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Patrícia Medici is a Brazilian conservationist whose main professional interests are tapir conservation, tropical forest conservation, landscape ecology, and communication. Patrícia has a Bachelor's Degree in Forestry Sciences from the São Paulo University (USP - Universidade de São Paulo), a Master's Degree in Wildlife Ecology, Conservation and Management from the Federal University of Minas Gerais (UFMG - Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais), Brazil, and a Ph.D. Degree in Biodiversity Management from the Durrell Institute of Conservation and Ecology (DICE), University of Kent, United Kingdom. For the past 25 years, Patrícia has been working for a Brazilian non-governmental organization called IPÊ - Instituto de Pesquisas Ecológicas (Institute for Ecological Research) of which she was one of the founding members. Since 1996, Patrícia coordinates the Lowland Tapir Conservation Initiative (LTCI) and dedicates her life to the conservation of tapirs and their remaining habitats in Brazil. Since 2000, Patrícia has been the Chairperson of the IUCN SSC Tapir Specialist Group (TSG), a network of over 130 tapir conservationists from 27 different countries worldwide. In 2014, Patrícia became a fellow of the TED Fellowship Program. Patrícia has been honored with several very prestigious conservation awards: Harry Messel Conservation Leadership Award from the International Union for Conservation of Nature in 2004; Future for Nature Award from the Future for Nature Foundation in the Netherlands in 2008; Whitley Award from the Whitley Fund for Nature in the United Kingdom also in 2008; Columbus Zoo Commitment to Conservation Award in 2017; William G. Conway International Conservation Award - Significant Achievement in 2018; and, National Geographic Society Howard Buffett Award for Leadership in Conservation in 2019.

Patrick Awuah is the founder and president of Ashesi University, a private not-for-profit institution that has quickly gained a reputation for innovation and quality education in Ghana. Ashesi University, which began instruction in March 2002, has principal strengths in business, economics and computer science. As a young man, Patrick Awuah left his native Ghana to pursue an undergraduate education at Swarthmore College, after which he pursued a career in the US high-tech industry. Prior to founding Ashesi, he served for eight years as a Program Manager in the Business Systems Division of Microsoft Corporation where, among other things, he spearheaded the development of dial-up internetworking technologies. He holds bachelor degrees in Engineering and Economics from Swarthmore College, and an MBA from University of California at Berkeley. In 2004, Swarthmore College awarded Patrick an honorary doctorate in recognition of his leadership in African higher education. Patrick Awuah was nominated a Global Leader 2007 by the World Economic Forum; and in recognition of his service to Ghana, was awarded Membership of the Order of the Volta by His Excellency, President J. A. Kufuor. He is a fellow of the Africa Leadership Initiative (a branch of The Aspen Global Leadership Network), a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, and the United States Tau Beta Pi honor society for excellence in engineering.

Paul Rucker is a multimedia visual artist, composer, and musician. His practice often integrates live performance, original musical compositions, and visual art installation. For nearly two decades, Rucker has used his own brand of art making as a social practice, which illuminates the legacy of enslavement in America and its relationship to the current socio-political moment. His work is the product of a rich interactive process, through which he investigates community impacts, human rights issues, historical research, and basic human emotions. Rucker has received numerous grants, awards and residencies for visual art and music. He is a 2012 Creative Capital Grantee in visual art as well as a 2014, 2018, 2019 MAP (Multi-Arts Production) Fund Grantee for performance. In 2015 he received a prestigious Joan Mitchell Painters & Sculptors Grant as well as the Mary Sawyer Baker Award. In 2016 Paul received the Rauschenberg Artist as Activist fellowship and the Smithsonian Artist Research Fellowship, for which he is the first artist in residence at the new National Museum of African American Culture. Residencies include MacDowell Colony, Blue Mountain Center, Ucross Foundation, Art OMI, Banff Centre, Pilchuck Glass School, Rauschenberg Residency, Joan Mitchell Residency, Loghave, Montalvo, Hermitage, Hemera Artist Retreat, Air Serembe, Creative Alliance and the Rockefeller Foundation Study Center in Bellagio, Italy. He will be a Master Teacher at the Atlantic Center for the Arts in 2021. In 2013-2015, he was the Robert W. Deutsch Foundation Artist in Residence and Research Fellow at the Maryland Institute College of Art. He was awarded a 2017 John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship, a 2018 TED Fellowship, a 2020 TED Senior Fellowship and the 2018 Arts Innovator Award from the Dale and Leslie Chihuly Foundation and Artist Trust. His most recent award is a 2020 Art for Justice Fund Fellowship. Rucker is an iCubed Arts Research Fellow and Assistant Professor at Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond, Virginia and Curator for Creative Collaboration for VCUarts.

