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 Cohort

Quantum physicist, equity advocate

Shohini Ghose
I always wanted to be an explorer like Rakesh Sharma, the first Indian to go to space. I haven’t made it to space yet, but I did become an explorer of the quantum world as a physics Professor in Waterloo, Canada. I examine how quantum physics can transform computing and communication. My colleagues and I were the first to observe the effect of chaos on quantum entanglement. I am passionate about building an inclusive science community as the Founding Director of the Laurier Centre for Women in Science (WinS) and the NSERC Chair for Women in Science and Engineering in Ontario. I was thrilled to become a 2014 TED Fellow and a 2018 TED Senior Fellow. I currently serve on the Scientific Board of the UNESCO International Basic Sciences Program. I still dream of going to space.
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TED Fellows 2014 Cohort

Eco-entrepreneur

Shubhendu Sharma
I make forests.Indian industrial engineer restoring natural forests with his company, Afforestt, which offers a way to plant maintenance-free, wild and highly biodiverse forests using specialized afforestation methodology, research and cutting-edge technologies.
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TED Fellows 2009 Cohort

Siddharth Kara
Siddharth Kara is first Fellow on Human Trafficking at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government, and he is a founding member of Harvard's Advisory Collective on Human Rights. He is also the author of "Sex Trafficking: Inside the Business of Modern Slavery," the first of three books he is writing on the subjects of human trafficking and contemporary slavery. Kara first encountered the horrors of slavery in a Bosnian refugee camp in 1995. Beginning in 2000, he set aside his finance career and commenced a global journey across eighteen countries on six continents to further research these crimes, interviewing over five hundred slaves of all kinds, witnessing firsthand the sale of humans into slavery, and confronting some of those who trafficked and exploited them. Kara focuses his work on providing a rare business and economic analysis of contemporary forms of slavery, designed to provide more effective measures to help eradicate these offences once and for all. Kara advises several governments and international organizations on antislavery policy and law. He serves on several antislavery NGO boards, and he lectures on slavery and related human rights issues around the world. Previously, Kara was an investment banker at Merrill Lynch, then ran his own finance and M&A consulting firm. He holds a Law degree from England, MBA from Columbia University, and BA from Duke University.
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TED Fellows 2009 Cohort

Co-Founder & Director

Siva Cotipalli
Siva is the co-founder and director of Agroforge, an India based agri supply chain solutions company. Agroforge works towards improving the incomes of the farmers and reducing wastage of food in the farm-to-fork supply chain.Siva always worked towards building scalable ventures that helps millions of Indians. Earlier he co-founded dhanaX, which is a social lending site that matches lenders with investable savings and low-income borrowers who have no access to formal credit. Siva consulted organizations in the areas of sanitation, waste management and rural distribution. Siva, is one of the 30 Youth Icons identified by Pepsi and MTV in India for 2008, has won several laurels at international and national forums. He was one of the 12 Chevening-Gurukul Scholars identified by the British government. He has been regular feature in national and international media for his thoughts on Indian social entrepreneurship.
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TED Fellows 2012, 2011 Cohort

Designer, computer scientist

Skylar Tibbits
Skylar Tibbits is a designer and computer scientist whose research focuses on developing self-assembly and programmable materials within the built environment. Tibbits is the founder and co-director of the Self-Assembly Lab at MIT, and Associate Professor of Design Research in the Department of Architecture. Tibbits has a professional degree in architecture and a minor in experimental computation from Philadelphia University, and a masters in design computation and masters computer science from MIT. He has worked at a number of design offices including Zaha Hadid Architects, Asymptote Architecture and Point b Design. He has designed and built large-scale installations and exhibited in galleries around the world, including the Centre Pompidou, Philadelphia Museum of Art, Cooper Hewitt Smithsonian Design Museum, Victoria and Albert Museum and various others. He is the author of the book Self-Assembly Lab: Experiments in Programming Matter (Routledge, 2016), Active Matter (MIT Press, 2017), co-editor of Being Material (MIT Press 2019) and the Editor-In-Chief of the journal 3D Printing and Additive Manufacturing. Awards include LinkedIn's Next Wave Award for Top Professionals under 35 (2016), R&D Innovator of the Year (2015), National Geographic Emerging Explorer (2015), an Inaugural WIRED Fellowship (2014), the Architectural League Prize (2013), Ars Electronica Next Idea Award (2013), TED Senior Fellow (2012) and 2008 he was named a Revolutionary Mind by SEED magazine.
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TED Fellows 2021 Cohort

