Tyler's Blog Death of Destiny

TEDxTerry talks 2009

So today, I spent most of my day at the TEDxTerry talks 2009 conference at UBC.

Here was today's itinerary:

• 10:00 AM - 10:10 AM :: Introductions
• 10:10 AM - 10:30 AM :: Jennifer Gardy
• 10:30 AM - 10:50 AM :: Alexander Cannon
• 10:50 AM - 11:10 AM :: TED Dan Ariely
• 11:10 AM - 11:35 AM :: Break
• 11:35 AM - 11:55 AM :: Azim Wazeer
• 11:55 AM - 12:15 PM :: Iris Amuto
• 12:15 PM - 12:35 PM :: Jennifer Kaban
• 12:35 PM - 1:20 PM :: Lunch
• 1:20 PM - 1:40 PM :: TED Stefan Sagmeister
• 1:40 PM - 2:00 PM :: Camille Israel
• 2:00 PM - 2:20 PM :: Nadine Qureshi
• 2:20 PM - 2:40 PM :: Eric Ma
• 2:40 PM - 3:05 PM :: Break
• 3:05 PM - 3:25 PM :: TED William Kamkwamba
• 3:25 PM - 3:55 PM :: Tahira Ebrahim (WISH)
• 3:55 PM - 4:15 PM :: Feedback, Raffle, and Closing

And as for the day's exciting events...

10:00 AM - 10:10 AM :: Introductions
The introductions were pretty short. The event's MC was once again Dr. David (Dave) Ng from UBC's Terry Project. He basically introduced the Terry Project, Terry talks, and TEDx. It was also about this time that I noticed that the plugs didn't have working electricity, and thus my laptop was useless (good bye effective time management for today). *sigh* Oh well.

10:10 AM - 10:30 AM :: Jennifer Gardy
Jennifer Gardy, aka Nerd Girl, is a UBC alumni student currently working at BC's Centre for Disease Control. Her talk was named Public Health in the 21st Century: the Open-Source Outbreak (Outbreak 2.0). That being said, I've gotta hand it to Dr. Gardy that she did something I wish the other talkers did: she started by giving her "Take-Home Points". Those would be that technological advances and scientists becoming more open to collaboration has led to what she referred to the rapid and collaborative Public Health 2.0 (in reference to the Web 2.0). She mentioned a few examples including Richard Lester's use of SMS to combat HIV in Africa, Stephen Quake's quick production of a human genome, and how our genome procedures have increased in efficiency over 100 fold from SARS a few years to the H1N1 pandemic we are currently experiencing. She finished by suggesting that her audience embrace new technologies, Open Access, and collaboration with fellow scientists.

10:30 AM - 10:50 AM :: Alexander Cannon
Alexander Cannon is currently a student of the Doctorate of Musical Arts degree in trumpet performance at UBC. His talk was named Gender Quest. Cannon opened his talk by stating that he was born biologically as a girl, and used this as a bridge into his talk about being transgendered. He mentioned that a current hypothesis for the cause of transgender identification is the size of the hypothalamus (a part of the brain) in that in as he stated "typical people", the hypothalamus is about the size of a golf ball in males and about the size of a bean in females, but it is suspected that for transgendered people, the size of the hypothalamus may be reversed. He ended his talk by getting the audience to ask themselves if gender really matters in everyday life. Should a parent's first question about their child be "Is it a boy or a girl?", or rather should it be "What type of person will this child be?" or "What will this child be capable of accomplishing?"?

10:50 AM - 11:10 AM :: TED Dan Ariely

11:35 AM - 11:55 AM :: Azim Wazeer
Azim Wazeer is a UBC Sauder student. His talk was titled Perspectives of Global Nomads. Wazeer's talk was based largely on a compare and contrast basis between Saudi Arabian and North American life (both on campus and off campus). His talk was a promotion of international and global citizenship.

11:55 AM - 12:15 PM :: Iris Amuto
Iris Amuto is a UBC student pursuing a double major in Political Sciences and Women's Agenda Studies. Her talk was titled The African Paradox. She opened her talk with a short excerpt from Richard Dowden's Africa: Altered States, Ordinary Miracles. Her presentation was an effort to show the other side to Africa. That is, she wanted to show that Africa is not entirely consumed by war and starvation. She wanted to show that Africa has more sides than just those--she showed Africa's colors, Africa's faces, Africa's music, and stated that Africa is not "a scar on the conscience of the world" but rather a beauty mark. Ultimately, she wanted people to see Africa as it really is.

