Are you ready to meet your future?

TEDxBeaconStreet’s 2017 Speakers are already planning their talks!

Seeing the future is like flying: Characters in stories long, long ago could do it, and modern humans spent a long time trying to “rediscover” that knowledge, until one day Wilbur and Orville Wright’s plane left the ground and the impossible had become reality.

Are you ready to meet the modern Wilbur & Orville Wright? Because they’re coming to TEDxBeaconStreet this fall, when our 2017 Speakers take the stage!

One speaker wants to make personalized neuroscience possible. With a map of the neurons that make up your brain, that just might be possible. What could we do for Alzheimer’s, or PTSD, or any other disease, if we could see where in the brain these occurred? Another Speaker wants to find out.

When you wake up in the morning and look in the mirror, do you ever wonder what others see? Do you wish you, or they, could see something else? Adam Graves sees the mirror as a feedback loop, a special kind of interaction that helps determine how you interact with the world. If you could interrupt this loop and see yourself a different way, what could you learn?

We all know that some social situations are difficult to navigate, and they’re even more difficult for someone with autism, Aspberger’s, or other social anxiety disorders. What if you could have a coach, right in your ear, to help you decode and interact with people’s emotions in those difficult moments? Mohammed Ghassemi imagines a wearable AI that would help people build connections and reach across the the barriers that social anxiety builds.

When you watch the raindrops roll down a window, it’s a random pattern influenced by things like wind or bumps on the glass; that’s why it can be so entrancing. Udayan wants to map the properties of fluids, with the goal of programmable reality and optics. One day, you may watch that water behave in a strange new way.

If you’ve been to Comicon, then you know of Gareb Shamus. Gareb “started Comicon when it wasn’t cool to be a geek or a nerd,” and turned it from a small publishing business to a global convention, bringing together disenfranchised fans and their comic book heroes to share in the hopeful messages of their stories.

Wendy has pivoted in her career so many times, she’s practically pirouetting. What gives her the confidence to launch so many new careers? Wendy wants all women to have that confidence, and she looks at women in the workplace as a resource that hasn’t been fully tapped. What potential could we unlock if women in the workplace had the confidence to lead in their roles?

Imagine the first day at school: were you scared? You’re trying to figure out the world, and that’s a big task. Nazmus Saquib is a PhD student at MIT now, but he was classified as a “slow” child because his learning took a different, though equally efficacious, route. He wants to build tools to help children master this transition, and manage the multitasking that school requires.

Alice Han wants to cure a disease that’s endangering the lives of girls and women across the world; every 90 seconds, a woman in the world is struck with this disease. What is it? It’s violence against women. Could we make more progress solving this problem if we thought of it as a disease?

Rebecca Kleinberger’s idea is that our voices are something we offer to others, but often don’t like ourselves. We don’t know our own voices, so they sound foreign and disconcerting. She wants to help people self-reflect on their voices to be more sensitive about it and improve human interaction.

Adam Crellin-Sazama helps young people take action on climate change. Young people who live in the city don’t see polar bears or melting ice caps, but they can make a difference through information sharing and advocacy, as well as practicing sustainability in their own lives. “Young people need to lead the revolution,” he told our audience, because the effects of global warming will become real in their lives.

Sharon Levy is concerned about the opioid epidemic, and the fact that we’re not using the treatment that works (buprenorphine). By working in pediatric clinics to integrate treatments, she was able to melt stigma and help patients.

Eve Bridburg, the founder of GrubStreet, is concerned that public trust in institutions is eroded. Can we write our way out of it, like Alexander Hamilton? Her community at GrubStreet is connected through meaning and a willingness to tackle difficult decisions together. That power may be what’s needed to heal our country.

Jim Verquist’s talk is about the future of work: Most breakthroughs come from unexpected places, so the future of work is rather unpredictable. The way innovation & risk works means more employee freedom = less organizational risk. What does that mean for future companies? Eric Schiller, the founder of Scratch, asked him what we can do for people that don’t have the opportunity to fail: How can we support innovation?

Angie Schmider uses artists to illustrate and interpret her scientific ideas. She uses the art as a tool for teaching and exploration, because art goes outside the box. Have you thought about art as a method of communicating? The process of thinking about art in this way itself expands thinking… Where could you go with this?

Elliott Kronenfeld’s fight with his mother spurred a trip to Greece, where he was inspired to wonder: How is it that the Greeks can build the Parthenon to last 2,000 years, but we can’t build trailers that outlast one hurricane? The difference is passion. If we’re going to build things that stand the test of time, then we need to put passion back into our work. He also helps couples deal with infidelity and redefine monogamy to save their relationships.

Abishek Bajpayee uses imaging for two types of field: mechanics and autonomous driving. There wasn’t much previous software in fluid mechanics he could use, because people don’t enjoy writing code and NSF doesn’t encourage them to share it, so Abishek wants to address the skills gap. Coding is a language that people can learn like any other, except it facilitates worldwide communication through computers; his talk will change the world!

Kevin Frech reminded us that we’re in the sixth mass extinction of life on the planet, thanks to human activity. He went to Kenya and interviewed poachers, and realized that while it’s easy to throw money at a wildlife preserve, people who live on less than $3 a day don’t have the luxury of caring about preserve boundaries. We’re much more likely to save the animals by providing opportunities for the people around them; in a question that echoes worldwide, why aren’t we using the cheaper and more effective solution?

Dusty Whitney, a TEDx founder himself, calls himself “a generalist.” He argues that we’re experiencing, not a surplus, but a shortage of people on the globe. Since 1950, the population has tripled, but it’s because of a lack of deaths, not an increase in births, and it throws off the natural balance of producers and non-producers. His talk has implications for immigration, automation, world demographics, and so much more.

Lillian Medville runs a game to counteract systems of oppression. Those systems hurt all of us: they impact who we see as valuable and who we love, but we talk about them as abstract concepts that exist outside our relationships. Lillian will make it constructive to talk about justice in terms of bias and relationships.

John Peurifoy started Fue in his basement after his college girlfriend dumped him, and realized that it’s entirely possible for young people to start their own companies. He now wants to make it possible for others to do the same, with a do-good-while-doing-well model to maximize the social impact of his trainees. If kids are jaded, why is that and how can we fix it through innovation?

Louis B. Smith said, “Architecture is dead. The build the same building over and over again. There’s a desire for a richer environment.” Is architecture irrelevant to our culture? Can we visualize our culture as buildings and express it that way? Louis thinks so.