Photojournalist, visual storyteller

Smita Sharma
Smita Sharma is an award winning photojournalist and visual storyteller based in Delhi, India, reporting on critical human rights and social justice issues in her own community as well as around the globe on assignments for Human Rights Watch, TIME, National Geographic Magazine, and other publications. From documenting the effect of pregnancy on girl’s education in Kenya to child marriage in Nepal, and sex-trafficking in South Asia, Sharma is committed to representing people with dignity and telling underrepresented stories with impact. Smita is a International Women's Media Foundation reporting fellow. She is the recipient of Amnesty International Media Award for humanistic photography and One World Media Award for her short film “Rebel with a Cause”. Smita’s work has been published in various places and exhibited and shown globally including at the UN Headquarters in New York.
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TED Fellows 2020, 2011 Cohort

Water risk forecaster

Sonaar Luthra
Sonaar Luthra is a world-renowned water and climate consultant who forecasts water and climate risks, drawing on a deep understanding of how essential models, institutions and markets are struggling to adapt to rapid transformations in our planet's water cycle. He is the CEO/Founder of Water Canary, a Senior TED Fellow, a RAND Pardee non-resident fellow, an Ecological Security Fellow at the Council on Strategic Risks, and a Security Fellow at the Truman National Security Project. Sonaar studied at Bowdoin College, Oxford and NYU. He teaches "Water in the 21st Century" for MA Sustainability candidates at Harvard Summer School. He was recognized as a speaker and specialist in water quality and climate change by the Obama State Department, he is an ambassador for the Fight Forever Chemicals campaign run by Participant Media and the film Dark Waters, and his work has been featured in TED, WIRED, Maven’s Notebook, NPR, the BBC, the CBC, Al-Jazeera, the Architectural Review, and the Obama White House Water Summit's Commitments to Action on Building a Sustainable Water Future.
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TED Fellows 2021 Cohort

Writer, artist

Sonali Prasad
TED FELLOW 2021 Former Knight Science Journalism Fellow at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) 2019-20 | Prasad is a writer and artist from India examining ecological ruptures and the entanglement of land, time, and memory. She experiments with form and has used traditional and creative media practices, including longform reporting, poetry, data, documentary, installations, and visual art. Prasad’s journalism work has been published in outlets such as The Guardian, The Washington Post, Hakai Magazine, Mongabay, Quartz, and Esquire Singapore. She is a former Google News Lab Fellow and Pulitzer Traveling Fellow. She has been awarded the Logan Science Journalism Fellowship at the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole for May 2022 and the Jan Michalski Writing Residency in Montricher for July-August 2022. She is working on a manuscript and a long-term performance series examining the body of ecological grief.
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TED Fellows 2009 Cohort

Development economist

Sophal Ear
Re-elected to the Crescenta Valley Town Council in November 2018 to a second 3-year term, encompassing more than 22,000 residents in unincorporated Los Angeles County, California, and currently serving as its Corresponding Secretary, Sophal Ear, PhD, is a tenured Associate Professor of Diplomacy & World Affairs at Occidental College in Los Angeles where he lectures on political economy, security, development, and Asia. Previously, he taught how to rebuild countries after wars at the U.S. Naval Postgraduate School and international development at the Maxwell School of Syracuse University. He consulted for the World Bank, was Assistant Resident Representative for the United Nations Development Programme in East Timor, Term Member of the Council on Foreign Relations, Advisor to Cambodia's first private equity fund Leopard Capital, and Audit Chair of the Nathan Cummings Foundation. A TED Fellow, Fulbright Specialist, and Young Global Leader of the World Economic Forum, he sits on the Boards of Refugees International (Washington, DC), Partners for Development (Silver Spring, MD), International Public Management Network (Washington, DC), the Southeast Asia Development Program (Phnom Penh, Cambodia), and the Center for Khmer Studies (Siem Reap, Cambodia). He is the author of Aid Dependence in Cambodia: How Foreign Assistance Undermines Democracy (Columbia University Press, 2013, http://amzn.to/UXhoWc) and co-author of The Hungry Dragon: How China’s Resources Quest is Reshaping the World (Routledge, 2013, http://amzn.to/WkxCEf). He wrote and narrated the award-winning documentary film "The End/Beginning: Cambodia" (47 minutes, 2011, news blurb http://youtu.be/QwsSDPRI25E) based on his 2009 TED Talk (http://www.ted.com/talks/sophal_ear_escaping_the_khmer_rouge) and has appeared in four other documentaries. A graduate of Princeton and Berkeley, he moved to the US from France as a Cambodian refugee at the age of 10.
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TED Fellows 2007 Cohort

