Theme: Crossing Frontiers

In the spirit of ideas worth spreading, TEDx is a program of local, self-organized events that bring people together to share a TED-like experience. At a TEDx event, TEDTalks video and live speakers combine to spark deep discussion and connection in a small group. These local, self-organized events are branded TEDx, where x = independently organized TED event. The TED Conference provides general guidance for the TEDx program, but individual TEDx events are self-organized (subject to certain rules and regulations).

KulturForum Kiel
Andreas-Gayk-Straße 31
Kiel, Schleswig-Holstein, 24103
Germany

Annika Rathje

After studying adult education and working several years as a project manager and teacher at various institutions for further professional education, Annika Rathje worked 7 years as an Executive Assistant at Google where she later became responsible for various well-being projects. In that role she helped to foster and develop strategies for a more healthy corporate culture – an ideal that has made Google one of the most popular employers in the world. Rathje`s mission is to bring happiness into many more workplaces. As the founder of “Workplace To Be” she works as consultant for companies and managers to help with developing enjoyable workplace environments and staying innovative.

Dr. Jingnan Guo

Always fascinated by the exploration of Universe, Jingnan Guo started studying astrophysics when she was 17 years old. In 2007 the Marie-Curie Fellowship brought her to Europe to pursue her PhD on “high energy solar physics”. Ever since then she had been living and studying in four different institutes over three different countries across Europe (UK, Italy and Germany). Having worked with different groups and grown through various projects, Guo’s research area ranges from solar dynamics in particular particle acceleration and propagation during solar eruptions to the influence of solar energetic particles as well as galactic cosmic rays on Earth, Mars and the interplanetary space. Her current work is dedicated to better understanding the radiation environment in the interplanetary system and the risk of human exploration to deep space and other planets such as Mars.

Dr. Monika Hein

Monika Hein grew up in the beautiful landscape of Hessen and moved to Hamburg in 1995, where she was trained for musical theatre and where she studied phonetics & pedagogics. After her studies she started teaching young actors and actresses how to develop their voices and pronunciation for the stage and screen. She also taught specific presentation techniques to company leaders, customer service, sellers and more. Meanwhile Hein finished her PhD in 2010 and came back to where she started from: the stage, now as a keynote speaker. As an experienced voice-over artist, trainer and speaker she knows how to embody the many aspects of the human voice on stage. She will show you how powerful your voice can be, but also, how a voice can struggle at times – we’ve all heard and felt it before.

Dr. Ricardo Fernandes

Dr. Ricardo Fernandes is a researcher at the universities of Kiel and Cambridge where he employs the methods from applied Physics to help answering the questions of Archaeology. He has been involved in several excavations around the world, from the Athenian Agora of Ancient Greece to some of the oldest prehistoric sites in South America located at the Atacama Desert. Fernandes relies on methods from Nuclear Physics to date archaeological samples and to obtain insights into the mobility patterns and dietary habits of past humans. This, in turn, led him to develop research in other scientific fields, including Ecology, Physiology, and Forensics. Fernandes is a strong advocate of interdisciplinarity as a source of novel and exciting research opportunities. Similarly, he believes that the study of the human past is a source of inspiration when facing present and future challenges.

Martin Dorey

Martin Dorey is a writer and surfer. He runs a copywriting business, Copy Monkey Limited, and has recently finished his third book about camping, camper vans and food, a subject that led to him presenting a BBC television series ‘One Man and His Campervan’ in 2011. Dorey is also an environmentalist, beach cleaner and beach lover and co-founded The Beach Clean Network, a not for profit, in 2009. After the winter storms in 2014 he created the #2minutebeachclean project, an idea that uses social media to inspire beach cleaning and social responsibility.

Mary Alice Arthur

From the time she was small, reading two books at once on the way to school, Mary Alice Arthur loved stories, but it took her more than 30 years to uncover their real power. At a storytelling festival in New Zealand in 1992, she had an “a-ha!” experience and from then on she devoured every story she could find, while waiting for the moment when her profession as a facilitator would meet her love of stories. She performed as a storyteller and worked as a consultant. Eventually the field of organisational storytelling began and now story is the new black. But now there is the danger of perceiving it as tool instead of what makes us intrinsically human. As a Story Activist, Arthur works with story in service of positive systemic shift and for focusing collective intelligence on critical issues. Her aim is to create spaces where a new story can take people into a generative future.

Patricia Franke

During her studies, Patricia Franke fell in love with pole dancing and embarked on a passionate journey as a dancer around the world. After travelling for over fourteen years, she decided to return to her home country and to step in the professional sales world. There she began to study the essence of successful selling and realised that her dancing job had given her the best sales training ever imaginable: body language, NLP, sales psycholgoy, intercultural competence, empathy. She had used all these techniques unconsciously all these years that made her a constant top performer in every job she took. Franke is currently working as a keynote speaker because she felt it was time to teach others in sales training & personal development. Being from a very international background and speaking five European languages fluently, makes Franke a great example for a personal success story.

Prof. Dr. Stanislav Gorb

Stanislav Gorb received his PhD degree in zoology and entomology at the Schmalhausen Institute of Zoology, Kiev, Ukraine. Gorb was a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Vienna, Austria, a research assistant at University of Jena, a group leader at the Max Planck Institutes for Developmental Biology in Tübingen and for Metals Research in Stuttgart, Germany. Gorb’s research focuses on morphology, structure, biomechanics, physiology, and evolution of surface-related functional systems in animals and plants, as well as the development of biologically inspired technological surfaces and systems. Gorb has authored five books, more than 300 papers in peer-reviewed journals, and five patents.

Taylor Clarke

Taylor is a geoscientist who loves a good metaphor, especially when that metaphor sparks a new scientific perspective. But do rhetoric devices, art, and visualization have a place amongst the sciences? Taylor is a Masters and Bachelors student currently studying Marine Geoscience, History and Greek Philology at the University of Kiel, and is interested in where the worlds of art and science collide. Originally from Southern California, Taylor has spent the past 5 years in Germany studying and teaching English.