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 2017 Cohort

Lawyer, human rights activist

Nighat Dad
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TED Fellows 2016 Cohort

Nikhil Pahwa
I help people understand the fast-evolving technology policy ecosystem in, and push for making the Internet more open, fair and competitive. I'm an entrepreneur, journalist and an activist. I'm also a TED Fellow, and an "Indian of Tomorrow". I founded MediaNama, a leading publication chronicling the growth of India’s digital ecosystem in 2008. In 2015, I started the Savetheinternet.in campaign for Net Neutrality, which was the largest grassroots campaign in the history of India, with over a million people participating. In addition, I'm also co-founded the Internet Freedom Foundation, which focuses on advocacy for an open Internet in India. MediaNama was awarded as an Ecosystem Builder by Fortune Magazine in 2016. * More about me at http://nama.cc/nikhilbio * Contact me at nikhil@medianama.com via email and +91-98103-10053 on WhatsApp
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TED Fellows 2009 Cohort

Disruption Lead

Nikhil Velpanur
Nikhil is currently Disruption Lead + Associate director at Garage 5B, the new ventures lab and Studio5B, the innovation studio of Dr. Reddy's Laboratories Limited, exploring the idea of disruption. He comes with a background of 14 years as an entrepreneur, technologist, designer and maker. In his past he has run a media company publishing a 8000 copy/month magazine, launched India’s first indigenously developed 3D printer Brahma3, built a product that makes poems from random tweets, open source tools to alleviate human-animal conflict, and involved in the founding and cofounding of multiple companies and nonprofits. He was part of the founding team of the INK conference, having started the INK fellows program, helped develop the INK makers program and build the community. He has lived and worked across South East Asia, being part of various efforts. He also advises, mentors and angel invests in hard science and agriculture start-ups. Nikhil thinks there is magic at the intersection of Design, Technology and Science / has an unwavering belief in the first noble truth of Buddhism / channels his inner scientist through cooking and coffee / drinks beer for its taste / is fascinated by the idea of India / thinks sport is a bloody waste of time / and can't wait to go live in a farm outside Mysore.
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TED Fellows 2010 Cohort

CEO

Nina Dudnik
I decided to become a geneticist and feed the world through science at the advanced age of 13. Twenty years later I am dedicated instead to making sure that other scientists and potential scientists from the developing world have the tools and training to make those advances themselves. As a graduate student I founded Seeding Labs - through which I have equipped research laboratories in 16 countries using surplus equipment from US labs. I am even more concerned with connecting people - the scientists who donate their surplus with the scientists who receive it - to create a truly inter-connected scientific community that spans the globe.
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Seeding Labs
TED Fellows 2011, 2012 Cohort

Tissue engineering researcher

Nina Tandon
Nina Tandon is CEO and co-founder of EpiBone, the world’s first company growing living human bones for skeletal reconstruction. She is the co-author of Super Cells: Building with Biology, a book that explores the new frontier of biotech. Nina has also been awarded Crain's New York, Forty Under 40; Ernst & Young, Winning Woman; and Goldman Sachs, 100 Most Intriguing Entrepreneurs. She has a Bachelor’s in Electrical Engineering from the Cooper Union, a Master’s in Bioelectrical Engineering from MIT, a PhD in Biomedical Engineering, as well as an MBA from Columbia University. Her PhD research focused on studying electrical signaling in the context of tissue engineering, and has worked with cardiac, skin, bone, and neural tissue.
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TED Fellows 2021 Cohort

Technologist

Nithya Ramanathan
Nithya Ramanathan, Ph.D., is the Chief Executive Officer and Co-founder of Nexleaf Analytics, a non-profit technology company that partners with countries to make sure they have the data they need to build lasting solutions that improve the health of people. Nexleaf has created a platform of real-time sensors and data analytic tools that protects the vaccine supply for 1 in 10 babies born annually on Earth. Nithya and her team have achieved this outsized impact by working shoulder-to-shoulder with Ministries of Health — rather than bypassing governments — to scale cutting-edge technologies refined through close collaboration with personnel at every level of the health system, from top-tier government officials to last-mile health care workers. Nithya's unique approach brings together sensor design, data analysis, software engineering, and field engagement to identify and address the root cause challenges within complex global health systems. A computer scientist specializing in sensor technologies and data analytics, Nithya is a tech-for-good pioneer and a leading thinker on global vaccine distribution. Nithya’s career started in Silicon Valley, and continued as Research Faculty in sensor technologies at UCLA. She holds a Ph.D. in Computer Science from UCLA and a B.S. in Electrical Engineering from UC Berkeley. Her work has been published in multiple peer-reviewed journals. Nithya is a PopTech Social Innovation Fellow, Switzer Environmental Fellow, and a Rainer Arnhold Fellow. She is the winner of the 2017 Hedy Lamarr Award for Female Tech Pioneer, was named a Gavi Got Life! Champion in 2018 alongside world leaders, and received the Tällberg Foundation/Eliasson Global Leadership Award in 2020.
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TED Fellows 2009 Cohort