12:15 PM - 12:35 PM :: Jennifer Kaban
Jennifer Kaban is a part-time UBC student currently working at TRIUMF and upgrading her prior degree in Journalism. Her talk was called Sharing Wonder. Although Kaban is a journalist, she has a real passion for the sciences. She shared three scientific wonders with her audience: origami (and its mathematical equivalences), teleportation (although teleporting 1 atom takes 10 minutes, and thus teleporting the approximately 10^23 atoms in the human body would take longer than the current age of the universe), and memories (which, unlike the previous "filing cabinet" analogy, are now better understood and known to potentially change upon each access). She wanted to inspire scientists to bring back the wonder that many students experience when first entering university (only to lose it after experiencing the course load).

1:20 PM - 1:40 PM :: TED Stefan Sagmeister

1:40 PM - 2:00 PM :: Camille Israel
Camille Israel is a fourth year UBC Antropology student. Her talk was titled Major Angst. Israel's talk was about angst experienced by university students and their losing of interest in their major. She hoped to give people some advice about getting excited about their majors again. Some of her ideas included talking in class, taking or leading Student Directed Seminars, finding interesting and engaging blogs about your interests, or taking up a hobby. Speaking of her hobby (the ukelele), she played a song for the audience to end her talk today. When I heard her warming up in the break, though, Jason Mraz somehow got stuck in my head and thus I've had this song stuck in my head since early morning (and playing on repeat since about 6:30 PM):

2:00 PM - 2:20 PM :: Nadine Qureshi
Nadine Qureshi is a second year UBC Science student and the co-founder of Mission Against Malaria. Her talk was titled Malaria: How We Are "Biting Back". Her talk talked about Mission Against Malaria's work in Tanzania. She discussed use of vaccines, bed nets, and other methods of fighting Malaria.

2:20 PM - 2:40 PM :: Eric Ma
Eric Ma is a fourth year Integrated Science student in Biochemistry and Cancer Biology at UBC. His talk was titled What Synthetic Biology Can Do For You. After briefly going over the Central Dogma of Biology (mostly for the non-scientific people in the audience), he went on to describe how DNA can be used as the building blocks to produce customized proteins. He also provided examples of where this is, or may be, utilized such as in synthetic blood using E. coli, or how bacteria may be used to consume greenhouse gases and use them to produce pharmaceutical drugs. He also went on to talk about his work on iGEM on UBC's iGEM team.

3:05 PM - 3:25 PM :: TED William Kamkwamba

Interlude :: Geoff Costeloe
Before the final speaker, Geoff Costeloe, last year's wish speaker, gave a speech about how his wish is progressing. Updates can be found at http://www.terry.ubc.ca/mix. Immediate progress can be seen in the Science One program where Science One Biology is doing some combined lectures and assignments with the History (HIST 104) classes.

3:25 PM - 3:55 PM :: Tahira Ebrahim (WISH)
Tahira Ebrahim is UBC's 2009 Terry talks Wish Speaker. Her talk was titled Broken Mosaic: Challenging Canadian Diversity. Her talk stated that despite Canada's multicultural reputation, racism is still a major problem. She also mentioned the interesting point that keeping the peace is ultimately keeping the silence. She would like to see a new diversity where an individual is recognized beyond their community (eg. Richmond's reputation as an Asian community). Ebrahim's wish was for the creation of an interfaith, interracial, and intercultural community on campus. It would provide a place for open sharing of differing opinions. It would involve club collaboration on cross cultural awareness. It would involve promoting and facilitating dialogue between groups. It would involve addressing real world questions on diversity and conflict. Ebrahim stated that possible avenues in which her wish may take place included advocacy, consulting, mediation, and mentorship. Any ideas, questions, or comments for the Wish can be sent to terrytalks2009@live.ca

3:55 PM - 4:15 PM :: Feedback, Raffle, and Closing
Because we went overtime with Geoff's interlude, the conclusion was very short and rushed. Ultimately it was a quick thanks (again) to the sponsors of the event. I'm not sure why they listed "Raffle" because there was not raffle at the event. XD

Breaks and Lunch
Lunch was again delicious--their egg salad sandwiches are wonderful :) And the breaks gave me a chance to do some chemistry homework because my midterm of death is coming up on Thursday night, but I figured Terry talks is pretty important so I better be there :)

Anyhow, that was Terry talks 2009. I hope this information is useful to anybody who missed the event :) Let me know if there's any errors, if you want me to add info, or if you have any questions.

For another perspective of the event, check out Miriam's entry!