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

Refugee advocate

As president of the International Rescue Committee, David Miliband enlists his expert statesmanship in the fight against the greatest global refugee crisis since World War II.

As the son of refugees, David Miliband has first-hand experience with those fleeing conflict and disaster. In 2013, he abandoned a long political career to take the helm of the International Rescue Committee, an NGO committed to emergency and long-term assistance to refugees (and founded at the call of Albert Einstein in 1933).

As a former UK Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, Miliband is no stranger to cross-border politics. He is a leading voice against recent anti-refugee and immigration measures in the US, where the IRC currently runs resettlement programs in 29 cities.

rescue.org @DMiliband

Thursday, April 27, 11:00AM - 12:45PM PDT
Session 8: Bugs and Bodies
Hosted by Chris Anderson.

Robert Sapolsky
Neuroscientist, primatologist, writer

Robert Sapolsky is one of the leading neuroscientists in the world, studying stress in primates (including humans).

We all have some measure of stress, and Robert Sapolsky explores its causes as well as its effects on our bodies (his lab was among the first to document the damage that stress can do to our hippocampus). In his research, he follows a population of wild baboons in Kenya, who experience stress very similarly to the way humans do. By measuring hormone levels and stress-related diseases in each primate, he determines their relative stress, looking for patterns in personality and social behavior that might contribute. These exercises have given Sapolsky amazing insight into all primate social behavior, including our own.

He has been called "one of the best scientist-writers of our time" by Oliver Sacks. Sapolsky has produced, in addition to numerous scientific papers, books for broader audiences, including A Primate's Memoir: A Neuroscientist's Unconventional Life Among the Baboons, Why Zebras Don't Get Ulcers: Stress Disease and Coping, and The Trouble with Testosterone.

profiles.stanford.edu/robert-sapolsky

Jun Wang
Genomics researcher

At his new institute/company, iCarbonX, Wang Jun aims to establish a big data platform for genomics.

In 1999, Wang Jun founded the Bioinformatics Department of Beijing Genomics Institute (BGI, now known as BGI Shenzhen), one of China's premier research facilities. Until July 2015, Wang led the institution of 5,000+ people engaged in studies of genomics and its informatics, including genome assembly, annotation, expression, comparative genomics, molecular evolution, transcriptional regulation, genome variation analysis, database construction as well as methodology development such as the sequence assembler and alignment tools. He also focuses on interpretation of the definition of "gene" by expression and conservation study. The Pig Genome Project was completed at BGI under his leadership, as well as the chicken genome variation map and the TreeFam in collaboration with the Sanger Institute. Recently, he and his group finished the first Asian diploid genome, the 1000 genome project, and many more projects.

In late 2015, Wang founded a new institute/company, iCarbonX, aiming to develop an artificial intelligence engine to interpret and mine genomic data and help people better manage their health and defeat disease.

Anne Madden
Microbial researcher

Whether brewing better beer or chronicling the lives of the microbes living in the dust under the couch, Dr. Anne Madden seeks to understand and utilize the microbial world around us.

Along with her colleagues in the Laboratory of Rob Dunn at North Carolina State University, Anne Madden studies ways that our dimly understood microbial neighbors can yield surprising discoveries. She's helped create one of the first single-culture sour beers, discovered a new fungus living inside wasp nests and cataloged the astonishing diversity of some of the microscopic and macroscopic life in our homes -- more than 600 species of arthropods in USA homes at last count.

In addition to her research work at North Carolina State University, Madden is Chief Strategist at the brewing yeast company Lachancea LLC and consults for a variety of industries from bee keeping companies to technology firms. Her work has been featured on numerous media platforms, including National Geographic and Newsweek.

anneamadden.com @anneamadden

David Brenner
Radiation scientist

https://ted2017.ted.com/program
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