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TED2017: The future you
4/20/17, 12:07 PM

David Brenner sees the good and the bad sides of radiation for health care, and his goal is to optimize radiation for situations where the benefits can be large and the risks small.

Radiation is very much a two-edged sword -- used in the right way it has revolutionized modern medicine -- such as through CT scans and as a cure for many cancers. But radiation used in the wrong way can be harmful. To maximize the benefits of the many different types of radiation, we need to understand exactly how they affect us -- from our DNA to the whole person.

Brenner directs the Center for Radiological Research at Columbia University Medical Center. He started his career in theoretical physics -- applying quantum mechanics to radiation therapy. While he has no doubt forgotten everything he knew about quantum mechanics, he has retained his love for applying hard-core physics concepts to solve biological problems. David has designed new “patient friendly” approaches for prostate cancer radiation therapy that are now in common use worldwide, and he is currently very excited about the prospects of beating pancreatic cancer with new types of radiation.

Over the past 6 years, Brenner has also been working towards a safe way to kill drug-resistant bacteria such as MRSA, as well as airborne viruses such as influenza, using a unique type of ultra-violet light.

columbia.edu/~djb3 @CRR_CUMC

Levon Biss
Photographer

With his "Microsculpture" series, Levon Biss photographs the incredible details of insects.

Levon Biss is a British photographer who works across many genres, including reportage, sport and portraiture. His passion for nature and photography have come together to create Microsculpture. For the project, a unique photographic process composites thousands of images using multiple lighting setups to create the final insect portraits. Each specimen was mounted on an adapted microscope stage, allowing close control over the position of the specimen in front of the camera lens. Most insects were photographed in about 30 sections, each section lit differently with strobe lights to accentuate the microsculpture of that particular area of the body. Each insect portrait is created from more than 8,000 separate images. In between his insect projects, Biss continues to photograph humans.

levonbiss.com @LevonBissPhoto

Mehdi Ordikhani-Seyedlar
Neuroscientist

Mehdi Ordikhani-Seyedlar is a postdoc at Duke, researching brain signals and their usage in brain-machine interfaces.

Mehdi Ordikhani-Seyedlar began his research on the neuropharmacology of learning and memory when he was studying veterinary medicine in Tabriz, Iran. Subsequently studying in France and Germany, he researched human visual attention, then started his PhD thesis focusing on decoding electrophysiological features of covert and overt attention in humans. He spent 2014 as a visiting scholar at the Nicolelis Lab at Duke University.

With his 2016 PhD from the Technical University of Denmark in hand, Ordikhani-Seyedlar took a postdoctoral position at Duke to develop algorithms to process large-scale neuronal activity and brain-machine interfaces. He hopes to begin May 1.

@mehdi_ordikhani

Richard Browning
Founder, Gravity

Richard Browning is the founder of human propulsion technology startup Gravity, which has invented, built and patented an Iron Man–like personal flight system.

Richard Browning is an ultra-marathon runner, an ex-Royal Marine reservist, former City commodity trader and a pioneering inventor. He's the founder of Gravity, launched in March 2017 with a dream to reimagine an entirely new form of human flight, leaning on an elegant collaboration of mind and body augmented by leading-edge technology.

Gravity has to date been experienced by over a billion people globally with video views alone running at more than 60m within seven days of launch. Browning’s vision is to build Gravity into a world-class aeronautical engineering business, challenge perceived boundaries in human aviation, and inspire a generation to dare ask ‘what if…’

gravity.co

Elizabeth Blackburn
Molecular biologist

Elizabeth Blackburn won a Nobel Prize for her pioneering work on telomeres and telomerase, which may play central roles in how we age.

Dr. Blackburn is the president of the Salk Institute and a pioneering molecular biologist. She received the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 2009 for discovering the molecular nature of telomeres, the ends of chromosomes that serve as protective caps essential for preserving genetic information, and for co-discovering telomerase, an enzyme that maintains telomere ends. Both telomeres and telomerase are thought to play central roles in aging and diseases such as cancer, and her work helped launch entire new fields of research in these areas.

In addition to the Nobel Prize, Blackburn has received nearly every major scientific award including the Lasker, Gruber, and Gairdner prizes. She has served as president of the American Association of Cancer Research and the American Society for Cell Biology, and on editorial boards of scientific journals including Cell and Science. She coauthored the best-selling book The Telomere Effect: A Revolutionary Approach to Living Younger, Healthier, Longer.

salk.edu

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