TED Names World-Changing 2012 TEDGlobal Fellows

NEW YORK, March 27, 2012 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- TED, the nonprofit devoted to Ideas Worth Spreading, today announces the new class of TEDGlobal Fellows, a diverse group of innovators from around the world who will give talks this summer at TEDGlobal 2012 in Edinburgh, a selection of which will then be posted on TED.com. The TED Fellows program hand-picks world-changing innovators from around the globe and brings them to the TED stage, helping to raise international awareness of their remarkable work as well as nurture their careers through ongoing coaching, mentoring and collaboration within the TED community.

Since the program launched in 2009, TED Fellows have scaled a platform that enables users to crowdsource crisis information, created revolutionary open-source blueprints for building tractors and other industrial machinery from scratch, and have inspired students to study neuroscience through self-led, counterintuitive experiments with cockroaches -- among many other game-changing projects. To date, the TED Fellows program has honored 287 Fellows from 75 different countries and has received a total of 6500 applications from from around the world.

"The 19 Fellows who make up the 2012 TEDGlobal class have already demonstrated breathtaking accomplishment," said Tom Rielly, the director of the TED Fellows program. "For example, we have a Kenyan self-taught sculptor who transforms 'junk' into art, including sublime eyewear, a Ugandan prison activist who works to reintegrate African prisoners into their communities and a coral scientist who is studying the impact of climate change on marine life. All of them are at dramatic inflection points in their careers, and we hope to help them accelerate their progress, no matter what their domain."

This year's Fellows come from 17 countries across multiple disciplines. Among them are:

• Ola Orekunrin, a Nigerian healthcare entrepreneur and founder of Flying Doctors Nigeria, an enterprise providing urgent helicopter, airplane ambulance and evacuation services across West Africa.
• Amanullah Mojadidi, an Afghan artist whose work explores "the geography of self" through combining traditional story lines and postmodern, parodist narrative strategies intentionally blurring the lines between fact and fiction, documentation and imagination.
• Alexander McLean, a British activist and founder of African Prisons Project, a Uganda-based organization working to improve the lives of men, women and children living in African prisons through healthcare, education, access to justice and community reintegration.
• Kristen Marhaver, an American coral reef biologist and science communications enthusiast based in Curacao, studying how certain bacteria can be used to increase settlement and survival of Caribbean corals.

See below for the full list of the 2012 TEDGlobal Fellows.

As part of the program, all TED Fellows will participate as full members of this year's annual TEDGlobal conference in Edinburgh, where they will deliver their own TED Talks before an audience of hundreds. Prior to the conference, the Fellows will gather for a three-day event to feature high-level workshops on subjects such as presentation skills to raising funds. After the conference, the best of the Fellows' talks will be posted on TED.com, catapulting their work onto the global stage.

The program nurtures the careers of Fellows by connecting them with professional coaching and mentoring services throughout the year via SupporTED, a program created by The Harnisch Foundation and Renee Freedman & Company. Fellows also participate in the TED community by sharing their discoveries on the TED Fellows blog, contributing to TEDx events and exchanging information, inspiration and ideas through the just-launched Fellows network (fellows.ted.com).

The TED Fellows program is made possible by the visionary support of the Bezos family, the Harnisch Foundation, the Dhanam Foundation, Arcus Foundation and numerous private donors. For more information about or to support the TED Fellows program, visit http://www.ted.com/fellows.

TED will be accepting submissions for the next round of TED Fellows starting May 28, 2012. Please visit www.ted.com/fellows/apply to learn more. The program seeks individuals between 21 and 45 years of age (though anyone over 18 is eligible) who demonstrate remarkable achievement in their fields of endeavor. It focuses on candidates from six regions: Asia-Pacific, Africa, the Caribbean, Latin America, Eastern Europe and the Middle East, though candidates from all regions are welcome.

Connect with TED Fellows:  
Email: fellows@ted.com   
Twitter: @tedfellow    
Facebook: facebook.com/TEDFellow   
YouTube: youtube.com/tedfellowstalks    
Fellows Site: ted.com/tedfellows   
Fellows Network: fellows.ted.com

TEDGlobal 2012 Fellows:

Ivana Gadjanski (Serbia) – Neuroscientist + poet
Serbian neuroscientist, tissue engineer and poet studying how cells translate mechanical stimuli into biological signals in order to repair damaged tissue, and investigating how poetry can be used in scientific research.

Salvatore Iaconesi (Italy) – Open-source engineer + artist
Italian engineer, artist and hacker behind Art is Open Source, an informal network promoting artistic, creative and critical practices.

Joel Jackson (UK | Kenya) – Auto innovator
British mobility entrepreneur and founder of Mobius Motors, a Kenya-based company designing and manufacturing a first-of-its-kind affordable vehicle made expressly for the unique customer requirements and often-poor road conditions found in the developing world.

