TEDxTufts: Where Ideas and Community Converge

TEDxTufts, an event featuring short talks on a variety of subjects delivered by carefully selected speakers from the greater Tufts University community, will be held April 17 from 12pm to 4pm in Tufts’ Cohen Auditorium. Tickets will be on sale for $10 starting April 5 at TuftsTickets.com.

Among this year’s attendants are 26 specially-chosen high school students from Medford and Somerville whose tickets will be sponsored by local organizations. This year’s topics include moral decision-making, artificial intelligence, mental health, big data, and classical music, among others.

Featured local speakers this year include:

– Howard Woolf, director of Tufts’s Experimental College, who will speak about the power of peer education, which the Experimental College pioneered and has championed since its inception.

– Sasha Chanoff, founder and executive director of RefugePoint, an organization dedicated to supporting refugees in Sub-Saharan Africa. A graduate of Tufts’ Master of Arts in Humanitarian Assistance joint program at the Friedman School and the Fletcher School, Chanoff will speak about the importance of moral decision-making and its role in shaping our lives.

– Cristina F. Rosa, author of Brazilian Bodies and their Choreographies of Identification and professor of dance at Tufts, who will present on how physical movement impacts the identity of a person and the group to which they belong.

TEDxTufts is an independently organized event modeled after the TED talk format popularized on YouTube. TED, which stands for Technology, Entertainment, and Design, was started in 1984 as a small conference with the motto “Ideas worth spreading.” Today, TEDx events have been attended by thousands worldwide, watched by more than a billion globally, and have introduced viewers to an incredible array of new ideas in order to create positive change.

TEDxTufts speakers are selected through a competitive process to reflect a diversity of opinion, idea, life experience, connection to Tufts, and more. These speakers are coached extensively by trained speaker coaches to hone their speeches and public speaking skills and ultimately to become expert presenters.

This year’s theme is Verge, which encompasses the phrases “converge,” “diverge,” and “on the verge” to represent the variety of different manifestations of innovative and unique ideas. The event will be co-sponsored by many local organizations, such as Danger!Awesome and Artisans’ Asylum, two member-based fabrication studios equipped with 3D printers and other materials. More local sponsors will be announced as the event approaches. A large art installation answering one of TED’s core questions — “What is your passion?” — will be on display at the event.

TEDxTufts curator and Tufts junior Slide Kelly says of the event: “TEDxTufts is a celebration of the ingenuity and tenacity that shines bright here at Tufts. As a student-founded, student-run organization, we are proud of our commitment to showcase ideas exclusively from members of the Tufts community and to serve as a conduit for the transmission of these ideas beyond the university.”

Find out more about the event at tedxtufts.com.

– Submitted by Amy Sokolow