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 2020 Cohort

Criminal justice advocate

Bianca Tylek
Bianca is an activist artist and the Founder & Executive Director of Worth Rises, where she combines her direct experience with the criminal legal system and expertise in financial and legal services to challenge the prison industry. Before founding Worth Rises in 2017, Bianca was a fellow at the Brennan Center for Justice, where she investigated the perverse financial incentives created by correctional funding. Previously, Bianca worked with various state and local corrections agencies, including New York City, Pennsylvania, and Massachusetts. She has also consulted to the Association of State Correctional Administrators and worked for the Campaign to End Mass Incarceration at the American Civil Liberties Union. Bianca co-founded College Pathways at Rikers Island, a preparation program for incarcerated students interested in pursuing higher education. Before committing her career to criminal and racial justice, Bianca worked as a financial analyst at Citigroup and Morgan Stanley. Bianca has been honored as an Art For Justice Fellow, American Achievement Summit Delegate, Equal Justice Works Fellow, a Harvard University Presidential Public Service Fellow, Ford Foundation Public Interest Fellow, Paul & Daisy Soros New American Fellow, and an Education Pioneers Analyst Fellow.
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TED Fellows 2011 Cohort

Associate Professor of Physics at METU

Bilge Demirkoz
Bilge Demirkoz is a Turkish particle physicist who spent 14 years abroad and has returned home to Turkey and has a faculty position at METU, Middle East Technical University in Ankara. After graduating from MIT with a major in physics and minors in mathematics and music, Bilge Demirkoz continued her graduate studies at MIT, working on the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer experiment, which is now searching for anti-matter and a dark matter signature in space. (AMS was installed on the International Space Station on May 19th, 2011). For she finished her D.Phil., working on the ATLAS experiment at Oxford University and spent many years working at CERN, also during her post-doctoral studies with Cambridge University and IFAE Barcelona. Bilge Demirkoz is passionate about science outreach, as well as doing research and teaching. She wants to inspire the next generation of scientists as well as make public more aware of the amazing universe we all live in.
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TED Fellows 2014 Cohort

Musician, DJ

Blinky Bill
Student of music for life. Singer/Songwriter,producer and DJ.
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TED Fellows 2019, 2016 Cohort

Filmmaker, musician

Blitz Bazawule
Blitz Bazawule is a Filmmaker and Musician born in Ghana and based in New York. Blitz's short films Native Sun (2012) and Diasporadical Trilogìa (2016) premiered at New Voices in Black Cinema and Blackstar Film Festival respectively. Blitz is the founder of Africa Film Society, an organization focused on the preservation of classic African cinema. As a composer and musician, Blitz has released 4 studio albums, Stereotype (2009), Native Sun (2011), Afropolitan Dreams (2014) and Diasporadical (2016). Blitz's feature directorial debut 'The Burial Of Kojo' premiered at Urbanworld Film Festival where it won Best Narrative Feature (World Cinema). Blitz is a Senior TED Fellow and recipient of the Vilcek Prize.
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TED Fellows 2007 Cohort

Developmental Filmmaker

Bond Emeruwa
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TED Fellows 2014 Cohort

Experimental musician

Bora Yoon
Bora Yoon is an award-winning Korean-American vocalist, multi-instrumentalist and composer who addresses the dimensionality of space and sound in her work. She creates immersive architectural soundscapes using digital devices, voice, and found objects and instruments from different cultures and centuries to create immersive musical experiences for the stage, visual art, film, and dance. Non-discriminate of the boundaries which separate Music, Sound, and Noise, Yoon explores where sound connects with the subliminal using the human voice, viola, ancient Tibetan singing bowls, cell phones, radios, metronomes, bike bells, walkie-talkies, Bible pages, water, gramophones, the human voice, field recordings, and electronics, utilizing the sonic palette as a timbre language to evoke memory and association, to create nonverbal storytelling through music, and experiential sound design. Featured on the front page of The Wall Street Journal and in WIRE magazine for her musical innovations. Yoon has presented her unique experimental soundwork internationally at Lincoln Center, Nam June Paik Museum (Seoul), Patravadi Theatre (Bangkok), Brooklyn Academy of Music, Walker Art Center, Festival of World Cultures (Poland), the Singapore Arts Festival, and the Edinburgh International Festival performing the live score for the multimedia staged adaptation of Haruki Murkami's "Wind Up Bird Chronicle". She has been commissioned by Samsung, SAYAKA Chorale of Tokyo; published by Journal of Popular Noise, Boosey & Hawkes, and MIT Press; and awarded by the American Music Center, the Asian American Arts Alliance, and the New York Foundation for the Arts. www.borayoon.com
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TED Fellows 2014 Cohort