Cyrus Kabiru (Kenya) – Found object artist
Kenyan self-taught painter and sculptor who primarily uses junk materials to make his works, including striking eyewear.

Elaine Ng Yan Ling (UK | China) – Smart materials artist + designer
British artist and designer, currently based in China, exploring the function of natural shape-memory materials and how the behavior of natural elements can be incorporated in manmade materials for architecture and interior design. 

Max Little (UK | US) – Applied mathematician
Mathematician whose research includes a breakthrough technique to monitor – and potentially screen for – Parkinson's disease through listening to patients' voices alone.

Sheref Mansy (US | Italy) – Artificial-life scientist
American artificial-life scientist based in Italy working to build artificial chemical systems that mimic biological cells.

Kristen Marhaver (US | Curacao) – Coral reef biologist
Coral reef biologist and science communications enthusiast based in Curacao, studying how certain bacteria can be used to increase settlement and survival of Caribbean corals.

Alexander McLean (UK | Uganda) – African prison activist
Founder of African Prisons Project, a Uganda-based organization working to improve the lives of men, women, and children living in African prisons through healthcare, education, access to justice and community reintegration.

Amanullah Mojadidi (US | Afghanistan) – Artist
Afghan artist whose work explores "the geography of self" through combining traditional story lines and postmodern, parodist narrative strategies intentionally blurring the lines between fact and fiction, documentation and imagination.

Catarina Mota (Portugal) – Open-source advocate + researcher
Portuguese maker, open-source advocate and founder of openMaterials, a collaborative research project focused on open-source and DIY experimentation with smart materials.

Andrew Nemr (US) – Tap dancer
Lebanese-American tap dancer, artistic director of Cats Paying Dues/CPD PLUS and co-founder of The Tap Legacy Foundation, a nonprofit organization dedicated to building a lasting home for the art of tap dance.

Hakeem Oluseyi (US) – Astrophysicist + science educator
Astrophysicist, inventor and science educator whose research focuses on measuring the structure and evolution of the Milky Way galaxy and characterizing new planetary systems. 

Ola Orekunrin (Nigeria | UK) – Healthcare entrepreneur
Nigerian healthcare entrepreneur and founder of Flying Doctors Nigeria, an enterprise providing urgent helicopter, airplane ambulance and evacuation services across West Africa.

Ed Ou (Canada | Taiwan) – Photojournalist
Award-winning Canadian photojournalist whose work focuses on stories from the Middle East, the former Soviet Union, Africa and the Americas. He is currently working on a project documenting youth across the Arab Spring.  

Bel Pesce (Brazil | US) ­– Entrepreneur + innovator
Brazilian entrepreneur and co-founder of Lemon, a tech start-up that helps users collect and store paper and email receipts in one place so they can throw away the paper, keep the important stuff, and see their money in a new way.

Usman Riaz (Pakistan) – Musician + artist
Classical pianist, percussive guitarist and fine artist passionate about the creative process.

Bahia Shehab (Egypt | Lebanon) – Artist + creative director + Islamic art historian
Lebanese-Egyptian artist, designer and Islamic art historian studying ancient Arabic script and visual heritage to solve modern-day design issues.          

Christopher Soghoian (US) – Privacy researcher + activist
American privacy researcher and activist who focuses on online privacy, including both consumer issues and government surveillance.

About TED
TED is a nonprofit organization devoted to Ideas Worth Spreading. Started as a four-day conference in California 25 years ago, TED has grown to support those world-changing ideas with multiple initiatives. The annual TED conference invites the world's leading thinkers and doers to speak for 18 minutes. Their talks are then made available, free, at TED.com. TED speakers have included Bill Gates, Al Gore, Jane Goodall, Elizabeth Gilbert, Sir Richard Branson, Nandan Nilekani, Philippe Starck, Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, Isabel Allende and former UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown. The annual TED conference takes place each spring in Long Beach, California, along with the TEDActive simulcast in Palm Springs. TEDGlobal is held each summer in Edinburgh, Scotland.

TED's media initiatives include TED.com, where new TED Talks are posted daily, and the Open Translation Project, which provides subtitles and interactive transcripts as well as the ability for any TED Talk to be translated by volunteers worldwide. TED has established the annual TED Prize, where exceptional individuals with a wish to change the world are given the opportunity to put their wishes into action. TEDx offers individuals or groups a way to host local, self-organized events around the world, and the TED Fellows program helps world-changing innovators from around the globe to become part of the TED community and, with its help, amplify the impact of their remarkable projects and activities.

Follow TED on Twitter at @TEDNews, or on Facebook at facebook.com/TED.

Contact: Ben Kellogg, [email protected], 212-392-4949

SOURCE TED