Paul Wicks, Ph.D., is Vice President of Innovation at PatientsLikeMe. Specialising in the conduct of clinical research using the Internet, Paul is responsible for shaping the scientific validity of the PatientsLikeMe platform. He leads a team of experts charged with conducting scientific research that generates insights from the personal health data shared by patient members. Under Paul's direction, his team has produced over 100 peer-reviewed publications in journals such as Nature Biotechnology, the BMJ, and Neurology. Highlights include ALS clinical trials conducted over the Internet, dozens of new outcome measures, and realizing the potential benefits of patients connecting with one another. The team's academic collaborators have included Johns Hopkins, Harvard Medical School, MIT, Oxford University, King's College London, the VA, and ALSUntangled. The team also provides professional services to the company's commercial partners including every major pharmaceutical manufacturer. Today PatientsLikeMe forms part of the Digital Health Alliance launched by Chinese AI company iCarbonX in January of 2017 by TED 2017 speaker Jun Wang. Prior to joining PatientsLikeMe, Dr. Wicks worked directly with patients at the Institute of Psychiatry (King's College London) studying cognition in rare forms of ALS and the psychological consequences of Parkinson's disease. Paul was awarded "TR35 Humanitarian of the Year" by MIT's Technology Review magazine, recognised as one of Britain's 50 "New Radicals" by The Observer and NESTA, and is a TED Fellow from the class of 2013.

Perry Chen is an artist and the founder of Kickstarter, a public benefit corporation whose mission is to help bring creative projects to life. Chen was Kickstarter's CEO from its 2009 launch until 2014, then returned to that role from 2017 until March 2019. He has been its chairman since 2014. Sixteen million people have pledged $4.3 billion on Kickstarter since its launch, funding 164,000 creative projects. A 2016 study found that Kickstarter projects had spawned more than 8,800 new companies and nonprofits and generated more than $5.3 billion in direct economic impact. The company's 2015 conversion into a public benefit corporation, which Chen spearheaded, requires it to commit to its mission over the pursuit of profit maximization. Chen is now a vocal advocate for improved corporate citizenship in the tech industry and beyond. Chen's work as an artist has been exhibited in New York, Berlin, and Mexico City. He was a TED Fellow in 2010 and a Director's Fellow at the MIT Media Lab in 2016. In 2013 he was named one of the 100 most influential people in the world by Time magazine.

Peter is the CEO of Avendly and was faculty at Brown University. He was the Associate Director of the Brown University Humanity Centered Robotics Initiative where he helped in research on automation based job displacement, AR, VR and MR interfaces for robots, MR shared mental models with robots, social robotics for the elderly, UAV autonomy, Moral norms in AI, and some peripheral pick and place and motion planning work. He ran the Computer Vision practice at IDC as Research Director in Computer Vision AI Software. He was the Co-Founder and COO of XactSense, a UAV manufacturer working on LIDAR mapping and autonomous navigation. Prior to XactSense, Peter founded AIDG – a small hardware enterprise accelerator in Haiti and Guatemala. AIDG did design for extreme affordability work and provided seed funding to local entrepreneurs. The largest company launched with AIDG support, Kingo Energy, now serves 5 million people with solar systems in Central America. Peter received both TED and Echoing Green fellowships. He has been a speaker at TED Global, The World Bank, Harvard University and other venues. His public speaking is represented by TED. He speaks on AI, Robotics, automation based job displacement, design for extreme affordability, disaster response and international development. He holds a Philosophy B.A. from Yale.

I'm an environmental journalist and report on water, food security, and conflict-climate issues across the Middle East, North and East Africa, and beyond. Writing mostly for NatGeo, I've spent the past 8 years trying to hammer home the many ways in which climate stresses are contributing to instability and conflict in some of the world's most vulnerable states. I also consult on environmental issues for iNGOs, and am a fellow at the Center for Climate and Security and a TED fellow

Philip Niles is pursuing his M.D. and M.B.A. degrees at Case Western in Cleveland. He completed his undergraduate in three years, and majored in economics. Philip has pursued several independent projects including: evaluating the economic value of renovating public square for the Cleveland City Planning Commission, starting an HIV/AIDS testing center in Kenya, working as a supply chain management consultant for ORBIS International, an organization committed to preventing avoidable blindness through the use of its airplane-turned-eye hospital, in the Philippines, Myanmar and Vietnam, and, most recently, Philip has been named a Cleveland Clinic Healthcare Management Scholar, and consulted for the Cleveland Clinic Quality and Patient Safety Institute on the costs of postoperative complications. Philip has also been honored as a 2009 TED Fellow.

