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 2011 Cohort

Interface Designer + Innovator

Sumit Dagar
Sumit Dagar is a designer and technologist who puts his skills to use for innovating accessibility solutions. He believes that a deprived sense should not dictate an inability to use technology, rather, technology should adapt to user’s needs and capabilities. He founded Kriyate with this vision in 2012. Before founding the company, he headed a number of startups in services and products related to the design field. His work has earned him international recognition such as Rolex Young Laureate, TED fellowship, and MIT India TR 35.
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TED Fellows 2009 Cohort

CEO

Sunita Nadhamuni
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India Water PortalArghyam
TED Fellows 2017 Cohort

Ear surgeon

Susan Emmett
There are an estimated 1.6 billion people living with hearing loss globally, and 60% of all hearing loss in children can be prevented. Susan Emmett, MD, MPH is committed to addressing this disparity. She serves as Associate Professor of Otolaryngology and Public Health at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences in Little Rock, AR, USA. Susan completed residency in Otolaryngology-Head and Neck Surgery at The Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, MD. During her surgical training, she also obtained a Master of Public Health from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and completed a postdoctoral research fellowship at the Bloomberg School’s Center for Human Nutrition. A native of Tennessee, Susan graduated with a Bachelor of Arts from Princeton University in Molecular Biology and the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs. She worked in science and health policy at the National Institutes of Health and U.S. Senate before matriculating in medical school at Duke University. Her commitment to global health began as a Duke medical student during a year-long Howard Hughes Medical Institute Research Training Fellowship in Moshi, Tanzania. She was thrilled to return to Tanzania in 2017 as a TED Fellow – her first visit since moving back to the U.S. in 2009.
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TED Fellows 2010 Cohort

composer + improviser + percussionist educator

Susie Ibarra
Susie Ibarra is a Filipinx composer, drummer/percussionist, and sound artist who creates live and immersive music that invites people to connect to their natural and built environments. Ibarra is passionate about working to preserve and support Indigenous music and culture (musika katatubo in the Philippines) and advocating for preserving freshwater towers through sound recording and research around glaciers and fresh water. New works include album releases Rhythm Cycles, a drum solo performance commissioned by the Bagri Foundation and released with OTO Projects UK (2020); and the composer portrait album, Talking Gong, featuring Claire Chase and Alex Peh with Ibarra on New Focus Recordings (2021) and Water Rhythms Listening Room, a multichannel sound installation created mapping 5 water towers source to sink in collaboration with climate scientist Michele Koppes for a 2021 commission for Arko Art Center Museum Seoul Korea Sept-Dec, TED Countdown Climate Conference Edinburgh UK and Fridman Gallery exhibition in Beacon NY Nov/Dec 2021. Ibarra is a 2020 National Geographic Explorer in Storytelling, 2019 United States Artist Fellow in Music, and a 2018 Asian Cultural Council Scholar supported by the Rockefeller Foundation. She is a Senior TED Fellow and a Yamaha, Zildjian, and Vic Firth drum artist.
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TED Fellows 2011, 2012 Cohort

Designer, biofabrication pioneer

Suzanne Lee
Suzanne is a designer turned biofabrication pioneer for consumer products. She started growing microbial materials in 2003 coining the term ‘Biocouture’. She advises material startups and global consumer brands on the amazing new world of grown materials. A graduate of the celebrated design school Central Saint Martins in London, her work has been featured widely in the media and exhibited globally. Suzanne's ground-breaking book ‘Fashioning the Future: tomorrow’s wardrobe’, was the first to articulate the future of fashion through science and technology. She is a TED Senior Fellow, and a Launch Material Innovator - an initiative of NASA, Nike, USAID and the US State Department. For the last 5 years Suzanne has been the Chief Creative Officer of Modern Meadow, a biofabrication startup in New York. In 2014 Suzanne founded ‘BIOFABRICATE’, an international summit fostering design, biology and technology. Today BIOFABRICATE offers three pillars: Design, Consult, Learn.
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TED Fellows 2009, 2010 Cohort

