluable life-saving contributions as a senior scientific adviser of the national COVID-19 pandemic response. He was also named to the "Asia's Most Influential" list by Tatler Asia for his pandemic work. Edsel’s research interests include HIV molecular epidemiology and drug resistance. He has authored numerous peer-reviewed journal articles and book chapters. His pioneering work in HIV in the Philippines identified a shift in the predominant clade from subtype B to CRF01_AE as a major factor in one of the fastest growing HIV epidemics in the world. He is currently working on near-point of care tests for HIV drug resistance using the MinION platform. He is among the scientists that discovered the P.3 SARS-COV-2 lineage (formerly variant of interest Theta) in the Philippines. Edsel writes a weekly column entitled “Clinical Matters” for the Manila Bulletin which offers scientific perspectives on the COVID-19 pandemic.
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TED Fellows 2012 Cohort

Multi-Media Artist

Elaine Yan Ling Ng
Elaine Ng Yan Ling is British Chinese smart textile designer currently based in Hong Kong/Beijing and a graduate of Central Saint Martins in London where she earned her MA Design in Textile Futures with distinction. She is a TED fellow and presented 'Naturology: The secret life of textiles' at TED Global Conference 2012 (Fellow Talk). Elaine is the founder of THE FABRICK LAB, which brings together textiles, electronics, biomimicry, interiors and installations. Elaine is globally recognized, having worked with international design companies such as Nissan Design Europe and Nokia Design Beijing with multi design awards. Her work has been exhibited at V&A and Science Museum in London, Harbour Front Centre in Toronto, Milan Design Week with Lidewij Edelkoort and Textil Museum, Tilburg and Espace EDF Art Foundation in Paris. Elaine's design principle is based on Biomimicry, focusing on hybrid materialisation of craft and technology. Exploring how natural elements can be manifest in man-made material to enhance modern architecture and interior design. Investigating the crossover between technology and biological systems, how the function of shape-memory alloys and the behaviour or natural elements can be incorporated into manmade materials for architecture and interior design. By programming shape memory materials Elaine explores how tectonic movement can be achieved through natural responses to heat, light and electricity. Woven and etched patterns respond to changes in environmental conditions such as light intensity or mechanical force. With a sustainable and eco-conscious design philosophy Elaine explores living urban textiles and their responses to sun, wind and rain. Techno-Naturology is Elaine's discovery in the relationship between natural formations and technology design. The concept of Naturology tectonic motion is not only about mimicing the behaviour of nature, but also a means of evoking natural movement within an urban landscape. With this design philosophy Elaine enhances the fluidity and functional responsiveness of architecture, creating harmony within our urban environment. Climatology is Elaine's latest work celebrating nature's survival tactics. A new experimental smart textile series, using the smartness of nature to create natural responsive movement. The delicate movement narrates the invisible energy that is constantly surrounding us. The movement is reflecting the change of moisture, heat and light. Her specialized craft skills are a cross disciplinarily use of woven textiles design and three-dimensional surface design of wooden materials. The result is a constructive textile that is both an art piece and a functional material for furnishing.
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TED Fellows 2017 Cohort

Biomedical engineer

Elizabeth Wayne
I was raised in Mississippi. My father is a paraplegic Baptist minister and my mother is a schoolteacher. I told everyone around me I wanted to be a physicist at age 11 after completing a science fair project on nuclear fusion. I wanted to be the first to achieve sustainable fusion reactors as energy sources on Earth (yes at age 11). I achieved my childhood goal and earned a Bachelors in Physics from the University of Pennsylvania but I fell in love with optical imaging rather than nuclear fusion. And eventually cancer too. I got a PhD in Biomedical Engineering building live animal imaging platforms to visualize cancer as it spreads through the body. So I study ways to use immune cells to deliver therapeutic genes and proteins to the places our body needs them the most: in disease. 2017 TED Fellow
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TED Fellows 2014, 2019 Cohort

Photojournalist

Eman Mohammed
Eman Mohammed is an award-winning photojournalist and Senior TED fellow, currently based in Washington, DC Eman is a visual artist, born in Saudi Arabia and educated in Gaza City, Palestine, where she started her photojournalism career at 19. For the first decade of her work, she focused on documenting the political conflict in the MENA region, including military Israeli invasions and the formation of armed militant groups in the Gaza Strip. Eman's body of work has since transitioned into series of long-term and in-depth aftermath projects focused on women in culturally sensitive communities and investigative stories about criminal justice and race relations from an outsider perspective in the United States. Eman's photographs have been published in The Guardian, CNN, Le Monde, VICE, The Washington Post, Geo International, Mother Jones, NPR, Marie Claire, and The Atlantic. Several international organizations have also recognized her work as it was acquired by the British Museum in London and The Harn Museum of Art, University of Florida. Eman has been a TED fellow since 2014 and was selected as a Senior TED Fellow in 2019.
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TED Fellows 2009 Cohort