Technology innovator

Soyapi Mumba
Soyapi Mumba is an award-winning technology innovator who creates technology solutions for low-resourced environments. As Director of Public Health Informatics at Baobab Health Trust, he oversees development of electronic health surveillance and reporting systems for public hospitals in Malawi. Previously, he led the software development of Malawi's national electronic health record system which empowers low-resourced public clinics to serve large volumes of patients while following treatment guidelines and meeting reporting requirements. In his spare time, he runs Owinna.com, a platform that keeps sports fans connected to their local teams and players with timely scores and updates. He also maintains SearchWith, an addon for searching a customisable list of online services in Firefox web browser. Soyapi is a TED Fellow and a prize winner of “Share an Idea, Save a Life” national competition for innovations in maternal, newborn and child health. His work has been featured in the book “The Bright Continent: Breaking Rules and Making Change in Modern Africa.” He lives in Lilongwe, Malawi, with his wife Miriam and their twin boys. Soyapi holds a Master of Science degree in Biomedical Informatics from University of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania and a Bachelor of Science degree in Computer Science from University of Hertfordshire, England.
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TED Fellows 2019 Cohort

Artist

Sput niko
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TED Fellows 2009 Cohort

Srinivas Kiran J
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TED Fellows 2017 Cohort

Musician, Educator, + Founder of Play On, Philly!

Stanford Thompson
Stanford Thompson is a musician and educator who serves as the Founder and Executive Director of Play On Philly and Founding Board Chairman of El Sistema USA, bringing music education to students in underserved areas throughout Philadelphia and beyond. Recognized as a TED Fellow, Stanford believes that music education is a powerful tool for positive personal and community change. Mr. Thompson serves on the faculty of the Global Leaders Program and regularly presents at major universities and music conservatories about leadership, entrepreneurship and social justice. As a consultant, he has guided the development of dozens of music programs across the United States and collaborated with major orchestras, higher education institutions, and arts organizations to develop new strategies and initiatives that help provide equitable access to the arts. As a professional trumpeter, Stanford has performed as a soloist and member with major orchestras around the world and continues to perform chamber music and jazz. Stanford is a native of Atlanta, GA, a graduate of the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra’s Talent Development Program and holds degrees from The Curtis Institute of Music and the New England Conservatory’s Sistema Fellows Program.
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TED Fellows 2014 Cohort

Conservation biologist

Steve Boyes
South African conservation biologist Steve Boyes is the Founder of the Wild Bird Trust. With a passion for wilderness and restoration, he works to protect Botswana’s pristine Okavango Delta from threats upstream. In 2015, Boyes and his team poled and paddled dug-out canoes over 1,500 miles across the Okavango River Basin from source-to-sand in 121 days. This was the first exploration of the remote upper reaches of the Cuito and Cuanavale Rivers. New species. Unknown waterfalls. First contact. The goal. Work with the Angolan government to establish, by far, the largest wildlife reserve in Africa. One of the great conservation opportunities of our generation. We are these last wild places everyone of us. A childhood fascination for wild parrots has Boyes working tirelessly to mitigate all extinction threats to Africa's parrots. He discovered and successfully combatted a devastating outbreak of Psittacine Beak and Feather Disease in wild Cape parrots, Africa’s most endangered parrot. His research motivated a moratorium on the importation of African grey parrots, Africa’s most traded wild bird, into South Africa. He is currently focusing on planting a million indigenous trees and establishing new protected areas. Boyes is a Fellow at the National Geographic Society and a 2016 TED Senior Fellow.
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TED Fellows 2010 Cohort

Agriculturalist, social entrepreneur

Su Kahumbu
I've worked in the organic sector for 17 years as a producer, trainer, and marketer of organic produce. I had a small chain of organic outlets in Nairobi, availing premium prices and opportunities for the rural organic farmers. I'm passionate about enabling the rural agricultural communities particularly the small scale farmers , and contribute to a monthly magazine that is distributed into the small scale organic farming community free of charge. My latest endeavours are in developing mobile applications to serve the same farmers. I developed an application called iCow for the dairy farmers and won the first Apps4Africa Award for this innovation. I'm now working on a larger agri platform also delivered over mobile phone.I'm a very proud mother of 3 beautiful kids, Stefi, Elleni and Moniko whom I adore. I'm an amateur guitar player but a seasoned rock singer, :) an athelete (competitive swimmer a long time ago) who loves all sports, Kenya's first woman skydiver. I love scuba diving too. I live on an organic farm and am surrounded by the magical characters of my farm animals all day long. My 'farm' is my office, my lab :). I'm 4th in a wonderful family of 9 and I'm a TEDGlobal Fellow 2010 Fast forward to 2019- I'm now a grandma! And iCow is operational in 3 countries in Africa!
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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.