Documentary filmmaker, physicist

Taghi Amirani
I’m a TED Senior Fellow and a documentary filmmaker. Have just finished making COUP 53, my first feature, edited by the legendary multi Oscar winning Walter Murch (Apocalypse Now, The Godfather, The English Patient) and featuring Ralph Fiennes. —- Now you can read the boring bio, if you must He is an Iranian physicist turned documentary filmmaker. He has made over 40 documentaries, a couple of fiction shorts and a handful of commercials. He is from the very first class of TED Fellows. When invited to apply for a Senior Fellowship in 2009, he pitched his first feature documentary, COUP 53. Ten years in the making and edited by the great Walter Murch, COUP 53 tells the story of the 1953 Anglo-American coup d’état in Iran in unprecedented detail. Described as "politically explosive" and "cinematically innovative," the film had its world premiere at the 2019 Telluride Film Festival. 80% of the funding for COUP 53 came from prominent TED donors. In 2023 COUP 53 will be marking the 70th anniversary of the coup in a series of major events and screenings across the US and Europe.
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TED Fellows 2009 Cohort

Co-Founder & Director

Tahir Amin
Practising Solicitor of the Supreme Court of England and Wales, specialising in all intellectual property - IP (trade marks, patents, copyright etc). Co-Founded I-MAK in 2006 to ensure the patent system works for patients in the developing (and developed) world and does not prevent access to affordable medicines. Prior to I-MAK, spent nearly 3 years working on researching IP and the public interest and helped start a civil society intervention in the Indian patent system. I have over 12 years practice experience in the private sector having trained and worked for two of the leading IP firms in the UK and Levi Strauss & Co.
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TED Fellows 2015 Cohort

Synthetic biologist

Tal Danino
Tal Danino's research explores the emerging frontier of combining biology, engineering, and medicine. His work as a synthetic biologist focuses on reprogramming bacteria to detect and treat diseases in our bodies such as cancer. Originally from Los Angeles, Tal received B.S. degrees from UCLA in Physics, Chemistry, and Math, and received his Ph.D. in Bioengineering from UCSD. He did a postdoctoral fellowship at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and is currently an assistant professor at Columbia University in New York. Tal's work has been published in scientific journals and highlighted in several popular press venues. He actively develops "Bio-Art" projects that share perspectives and stories about science with recent projects featured in the New York Times, WIRED, and the Wall Street Journal.
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TED Fellows 2009 Cohort

Tanzeem Choudhury
I am an associate professor in Computing and Information Sciences at Cornell University and co-founder and CEO of HealthRhythms. I received my PhD from the Media Laboratory at MIT. I direct the People Aware Computing group which develops mobile sensing systems for understanding life patterns of individuals, groups, and societies. I specifically focus on analyzing voice patterns for health. I hope to change the way mental health is diagnosed and treated by creating novel wearable and cellphone system that continuously track mental wellbeing. My work has been featured in the Economist, NYTimes, BBC, MIT Technology Review, FastCompany and other popular press. I was recognized in MIT Technology Review's 2008 TR35 list which recognizes 35 most innovative technologist under the age of 35.
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TED Fellows 2012, 2010 Cohort

photographer

Teru Kuwayama
OFP 2018 Instagram Community Team 2014 Facebook Strategic Partnerships Team 2013 Hoover Institution Media Fellow 2013 TED Senior Fellow 2012 Dart Center Ochberg Fellow 2010 Knight Newschallenge Award 2010 TED Global Fellow 2010 John S. Knight Fellow at Stanford University 2009-2010 Dorthea Lange-Paul Taylor award 2009 South Asian Journalists Association Fellow 2009 NYC Urban Artists Initiative Fellow 2008 Alicia Patterson Fellow 2006 W. Eugene Smith Fellow 2006 Nikon Storyteller Award 2006 Days Japan International Photojournalism Award 2006 Esquire magazine Best and Brightest, The Iraq Generation, 2004 Marty Forscher award, 2003 New York Foundation for the Arts award, 2002 Yann Geffroy award, 2000 Alexia Award for World Peace 1999
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TED Fellows 2015 Cohort

