TEDxBGU 2015 revolved around the topic of Breaking Barriers!
How have you pushed your goals and ideas forward despite obstacles that have come in your way? What advice can you offer for those who are struggling to circumnavigate limitations set by others or oneself? What have you been able to accomplish that you never thought you were capable of in the past?

Ben-Gurion University of the Negev
Be'er Sheva, HaDarom
Israel

Dov Moran

Dov Moran is an Israeli engineer, inventor and entrepreneur, best known as the founder of M-Systems, and theinventor of the USB Flash Drive (USB stick, Disk-on-Key). Under his leadership it was acquired by SanDisk Corp for $1.6B at the end of 2006 after reaching revenues of $1B. Dov is also a founder, investor and Chairman of various other companies dealing with IoT, Digital Health, media technology, B2B SAAS based platforms and more.His latest start-up venture, Comigo, has developed a highly advanced, Android-based platform that integrates TV and video viewing with the Internet and social media, aimed at changing the TV viewing experience.

Erel Margalit

Member of Knesset Dr. Erel N. Margalit, one of the architects of the “Start-Up Nation,” is an Israeli entrepreneur with nearly 30 years of experience leading successful start-ups, economic development, social and cultural endeavors. Elected in 2013 on the Labor Party slate, he brings innovative leadership to the country’s most pressing political, economic, and social challenges.

Johnathan Simon

Johnathan is a high school student. Starting from a young age he became passionate about computer science and even more specifically on information security and artificial intelligence. Throughout high school, Johnathan has discovered some major security vulnerabilities within the most secured and trusted companies such as: Google, eBay, Adobe, Red Hat and more. Due to these discoveries Johnathan is now recognized by those companies, e.g. listed in the Google's Hall of Fame. In addition, Johnathan also studies artificial intelligence in the EPGY program at Stanford University. Currently and parallel to his high school studies, he is a part-time software developer at "Spectory". During his free time Johnathan enjoys track & field. This hobby took him as far as to have won the "Awty International School" in Houston award for outstanding male track performer and also won second place in Israel's national long jump competition for middle schools.

Kay Wilson

Kay Wilson is a British-born Israeli. She is a jazz pianist, cartoonist, a licensed tour guide and a writer whose articles are published in The Tower, Arutz 7 and the Times of Israel. Kay is also the survivor of a horrific machete attack that occurred in December 2010 while guiding her American friend and client, the late Kristine Luken. The two women were attacked and held at knife point and eventually tied up and then brutally stabbed. Kay watched helplessly as her friend was executed. Despite sustaining horrendous injuries herself, she managed to play dead and later escape. After nearly four years of physical rehabilitation and trauma therapy, Kay began working as an inspirational speaker, speaking for non-profits on issues of human rights for global victims of terrorism and campaigning against hate speech on university campuses.

Roxanne Pomerantz

Roxanne lived in Beersheva, Israel for six months to participate in the Overseas Student Program at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev. Roxanne was the winner of a campus-wide competition to be the Student Speaker representative at TedxBGU 2015. Her talk was inspired by her intensive Hebrew-language learning program (Ulpan) experience and by being part of an international student body that developed strong connections quickly with the help of a new common language. Exposure to the Hebrew language at a very young age through Jewish traditions gave Roxanne a natural advantage in the language learning process: an advantage which, through her debut-Ted talk, she wishes people will be inspired to give to others, simply by making a conscious effort to expose the children in their lives to foreign languages.

Shaul Shalvi

Honest people sometimes bend ethical rules. What makes people deviate from the ethical standards they cherish? Behavioral scientist Shaul Shalvi has spent the last eight years studying ethical decision making and corruption using experiments. The Behavioral Ethics Lab that he leads seeks to uncover the psychological roots of corruption, and design ways to fight it.

Shaul Shalvi

Honest people sometimes bend ethical rules. What makes people deviate from the ethical standards they cherish? Behavioral scientist Shaul Shalvi has spent the last eight years studying ethical decision making and corruption using experiments. The Behavioral Ethics Lab that he leads seeks to uncover the psychological roots of corruption, and design ways to fight it.

Ya'akov (Kobi) Gal

Dr. Ya'akov (Kobi) Gal leads the human-computer decision-making lab at the department of information science engineering in Ben-Gurion University. He is also a research associate at the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences at Harvard University. His work investigates representations and algorithms for making decisions in heterogeneous groups comprising both people and computational agents. He has worked on combining artificial intelligence algorithms with educational technology towards supporting students’ in their learning and teachers’ understanding of students’ learning strategies. He has published over 50 papers in highly refereed venues on topics ranging from artificial intelligence to the learning and cognitive sciences. Gal is a recipient of the Wolf foundation's 2013 Krill prize for young Israeli scientists, a Marie Curie International fellowship, and a three-time recipient of Harvard University’s outstanding teacher award.

Yoav Abrahami

Yoav Abrahami is the Chief Architect at Wix.com, working with developers and operations to build the company's future products as well as accelerating and improving development processes. Prior to joining Wix, Yoav was an Architect at Amdocs Cramer OSS division. Yoav holds a MS in Physics and a BS in Computer Science from the Tel Aviv University.