Latest from TEDx

TEDx 2012: Sam Hunt

Though he likes to call his poems “songs for the tone-deaf”, Sam has happily worked with musicians – country band The Warratahs, modern classical man Gareth Farr, the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra, and alternative rocker David Kilgour, among others. Sam was special guest at two acclaimed Leonard Cohen concerts in 2009. In 1986, Sam was awarded a QSM – a “quiet sober man” he claimed. In 2010, he was further festooned with honour when he was made a Companion of the New Zealand Order of Merit (CNZM) for services to poetry. Sam has enjoyed a burst of activity in recent years, publishing a new collection of poems Doubtless and the semi-autobiographical Backroads: Charting a Poet’s Life, as well as a selection of James K. Baxter poems. His most recent book is Knucklebnes: Poems 1962 – 2012.

TEDx 2012: John Windsor

Professor John Windsor is a surgeon who holds a personal chair in surgery at the University of Auckland. His current research includes the role of toxic mesenteric lymph in the promotion of multiple organ failure; the investigation of specific mitochondrial therapies to restore cellular bioenergetics; the mapping and modulation of gastric electrical activity; and the development of medical devices. Over the last five years, John has published 80 manuscripts, raised $6m in grants and given over 100 invited talks, including Visiting Professorships to Harvard, Oxford, Karolinska, Singapore, Cape Town and Delhi. John is also co-founder and director of the startup SIMTICS Ltd that has developed the ‘Integrated Cognitive Simulator’ for procedural and surgical skills training.

TEDx 2012: Pip Hall

Pip Hall has worked as a full time writer in theatre, film and television for 17 years. An accomplished playwright, Pip has multiple awards to her name including New Zealand’s most significant and prestigious theatre honour, the Bruce Mason Playwriting Award. Pip also works extensively in television and film as a writer, story liner, story/script editor, developer, creative producer and actor.

TEDx 2012: Alistair Knott

Alistair Knott is a linguist and cognitive scientist working at Otago University‘s Department of Computer Science. He grew up in Brussels, attending the European School, a multilingual institution whose Babel-like environment sparked a lifelong interest in language. Ali studied psychology and philosophy at Oxford University, and then did postgraduate and postdoctoral work in artificial intelligence at the University of Edinburgh. He took up a lectureship at Otago in 1999, where he is now an associate professor. Ali’s research is in computational modelling of human language, with a focus on models of language generation. He worked on some of the earliest text generation systems deployed on the World Wide Web, and on an influential web-based human-computer dialogue system. His current interest is in psychological models of text generation: What are the neural mechanisms which allow people to talk about what they see and do?

TEDx 2012: Assil Russell

Assil Russell is a young dental surgeon from Hamilton who has a passion for helping others. Born in Iraq and raised in New Zealand, at the age of 21 Assil set up New Zealand’s first and only registered medical and dental charity for Iraqi orphans and disadvantaged children – I CARE (Iraqi Children’s Aid & Repair Endeavour). Assil believes that “You don’t have to be a doctor to save lives” and ICARE is now an international movement that is empowering ordinary people from all walks of life to make a real difference, one smile at a time.

TEDx 2012: David Krofcheck

David was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA. He earned a BSc in physics from Carnegie Mellon University, followed by an MSc and PhD in Physics from Ohio State University. While working on university campuses in Michigan and California, David held postdoctoral positions at both Lawrence Livermore and Lawrence Berkeley National Labs. David’s current work is based at the CERN laboratory in Geneva, Switzerland. He loves to play with ideas and is most happy when he can uncover similar strands of thought on disparate subjects, particularly in science, philosophy and religion. David believes that New Zealand should nurture its intellectual resources as it has done for its environmental riches.

TEDx 2012: Andrew Patterson

Andrew is arguably New Zealand’s most internationally recognised and published Architect. Last year the worlds most searched architectural Journal, London based ‘World Architecture News’ named his firm, Patterson Associates as one of five Architects world wide “who’s work is set to shape Global Architecture in the 21 century.” He is the designer of New Zealand’s only new build 6 Green Star rated project – Geyser, in Auckland. Rated as international innovator Andrew believes if that if New Zealand is to sustainably succeed its built environment must equal or better its natural environment.

TEDx 2012: Michelle Dickinson

Michelle has a PhD in biomedical materials engineering, runs New Zealand’s only nanomechanical testing laboratory and is a self-confessed adrenaline junkie. Her passion for both sports and science has enabled her to travel the world on the search for her next adventure or research project. With specialist knowledge in nanotechnology, Michelle has contributed to the development of cutting edge technologies. Secretly, however, Michelle has been working on advancing these developments to help her to achieve her childhood dream of becoming a real life superhero.