Tharanga Goonetilleke
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TED Fellows 2014 Cohort

Graffiti artist + activist

Thiago Mundano
MUNDANO is an artivist, born in São Paulo, Brazil, with worldwide recognition for using his art, his talks, and for standing up against social inequality. Either in a public space, or in over 320 ‘’carroças” of “catadores” (waste pickers), his work shines a light over societies environmental, social and political issues. As a graffiti artist and activist, he questions and teases public authorities and population’s behavior through interventions, often carried with impact phrases inspired by local context. The environment and its current worries, as well as the universal human rights, are the base of his activism, which transcends his paints and colors. Mundano is an Ashoka and TED Fellow. Founder of the ngo “Pimp My Carroça”, and “Cataki”, a nonprofit app that became a hit in Brazil, creating a match between “catadores”, companies, businesses and general society. There over two thousand “catadores” registered already in more than 400 cities, and these numbers grow organically everyday. Mundano have been awarded with many prizes in different areas, such as public art, human rights, creativity and digital innovation. The tireless artivist have already defined his main life goal: to create an environmental and social legacy with his art. To fulfill this challenge, he’s been travelling around the globe for the last ten years, giving speeches, making interventions, and exposing his art in over 40 cities in Brazil and the world. facebook.com/pimpmycarroca www.pimpmycarroca.com
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TED Fellows 2009 Cohort

Founder

Tino Chow
Tino Chow comes into branding with an unexpected background. As a former military officer in the Singapore army who went to art school, Tino discovered his niche by combining his experience in operations with creativity. He works with purpose-driven companies and startups to leverage the power of brand strategy, design thinking, and design doing in order to grow their impact. Before starting Giant Shoulders, Tino spent over a decade building creative cultures and collaborative teams with agencies in New York and startups in Silicon Valley. Tino holds a design degree from the Rhode Island School of Design and is an Adjunct Professor at Brown University. He frequently talks about branding and design thinking and is a TED Fellow.
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TED Fellows 2021 Cohort

Mental health innovator

Tom Osborn
Tom Osborn is the Co-Founder and CEO of Shamiri Institute, a data-driven public benefit organization that develops and scales mental healthcare to young people across Sub-Saharan Africa and especially Kenya, where nearly 50 percent of young people report mental health problems. Shamiri Institute currently serves more than 7,500 Kenyan youths. Tom is a 2021 TED Fellow—given to doers who have shown unusual accomplishment, exceptional courage, and are creating positive change around the world. Tom has developed a global reputation as a community mobilizer, social entrepreneur, and global mental health innovator. At 18, he co-founded GreenChar, a social enterprise which provided 3,000 homes and institutions in rural Kenyan and urban slums with clean energy. For his trailblazing work in the clean energy sector with GreenChar, Tom became the youngest recipient of the Echoing Green Fellowship – an award given to the leading emerging social entrepreneurs around the world. At 19, Tom was named on the global list of Forbes’ 30 under 30 social entrepreneurs (the second youngest person to receive the honor). He has also other numerous national and international awards for his community-oriented entrepreneurship, including World Deliver Social Entrepreneur of the year in 2016, the Donors’ Circle for Africa Energy Prize and many others. Africa Youth Awards named him as one of the 100 Most Influential Young Africans. Tom was born and raised in poverty in rural Kenya. His education was only possible because of $300,000 in academic scholarships and grants. He graduated from Harvard University with a Bachelor’s in Psychology (High Honors) with a secondary in Computer Science.
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TED Fellows 2009 Cohort

Co-Founder

Tony Yet
Tony is co-founder of TEDtoChina.com and curator of TEDxGuangzhou . Since the launch of the website in November 2008, it has become a daily obsession for him and a source of inspiration for many non-English speaking Chinese. The main motivation behind this site is to ignite changes through conversations about ideas and to inspire young people with heartfelt stories. Tony believes in the free flow of knowledge and ideas across boundaries. He is also a staunch advocate for free software. Also a voracious reader and a word hunter, Tony likes digging into the history of words and learn their stories, which he found out to be an interesting way to learn about other cultures.
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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.