Bradley Cantrell
Bradley Cantrell is a landscape architect and scholar whose work focuses on the role of computation and media in environmental and ecological design. He has held academic appointments at the Harvard Graduate School of Design, The Rhode Island School of Design, and the Louisiana State University Robert Reich School of Landscape Architecture where he led the school as graduate coordinator and director. His work in Louisiana over the past decade points to a series of methodologies that develop modes of modeling, simulation, and embedded computation that express and engage the complexity of overlapping physical, cultural, and economic systems. Cantrell’s work has been presented and published in a range of peer reviewed venues internationally including ACADIA, CELA, EDRA, ASAH, and ARCC. Cantrell’s research and teaching focuses on digital film, simulation, and modeling techniques to represent landscape form, process, and phenomenology. His work in digital representation ranges from improving the workflow of digital media in the design process, to providing a methodology for deconstructing landscape through compositing and film editing techniques. His work in media has been recognized through a range of venues and has engaged both public and private clients. Cantrell is the co-author of two books that focus on digital representation techniques specific to the profession of landscape architecture. The first book, Digital Drawing for Landscape Architecture, connects traditional analog techniques and methods of representation to similar digital methodologies. Digital Drawing for Landscape Architecture won a 2012 ASLA Award of Excellence and has become a standard text for many landscape architecture programs as well as professional reference that is currently being published in its second edition. The second book, Modeling the Environment, explores an approach to digital modeling that is specific to environmental design and landscape architecture. The methodologies highlighted in the book foreground environment, topography, and temporal processes through the lens of the digital composite. Addressing the synthesis of computation and ecology, Cantrell develops and designs devices and infrastructures that create complex interrelationships between maintenance, evolved processes, and environmental response. This approach specifically addresses the interface between old modes of representation and direct connections to ecological processes. In collaboration with co-author Justine Holzman, Cantrell is currently developing a manuscript to be published by Routledge in the Fall of 2015 entitled, Responsive Landscapes. Responsive Landscapes highlights a range of case studies in architecture, landscape architecture, computer science, and art that employ responsive technologies as mediators of landscape processes.
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TED Fellows 2019 Cohort

Ancient technology architect

Brandon Clifford
Brandon Clifford is a time-traveler who develops creative approaches to the world’s most pressing problems. He identifies contemporary blind-spots by mining ancient knowledge that holds resonance with topics of today. He is best known for bringing megalithic sculptures to life to perform tasks. Brandon is the director and co-founder of Matter Design. He is also an associate professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Brandon received his Master of Architecture from Princeton University and his Bachelor of Science in Architecture from Georgia Tech. He has also served as the LeFevre Fellow at The Ohio State University and the John G. Williams Distinguished Visiting Professor at the University of Arkansas. Brandon is a designer and researcher who has received recognition with prizes such as the American Academy in Rome Prize, a TED Fellowship, the SOM Prize, the Design Biennial Boston Award, and the Architectural League Prize for Young Architects & Designers. His most recent authored work ‘The Cannibal’s Cookbook’ demonstrates his dedication to bringing ancient knowledge into contemporary practice with theatrical captivation. His work at Matter Design is focused on re-directing architectural research through spectacle and mysticism by re-posing a series of ancient, but hauntingly relevant questions. For instance, could walking massive statues help us design for transportation and assembly? Is the key to recycling our building materials locked inside the cryptic walls suspected of being built by primordial giants? These ancient ways of thinking compound cultural significance, ceremony, and mythology with technical and methodological procedures that have the potential to resolve our contemporary problems. His speculative built works continue to disrupt common practices and challenge default solutions.
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TED Fellows 2012 Cohort

CEO

Bre Pettis
I make things that make things. At MakerBot Industries, my company, we make machines that give creative people the superpower to make anything. I also started Thingiverse so that people could share digital designs in such a way that others can build on them. I started NYCResistor, a hackerspace in NYC, with the smartest people in the city and we share a clubhouse filled with tools like lasercutters. I was a teacher for a long time teaching small and medium sized students. I failed at being a working artist.
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TED Fellows 2022 Cohort

Equitable housing developer

Bree Jones
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TED Fellows 2009 Cohort

