Theme: ENTELECHY

Entelechy (n.): realizing or making actual what is otherwise merely potential.

The journey from potentiality to actuality is an eager attempt to realize a vision – a vision of something more. It comes with obstacles, challenges, moments of weakness as well as moments of strength, some of which make us question our convictions, achievements and future possibilities. In order to become all that we are capable of being, we must embark on new, exciting endeavors, ultimately testing what we’re made of.

At TEDxTUM 2016, we encourage you to explore, aspire, catalyze your imagination and dare reality to realize that which is potential, on your way to the destination of your choice.

TUM Main campus
Arcisstraße 21
Munich, Bayern
Germany

Alina Groder & Sungsit Saiynart

Dancers

Alina and Sungsit have their debut as dancing couple at TEDxTUM. Alina is 19 years old, was born Tirol, Austria, and started dancing at the age of eleven. It quickly turned into an addiction, and she later moved to Munich to study at Iwanson International School of Contemporary Dance. Sungsit (20) was born in Bangkok and raised in the north of Sweden. Starting to breakdance at a young age, he didn’t focus fully on it until the tragic passing of a classmate made him realise that he should pursue his passion.

Auguste von Bayern

Zoologist & Researcher

Auguste von Bayern is a zoologist who seeks to understand how animals, in particular corvids (birds of the crow family) and parrots think. Her research interests comprise socio-cognitive abilities as well as flexible problem-solving skills and vocal learning abilities of these birds. Auguste has been fascinated by wild animals and animal behavior since childhood. Inspired by scientists such as Jane Goodall and Konrad Lorenz, she raised Canadian geese from the egg and studied their behavior from the moment of hatching when she was still at school.

Gerhard Schmitt

Professor of Information Architecture

Gerhard Schmitt sees Responsive Cities as the new frontier in human settlement. Responsive Cities engage residents and prospective citizens from the very beginning in the planning and management of their habitat, based on Smart City technology. He stands firmly on the point that that citizens are the ones who know most about their habitat and therefore must sit at the table where decisions are made.

Hugo Kehr

Professor of Psychology

Hugo Kehr is the acting chair holder of the Chair of Psychology at the Technical University of Munich. His current research, focuses on what motivates us as humans, and why we sometimes struggle with conflicting drives and a lack of willpower. Hugo Kehr received the prestigious Heisenberg Fellowship, and he is a Fellow of the Alexander von Humboldt-Foundation. Since 2008, he has been organizer of the Munich Symposium of Motivation, a biannual international scholarly conference.

Jérôme Lutz

Founder SynBio.info

Jérôme Lutz has always been interested in what the future might hold for us, and how we can contribute to shaping it. Driven by questions and visions about the future, he dove into Synthetic Biology two years ago. This transdisciplinary field aims at understanding life by engineering it. His personal notebook from the first days has turned into the shared knowledge platform SynBio.info, where experts and novices teach each other the latest concepts of the field. His drive to achieve even more by working together across disciplines brought him to set up local SynBio communities both in Munich and London.

Mel Kelly

Comedian

Mell Kelly came from Ireland to Germany in 2003 for an IT consulting project, planning to stay a just few months. Thirteen years later, he is still here and still working in the technology field. When Mel was younger, he found public speaking completely terrifying – he suspects the reason is that he spent too much time in front of computers. Now, Mel is founder of the Comedy Club Munich, which has gone from success to success: they have regular comedy events with up to 450 guests.

Nassir Navab

Professor Computer Aided Medical Procedures & Augmented Reality

Nassir Navab chose to study computer engineering because he had a better knowledge of all other classical choices he had at that time. He is combining Augmented Reality to medicine to design and build the surgery of the future. He believes that augmented humans will be able to see like an eagle, hear all frequencies like a wax moth, smell like a bear and have the haptic sensibility of a manatee.

Peak to Peak

Band

Peak to Peak are a newcomer band from Munich. Usually their songs combine electronic sounds with guitar and drums to create a powerful yet poetic and surprisingly different sound. Founded beginning of 2016 with their first members Daniel (guitar), Samuel (drums) and Jean (vocals), the band recently grew to four members with Daniel at the keyboard.

Sabine Kobayter

Consultant

Sabine Kobayter works across disciplines to add a strategic lens to design problems, with the goal of changing standardized healthcare systems to cater to those who are most at risk: injected drug users. Sabine holds a PhD and MSc in Pharmacology from the University of Oxford, where she developed an Elsevier award winning spinal cord injury model to examine the effects of spinal injury on internal organs.

Sandro Krieg

Neurosurgeon + Researcher

Sandro Krieg’s research group clinically established navigated transcranial magnetic stimulation (nTMS), a mapping technique which is used, amongst others, to help surgeons safely remove brain tumors. In many cases, these tumors are located in critical brain areas, which means that their removal can put the patient’s motoric or speech abilities or other important parts of the brain at risk.

Simon James

Visual Artist

Simon James is a visual artist who combines the two disciplines of painting and sculpture into one rhythmic process that he calls ‘Two-dimensional Sculpture’. After spending two years in Newcastle upon Tyne, traveled to Munich for the first time in 1989. To finance his journey, he painted copies of old masters on the streets. In 1992, he was one of the first artists to take a studio at Domagk Ateliers in Munich, which was to become the largest artist community in Europe.

Simon Reinhard

Memory Athlete

Simon Reihnard was born in Munich and studied Law there, finishing in the top 7.5% of his class. During his university career, he came into contact with memory techniques; he learned that there was such a thing as „memory sports“, the competitive memorizing of different kinds of information (numbers, names, words, cards) in a set tournament format. He started competing right away and found it thoroughly fascinating to memorize more and more information with the help of techniques which use a set of locations and images.

Steffie Limère

Co-Founder Factory of Imagination

Steffie Limère is the co-founder of Factory of Imagination, the largest imagination event in the world. She takes young, inexperienced volunteers and transforms them into world-class creative leaders of tomorrow. She encourages them to act on the ideas they have in their head to bring them to reality. Steffie combines analytical insight, passionate organisation, and dynamic leadership skills to build her own, unique fantasy factory: A place where anything is possible.

Terry Swartzberg

Ethical Campaigner

Terry Swartzberg has found himself a very difficult and very rewarding profession: “Ethical Campaigner”. His current campaigns strive to save the climate, to ensure that the Holocaust and its many victims are not forgotten, to foster understanding among religions, to stop the suffering in Africa, and to free the unjustly imprisoned. Terry approaches all of his campaigns with never-ending enthusiasm, which he transmits to the people around him.