Poonam is an Industrial designer, facilitator, entrepreneur and mentor. She graduated from the National Institute of Design, Ahmedabad India in 1986, specialising in Product Design. Product Design She began her career designing and prototyping a variety of products that include a Centralised Lubrication System, an Industrial Water Purifier, and a Public Telephone Booth. In this period of her career, she also managed Sur Engineering – a family firm manufacturing machine tools. Workshops, teaching, education Poonam has conducted several workshops on Creativity and Innovation for a variety of audiences – from school children to corporate executives. Organisations that engaged Poonam in this area include Mallya Aditi International School (Bangalore), Newspapers in Education, Verifone, Wipro, Sun Microsystems and ITC. Poonam is passionate about design education. Poonam is one of the founding faculty at Srishti School of Art, Design and Technology Bangalore. Apart from designing and delivering cutting-edge programmes for Srishti’s design students (Foundation programme, Design Lab, Design for Community and Self, Unlearning), Poonam has also facilitated and managed student interactions with craftspeople, NGOs, industry/ corporates, academics from national and international design schools, government and other stakeholders. She stopped teaching at Srishti in May 2008. Entrepreneurship As an entrepreneur she founded IndusTree Crafts in the early 90’s, and another company – Playnspeak – in 2000. IndusTree Crafts works with craftspeople to design, manufacture and retail/ export Indian crafts for contemporary customers. Playnspeak offers craft-based products for the home and office, products that poke fun at the values and ways of human beings, and also products that provoke reflection. Design and Development Since 2000, Poonam has spent a lot of time (amongst other things) writing papers on Design and how it impacts Development. Her continuing interest in the field has enabled her to speak at, design and conduct workshops and seminars for people from varied backgrounds – students, designers, NGOs and the government. She is also on the board of a trust called DESI which works in the area of livliehood generation in rural Karnataka. Daily Dump Her latest project – Daily Dump – involves the design, manufacture, distribution and servicing products related to home composting. This is a product – service system which is based on an open-source platform and is meant to encourage micro-enterprise formation and collaborative product development. It uses craft skills to address a primarily urban issue. Daily Dump’s purpose is to reduce the waste generated by households, and thus reduce the pressure on the already-far-from-perfect public waste management systems. Daily Dump has been selected as one of the “Top Nominees” for the INDEX Design award 2007. It has also received other awards. The interesting thing is that there are independent businesses that have been enabled by the knowledge base of Daily Dump all over the country. New Projects Poonam has begun prototyping two new projects – one in the area of children’s creativity and the other in the space of poverty alleviation. Poonam lives in Bangalore, with her husband Anand, and works out of her studio (popularly know as ‘the shed’) sharing the space with students, terracotta composters and the spirit of the raintree that is the canopy of this space.

I am passionate about using the intersection of design, technology, management and policy to address poverty issues & work with underserved communities. I do believe we can solve the biggest challenges of the world only through cooperation, and cross-functional learning/application. After several years working internationally (largely as a water-sanitation consultant in the developing world), I decided to move back home to California to apply my knowledge, lessons and life experience to address pressing needs in my own community - such as homelessness, criminal justice reform, public health, and education. Specifically, I'm interested in making our local government services more nimble, efficient, and effective through the use of appropriate technology and policy. If you have ideas, would like to talk more, or think we can work together, please reach out to me at pragnya@alum.mit.edu. Thank you!

Tenure Line Faculty Member, University of California. Dr. Pratik Shah is a faculty member at the University of California and directs a computational medicine research group for hypothesis-driven deep learning, engineering, and biomedical research to discover novel biological and clinical knowledge for inventing translational medical technologies to diagnose and treat cancer, infectious, and neurological diseases. He also has significant expertise and motivation for real-world clinical evaluations of research findings. Research in his lab builds a unified scaffolding of novel deep learning, biological, and statistical reasoning methods to resolve distinct hypothesis driven research problems including, for example, how to diagnose and treat cancer disease, how to leverage causal structures in observational data for unbiased patient centered medicine, and how infectious microbes and host cells adapt during disease –under a single theoretical and methodological framework. His research group aims to establish a new theory and practice for computational medicine research by moving the field from a static snapshot to a fully dynamic and living-systems wide perspective of molecular and clinical processes. Dr. Shah and his team are motivated to invent and deploy pragmatic and equitable medical technology for improving health and managing diseases. Key goals are: 1) Research and invention of deep learning, medical imaging and biomedical engineering technologies to generate fundamental insights in biology and clinical medicine; 2) application and translation of these emerging technologies into novel diagnostics and therapeutics; and 3) empowering patients, physicians, researchers, and regulators for making informed and equitable healthcare decisions. Recent work from his lab has been published in Cell Reports Methods, Nature Digital Medicine, Cell press, Journal of American Medical Association, IEEE conferences, and Proceedings of National Academies of Science Engineering and Medicine workshops. Pratik serves on the grant reviewer board of US government agencies and foundations supporting patient-centric research. Past acknowledgments include the American Society for Microbiology’s Raymond W. Sarber National Award, a Harvard Medical School and Massachusetts General Hospitals ECOR Fund for Medical Discovery postdoctoral fellowship, AAAS-Lemelson Foundation Invention Ambassador award, coverage by leading national and international news media outlets. Pratik has been an invited discussion leader at Gordon Research Seminars; a speaker at American Association for the Advancement of Sciences, Cold Spring Harbor Laboratories, Gordon Research Conferences, The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine, TED and IEEE bioengineering conferences; and a peer reviewer for leading scientific publications. Pratik has BS, MS, and PhD degrees in biological sciences and completed fellowship training at Massachusetts General Hospital, the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, and Harvard Medical School. More information about Pratik's research lab at: https://www.pratiks.info/research/university-of-california/ Connect at: https://www.linkedin.com/in/pratikshahuci/ Follow: @PratikShahPhD