Founder

Enda Nasution
Blogging since 2001, now run a social media startup solving public services in emerging countries
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TED Fellows 2022 Cohort

Bionic innovator

Enzo Romero
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TED Fellows 2010, 2012 Cohort

Ecologist

Eric Berlow
Dr. Eric L. Berlow is a community ecologist and network scientist and CEO of Vibrant Data Labs - a social impact data science company developing an open-source framework for tracking the ecosystem of money flowing to climate solutions. Eric previously co-founded a visual data interface company which was acquired by Rakuten in 2016 - where he then led data product innovation. Berlow was the founding director of the University of California’s first science institute in Yosemite National Park, where he co-led efforts to leverage data and machine learning for species conservation policy. Berlow is internationally recognized for his research on ecological complexity – with articles in Nature, Science, and the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. His two talks on TED.com focus on simplifying complexity and finding hidden patterns in complex data. Berlow is currently an Emerson Collective Climate Fellow - and previously was awarded a TED Fellowship, a TED Senior Fellowship, an Alexander von Humboldt Fellowship, and a National Science Foundation Post-Doctoral Fellowship. He was named one of the Top 100 Creatives by Origin Magazine and named one of ImpactAlpa’s “Agents of Impact”. Berlow holds a B.A. from Brown University and a PhD in Ecology from Oregon State University.
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TED Fellows 2007 Cohort

Eric Osiakwan
Eric Osiakwan is the Executive Secretary for both the African Internet Service Providers Association and the Ghana Internet Service Providers Association. He is also a visiting fellow and scholar at the Stanford University and Reuters Foundation Digital Vision Program. He is a consultant to the World Bank's Information for Development Program on Open Access for Africa; project co-coordinator for UC Berkeley's TIER Group in Ghana; and affiliate of the Berkman Centre for Internet and Society at the Harvard Law School. Osiakwan was invited by the Royal African Society to contributed ideas to Prime Minister Tony Blair's Commission for Africa. He is an associate of Spintrack AB, Balancing Act and African Analysis CC. He is also a director of Internet Research, InHand Ltd. and PenPlusBytes. He co-founded the Ghana New Ventures Competition and is a member of a number of professional bodies, including the Internet Society, Internet Corporation for Assigned Name and Numbers, and Ghana Institute of Information Technology. He co-authored The Internet in Ghana with the Mosaic group, using the GDI methodology, and co-authored the Ghana chapter of Negotiating the Net in Africa: The Politics of Internet Diffusion.
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Fellows Talks

We’ve organized Fellows talks into curated playlists to make it easier to find content you’re interested in.

TED Fellows impact at a glance

Change that gets noticed

200M

200M people impacted by Fellows work annually

451M

451M TED Talk views

2,234

2,234 articles published by/about Fellows per year

1,303

1,303 speaking engagements each year

234

234 businesses launched

The groundbreaking work of a TED Fellow does not stay in the shadows. Each year we study the impact Fellows have on their respective fields, as measured by tangible forms of recognition. Here are some highlights from the past few years.

Our purpose

What makes a TED Fellow?

TED Fellows are some of the brightest, most ambitious thinkers, future-shapers and culture-shakers from nearly every discipline and corner of the world.

Whether it’s discovering new galaxies, leading social movements or making waves in environmental conservation, with the support of TED, Fellows are dedicated to making the world a better place through their innovative work. In 2024 the program will shift to a nomination-based application process.

Qualifications

We look for the proximate emerging leaders working on-the-ground on world-changing ideas -- the doers, makers, inventors, technologists, filmmakers and photographers, musicians and artists, educators, scientists, entrepreneurs, nonprofit leaders, and human rights activists. Here is what we look for in a TED Fellow:

1

Emerging leaders. We focus our efforts on individuals who are in the earlier phases of their career, those who have a track record of excellence but have not received a numerous other fellowships and accolades. We search for those who are not already on the global stage.

2

Originality and authenticity. We look for proximate leaders with a unique approach to solving humanity’s greatest challenges. We look for the people working on-the-ground on world-changing ideas, putting ideas into action.

3

Kind, collaborative character. We look for individuals who have an early track record of great work in their field. We look for individuals from all disciplines, who have collaborative, kind personalities. Many Fellows claim that the community of other Fellows is the most valuable aspect of the fellowship. We try to nurture this collaborative spirit in the community.

4

Poised to grow. Since this is not a granting fellowship, we look for individuals who would best be able to use the TED community and this opportunity as a launching pad. The TED Fellowship is best for candidates who are prepared to grow with TED’s forms of support: amplification, network-building, communication training, professional development coaching and mentoring.