TED Talks Science and Medicine Creators & Guests

Dean R. Lomax is a paleontologist.

Sergiu P. Pasca is a neuroscientist.

Dr. Laurel S. Braitman is a science historian and writer. Currently, she is writer-in-residence at the Stanford School of Medicine and a contributing writer for Pop Up Magazine.Braitman's work has appeared in The Guardian, The Wall Street Journal, Fast Company, The New Inquiry, and Salon. Her first book, "Animal Madness: How Anxious Dogs, Compulsive Parrots, and Elephants in Recovery Help Us Understand Ourselves," was published in 2015. Her second book, "What Looks Like Bravery: An Epic Journey Through Loss to Love," was published in 2023.

Michael Middlebrooks is a marine ecologist with an emphasis on photosynthetic kleptoplastic sea slugs. His research is particularly focused on how photosynthetic activity affects the behavior and ecological interactions for motile marine herbivores.

Chanda Prescod Weinstein is a theoretical cosmologist, assistant professor of Physics and Astronomy, and core faculty member in women's and gender studies at the University of New Hampshire.

Craig Richard is a physiologist.

Michael Shellenberger is an author.

Vaitea Cowan is a co-founder of Enapter.

Kelly Wanser is a technologist and climate activist. She is most known for advocating for research into the potential for climate intervention technologies. She is the founder and currently the Executive Director of the climate change research company SilverLining.Previously, Wanser was the co-founder and Principal Director of the Marine Cloud Brightening Project, a company that researches the impact of particles on clouds and climate.Wanser received her B.A. in Economics and Philosophy from Boston College.

Jason W. Chin is a synthetic biologist.

Sonia Shah is an investigative journalist and author of articles and books on corporate power, global health, and human rights.

Dan Widmaier is a California-based researcher and entrepreneur. He earned his bachelor's degree in Biochemistry from the University of Washington and later obtained his PhD in Chemistry and Chemical Biology from the University of California, San Francisco where he was a Genentech-Sandler Graduate Fellow.

Maria Popova (Bulgarian: Мария Попова) is a Bulgarian-born writer, blogger, literary and cultural critic living in Brooklyn, New York.

George Joshua Richard Monbiot is a British writer known for his environmental and political activism. He writes a weekly column for The Guardian and is the author of a number of books including Captive State: The Corporate Takeover of Britain and Feral: Searching for Enchantment on the Frontiers of Rewilding.

Guntur V. Subbarao and his team have developed an antibiotic-infused strain of wheat that naturally combats harmful, fertilizer-eating bacteria -- a "monster" contributor to climate change.

Dr. Sian L. Beilock is a cognitive scientist and the President of Barnard College. Her area of research was the differences between novice and expert athletic performances, and why people perform poorly in stressful academic situations.Before coming to Barnard College, Beilock was the Stella M. Rowly Professor of Psychology and Executive Vice Provost at the University of Chicago. Before that, she was an assistant professor in the Department of Psychology at Miami University.Beilock's first book, "Choke: What the Secrets of the Brain Reveal about Getting It Right When You Have To," was published in 2010. Her second book, "How the Body Knows Its Mind: The Surprising Power of the Physical Environment to Influence How You Think and Feel," was published in 2015.Beilock received her B.S. in cognitive science with a minor in psychology from the University of California, San Diego, and her Ph.D. in both kinesiology and psychology from Michigan State University.

Colin Averill is a microbiologist. He's the founder of FUNGA and a co-founder of SPUN. He's the lead scientist at ETH Zürich and Crowther Lab.

Michael Levin is an American developmental and synthetic biologist at Tufts University, where he is the Vannevar Bush Distinguished Professor. Levin is a director of the Allen Discovery Center at Tufts University and Tufts Center for Regenerative and Developmental Biology. He is also co-director of the Institute for Computationally Designed Organisms with Josh Bongard.