TEDxUF 2011

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About TEDxUF 2011

TEDx, x=independently organize event

Ideas Worth Spreading

Over 400 students, faculty, Gainesvillans, and TEDsters converged at the Constans Theatre at UF on February 26th for the second annual TEDxUF event.

TEDxUF 2011 Speakers


The Future of Medicine
EVA VERTES was first recognized for her research during high school, when she conducted Alzheimer’s research for which she received the top award in medicine at the 2002 Intel International Science Fair. She has since focused on cancer, trying to understand the built-in mechanisms the body uses to prevent against cancer and how we might be able to use these principles to guide the development of novel, effective cancer treatments – maybe even a cure. She received a degree in molecular biology from Princeton University in 2007, then spent 2 years working full-time in a cancer research lab at Weill Cornell Medical College, and is currently pursuing her MD at the University of Florida. Eva Vertes is perhaps best known for presenting at the 2005 TED conference when she was only 19 years old.


The Hidden Frontier
JILL HEINERTH has traveled the world exploring underwater caves on projects that were branded impossible. She sees her work as a giant puzzle and loves the challenge of finding the tools and knowledge that allow her to unravel the last finite frontiers of this Earth. Jill will share her thoughts about risk management, technology and synergism as she recounts her exploration inside of Antarctic icebergs, and making movies deep inside submerged caves around the world.

A New Capitalism
VIKRAM RANGALA taught writing and communication at the University of Florida for 15 years. He has traded futures and options for 12 years. During a painful time of professional transition and personal transformation, he worked to channel his passions, skills, and challenges into something positive. After tasting humiliation and hardship, he studied the greater suffering of others and the economic and societal cost of oppressing and undervaluing billions of people, especially girls, rather than investing in them. Recently, he started The Girl Fund Project, the world’s first nonprofit hedge fund, which will change the profit motive and give 100% of profits to help girls living in extreme poverty and violence. He will speak about the personal process of starting his experiment in a new capitalism: honest, compassionate, and worthy of our dignity.


Cross-Network Learning
JAMES OLIVERIO is internationally known as a creative artist, researcher, educator and producer. He has served as Founding Director of the Digital Worlds Institute at the University of Florida since January 2001, with full professorships in Music and in Digital Arts & Sciences. He holds five Emmy Awards from the Atlanta chapter of the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences for his original soundtracks. His work in globally-distributed performing and digital arts has been featured on CNN International and the BBC. His talk will discuss a needed shift in education from one lecturer/one classroom to an interdisciplinary approach linking resources around the planet via integrated techniques and technologies being developed at the UF Digital Worlds Institute.

The Wrong Idea
MARK YEGGE was an entrepreneur as a child. He mowed lawns, cleaned pools, and invested his earnings in the stock market. While receiving his degree in Business from the University of Florida he started a business importing watches with the Florida Gator logo from Hong Kong and Switzerland and marketing them throughout the Southeastern United States. He co-founded NexTrade Holdings, Inc. in the mid-1990′2 and the company became one of the Top 50 Fastest growing companies in the US. As its CEO, Yegge was twice recognized as an Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year finalist, received the Top 25 People To Watch award, and was recognized in the Top Forty Under Forty. He presents a false paradigm most people hold true that limits their success, and how to overcome it.

Imagination as a Verb
NETA PULVERMACHER was born in Kibbutz Lehavot Habashan, Israel. She graduated from Juilliard in 1985 and received an MFA in dance from Hollins University/ADF in 2006. She is an Assistant Professor at the University of Florida, School of Theatre and Dance, as well as the Artistic Director of The New York City based, The Neta Dance Company. Curious and quick, Neta and her company have pushed the boundaries of dance by merging movement, philosophy, science, music, intuition, narrative and imagery to create a living, breathing theatrical space. The Neta Dance Company tours nationally and internationally and will premiere its new bucket filled production, 2280 Pints! At Dance Theatre Workshop, NYC in May of 2011. Neta was awarded many grants and awards among them: an NEA fellowship, a NYFA fellowship, a UF FEO award and a special choreography award from Bessie Schonberg among many others. In 2010 Neta was selected as the UF College of Fine Arts Teacher of the Year as well as the CFA International Educator of the Year.

TEDxUF Student Talk Award
DOR RUBIN is a senior studying Microbiology and Cell Science at the University of Florida. Although he spends a great deal of time up at the fourth floor of Marston library studying Microbiology full time, his passions lie in entrepreneurship and screenwriting. Last summer, he helped democratize Hollywood by becoming the first intern at an online screen-writing start up company in San Francisco. His goals include but are not limited to: finishing a feature length screenplay, starting his own Phở restaurant, and travelling around the world in 80 days. His talk sheds light on the metaphor that connects philosophies such as Le’Chatelier’s principle, feedback inhibition and the development of Germ theory to basic principles of entrepreneurship and life.