Co-Founder

Nitin Rao
Nitin Rao, TED Fellow (2009), helps build CloudFlare's global network that protects millions of websites.
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Design Play
TED Fellows 2015 Cohort

Paleontologist

Nizar Ibrahim
http://www.nationalgeographic.com/explorers/bios/nizar-ibrahim/
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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 2009 Cohort

Nuhu Ribadu
NARRATIVE RESUME OF MR. NUHU RIBADU Nuhu Ribadu was born November 21, 1960. He graduated from the Nigerian Law School and was called to the bar in 1984, before joining the Nigeria Police, where he rose to become head of the Legal and Prosecution department, Police Headquarters, Abuja. His 18-year service in the Nigeria Police culminated in his appointment as pioneer Executive Chairman of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) in April, 2003. He was a key member of the Economic Management Team in from 2003 to 2008 that initiated and drove the wide ranging public sector reforms, which laid the foundations for the socio-economic rejuvenation of Nigeria. Ribadu’s modest achievements in EFCC, most notable amongst which are the delisting of Nigeria from the FATF List of Non-Cooperative Countries & Territories, admission into the prestigious Egmont Group and the withdrawal of the US Treasury advisory on Nigeria by the FINCEN helped make the EFCC a reference Law Enforcement Agency on the continent; and the bold investigation, prosecution, and conviction of Nigeria’s hitherto untouchable politicians and businessmen earned him the reputation of being a foremost and respected anti-corruption crusader in the world. He recently completed an LLM degree thesis on the jurisprudence of corruption in Nigeria from the Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria, Nigeria, in fulfillment of the requirements for the award of Master of Law, and two years ago at the Harvard Business School where he did a program in the strategic management of law enforcement agencies. He is currently a visiting fellow at Oxford University.
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TED Fellows 2012 Cohort

Olamide Orekunrin
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TED Fellows 2009, 2010 Cohort

Team Lead

Olatunbosun Obayomi
Olatunbosun Obayomi is a microbiologist and inventor from Lagos, Nigeria. Obayomi's research spans hydrogen biogas reactors, ecological engines, and microbial fuel cells. He is the founder of Bio Applications Initiative in Lagos, which focuses on the production of energy from organic waste, using green biogas technology to solve pressing needs related to energy supply, food production, and sanitation in the developing world. Obayomi has produced simple biogas plants for converting paper, animal, and human waste into energy. He has also retrofitted a conventional septic tank into a biogas plant. Obayomi is a member of the American Society for Microbiology (ASM). He was a TEDGlobal Fellow in 2010 and a BMWGuggenheim Lab Team Member for New York City 2011.His efforts have been celebrated in Nigeria as well; in 2008 he was honored with the Nigerian Youth Leadership Award, presented by LEAP Africa.
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TED Fellows 2022 Cohort

Psychologist, entrepreneur

Olga Kitaina
I am an entrepreneur, a researcher, and a practicing psychologist. I am the Founder and CEO of Alter -- a science-based platform helping people find the right and professional psychologist. My mission has three parts: to make mental health accessible to all, to make it as effective as possible, and to overcome the stigma around mental health care to enable people to thrive. Currently got my Master degree from UPenn. TED fellow, Forbes 30 under 30, Cartier Women’s Initiative finalist.
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TED Fellows 2012 Cohort

Co-Founder/Director of Scientific Programs

Oliver Medvedik
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Genspace
TED Fellows 2009 Cohort

Author, curator, LGBTQIA activist

Parmesh Shahani
Parmesh Shahani is the author of the award-winning book Queeristan: LGBTQ Inclusion in the Indian Workplace (2020). His first book 'Gay Bombay: Globalization, Love and (Be)Longing in Contemporary India' was released in 2008. He is presently a curator and consultant to many different organisations on their LGBTQIA inclusion strategies. Until 2021, he headed the Godrej India Culture Lab, an award winning experimental idea-space that he founded and ran for 10 years. Parmesh has a Masters degree in Comparative Media Studies from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He is a TED Senior Fellow, a Yale World Fellow and a World Economic Forum Young Global Leader.
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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.