Entrepreneur

Bright Simons
Bright is a Director at the West African think tank - IMANI Center for Policy & Education, and President of the mPedigree Network, an mHealth initiative aimed at ending the counterfeit medicines crisis that kills thousands daily in Africa, India and elsewhere. As a Social Innovator he has been recognized with membership in the World Economic Forum's Technology Pioneer Community and Global Agenda Councils. Bright, an Ashoka Fellow, is commited to the relentless championing of free-thinking, new perspectives and the overthrow of all unexamined dogma. As a devotee of social entrepreneurship, Bright is proud to have been elected a Tech Award Laureate in 2009 by the Tech Museum.
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TED Fellows 2009 Cohort

Bristol Baughan
Bristol Baughan is an Executive Producer of Emmy-winning and Oscar-Nominated films, Author, and Leadership Coach. She founded Inner Astronauts to support people in harnessing their unique gifts in service to the world. Bristol coaches executives and social impact leaders to truly embody the values they believe in and model modern leadership. She designs and facilitates training programs to bring cognitive, social, and behavioral science to campaigns, candidates, and causes. After a decade of starting companies and making award-winning films she has spent the last decade studying behavior and consciousness around the world including a Master's Degree in Spiritual Psychology and hundreds of hours of one-on-one and group coaching. She has gone on pilgrimage with Tibetan monks in India, studied Tantric & Hatha Yoga in Thailand, and traveled around the world learning from education reformer Sir Ken Robinson. Bristol spent over ten years in the film and media business making relevant stories entertaining through film at GOOD for HBO, Paramount, and Showtime (WHICH WAY HOME, BY THE PEOPLE: THE ELECTION OF BARACK OBAMA, RACING DREAMS, SON OF RAMBOW, THE OTHER SHORE: THE DIANA NYAD STORY). She is a TED Fellow and served as a delegate for the State Department Documentary Showcase in China. Bristol holds a B.A. in International Studies from the American University School of International Service and an M.A. in Spiritual Psychology from the University of Santa Monica.
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TED Fellows 2020 Cohort

Brittany Young
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TED Fellows 2019 Cohort

Executive Director of The Good Food Institute (GFI)

Bruce Friedrich
Bruce Friedrich is founder & CEO of the Good Food Institute, a global network of nonprofit organizations, with affiliates in the U.S., India, Israel, Brazil, Singapore, and Europe (UK & EU), that works on alternative protein policy, science, and corporate engagement. GFI is accelerating the production of plant-based and cultivated meat in order to bolster the global protein supply while protecting our environment, promoting global health, and preventing food insecurity. Bruce is a TED Fellow, Y Combinator alum, 2021 "American Food Hero" (EatingWell Magazine), and popular speaker on food innovation. He has penned op-eds for the Wall Street Journal, Guardian, USA Today, Los Angeles Times, Wired, CNN, and many other publications. He has represented GFI on the TED Radio Hour, New Yorker Radio Hour, Recode Decode, the Ezra Klein Show, Making Sense (Sam Harris), and a variety of other podcasts and TV programs. Bruce's 2019 TED talk has been viewed more than 2.4 million times and translated into 30 languages. He co-authored two books, contributed chapters or forewords to ten more, and has written seven law review articles. Bruce is also on the board of Food Solutions Action, a 501(c)(4) nonprofit, nonpartisan organization dedicated to accelerating agricultural innovation; he co-founded impact venture funds New Crop Capital and Clear Current Capital, though he has no financial interest in either fund; and he serves on the UN Climate Change Global Innovation Hub Working Group on Nutrition and Health. Bruce graduated magna cum laude from Georgetown Law and also holds degrees from Johns Hopkins University, the London School of Economics, and Grinnell College.
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TED Fellows 2018, 2020 Cohort

Astrophysicist

Burcin Mutlu-Pakdil
Burçin is currently an NSF & KICP Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Chicago. She has been honored as a 2018 Ted Fellow and 2020 TED Senior Fellow, featured in National Geographic as a “woman of impact”, named a 2019 AAAS IF/THEN Ambassador (an award meant to increase the visibility of women leaders in STEM careers on the national stage), and featured in a Science Friday film documentary, “Breakthrough: Portraits Of Women In Science”. She spends most of her time searching for hierarchical structure at the scale of dwarf galaxies as a novel test of the Cold Dark Matter paradigm. She uses data gathered in a large range of wavelengths from premier telescopes worldwide and wants to learn more about how the Universe came to be the way it is today. Mutlu-Pakdil's findings have been featured by CNN, Science Daily, Astronomy Magazine, Independent and MPR News, among many others. Damon Brown wrote in his regular Inc. Magazine online column: “Many organizations are dedicated to filling the STEM pipeline with more girls and women. Others are supporting the cause by being an example. TED Fellow Burçin is representing by being one of the most notable astrophysicists today.”
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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.