Theme: FILL IN THE _____

What word were you thinking of?

Our brain has the astonishing capability to fill in missing words in a ________. It sees context, compares it with its database of memories and picks what fits the most. Because we all have different sets of memories, we don’t all get the same answer. Think of human knowledge as a puzzle and problem-solving as putting its pieces together. Naturally, you start with what is in your local field of view. The underestimated next step is finding what is not.

Without looking beyond our own horizon, it’s not possible to realize how our individual knowledge connects to other information, currently out of reach. Without putting it in context, it’s like trying to solve a puzzle without knowing what the picture looks like. Like only using the back where all the pieces are gray.

Join us at TEDxTUM 2022 and get inspired by our speakers, showcasing their parts of the puzzle, because it might just be the blank that you’ve been missing to get a glimpse at the bigger _______.

TUM Main campus
Arcisstraße 21
Munich, Bayern
Germany

Claudia Traidl-Hoffmann

Medical Doctor Aiming at Preventing Diseases

Practicing dermatologist, ski-ing instructor, singer, musician, author, wife and mother of two, calling Claudia Traidl-Hoffmann “multifaceted” is an understatement. Driven by a strong sense of empathy she hopes to literally “heal the world” by preventing diseases altogether. As a physician-scientist, her research in medical science focuses on the interaction between humans and the environment around them which then determines the state of health or illness in a person. To this end, Claudia and her team were able to revolutionize the idea of how allergies arise and found new drivers for allergic immune responses in pollen. Apart from this, Claudia hopes to educate the world about climate change and how it impacts each and every one of us. Through her book, Überhitzt, she tackles the topic and goes on to explain how climate change impacts our health and what we can potentially do about it before it is too late. She is convinced that she has what it takes to drive this change!

Doro Seror

Environmental Artist

“Everyday is a new beginning” that is what Doro Seror encapsulates in both herself and her art. As an environmental artist, she mainly focuses on sustainability and recycling in her artistic work to bring forth new creations through a constant renewal process. Seror studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Munich, in addition to later exploring and learning dance, body therapy and shamanism. Seror has had notable exhibits at the Pinakothek der Moderne in Munich and the Ulster Museum in Belfast. Seror draws from her diverse experience and background describing her artworks as rituals and ceremonies that support people on their journey. She places utmost importance to create art that defies the very meaning of the word and to not waste the resources of our planet. Seror has created installments from surplus of used clothing to demonstrate the impact of unnecessary clothing waste and to teach people ways to actively participate in art and sustainability in their own lives.

HerTree

Musician, Singer & Composer

HerTree (Alexandra) is a musician, composer and singer. Manifesting a novel and fascinating approach to music, she introduces the idea of producing music only with nature recordings. Growing up close to forests as a child, she started observing the enchanting melodies it can produce from a small age, leading her to record audio while she was hiking, just so that she could hear them again. Ranging from Bavarian forests to jungles in Thailand, Alexandra records in different environments due to her appreciation of the vast differences between the sounds each produces. As she released her first songs in 2019, she won a cultural award and was, after the release of her debut album in 2021, featured prominently on German television and radio stations. Currently, she’s working on new songs, looking to bring the sounds of the rainforest to her listeners next.

Johannes Härtl

Choreographer & Mentor

With the notion of life itself as a mentor and his daily inspiration, Johannes Härtl is a choreographer, and youth mentor. As a life-long learner he aspires to always become a better version of himself and inspires those around him to do the same. Initially Härtl pursued an apprenticeship in hotel management which later evolved to studying medicine and Pedagogy and working with drug-addicted youth. Currently, Härtl is the director of Iwanson International School of Contemporary Dance, the very school he learned to dance.

Karim Tarraf

Environmental Entrepreneur

Karim Tarraf is an entrepreneur and co-founder of Hawa Dawa, a Munich-based company named one of the Top 10 Innovators in Germany and Top 35 in Europe by the MIT Technology Review among others. His company pioneers the use of sensor and satellite data to track and analyze air quality and correlate it with specific use cases in major cities. His aim is to make environmental data easily available such that it enables cities, businesses and citizens to steer climate-neutrality through an intuitive platform. Born and raised in Cairo, he coordinated climate mitigation projects for organizations such as the UN Environment Programme and the BMU in Southeast Asia and the MENA region. He is a frequent guest of stakeholder consultations on matters of climate change and air pollution organized by the World Health Organization. Next to his work at Hawa Dawa he is also a start-up mentor at the FEPS Incubation Center of Cairo University.

Kirstin Hegner

Shaper of Sustainable Mobility

Kirstin Hegner is an economist by education and, as of 2017, Managing Director of the Digital Hub Mobility at UnternehmerTUM in Munich. Her personal mission is dedicated to shaping the future of mobility by bringing companies, start-ups and scientists together to develop innovative solutions for sustainable, networked and space-appropriate mobility. By working with start-ups and incumbents in the mobility industry, Kirstin aims to solve mobility issues in large cities around Germany. Through identifying problems and seeking start-ups who could solve them, Digital Hub Mobility works with stakeholders to provide solutions to the market in short timeframes, ultimately reshaping the way we see mobility of the future.

Lydia Leipert

Journalist and Jobsharer

Lydia Leipert is a German journalist at the public broadcast Bayerischer Rundfunk (BR). Before working cross-media for radio, TV, and print – in Germany and abroad, Lydia completed a degree in history at the Humboldt University of Berlin and graduated from the Berlin School of Journalism. Today, her heart beats for digital media as well as imparting knowledge in new ways, like with the award-winning project @ichbinsophiescholl, a biographic real-time narrative on Instagram for the german heroine. This innovative historical account turned out to be a great success with currently more than 600,000 followers. Being part of the editorial team was one of the most challenging, yet rewarding experiences of her career so far. She sees the collaborative lighthouse project as proof that public broadcast exists beyond linear presentation.

Manuel Opitz

MedTech Entrepreneur

Manuel Opitz is a MedTech Entrepreneur, having worked for a handful of startups and co-founding and leading two as CEO. Currently heading deepeye Medical, his goal is to improve healthcare by empowering medical professionals with digital tools to treat their patients better. A true personification of the phrase “jack of all trades,” Manuel strives to bring together experts from various disciplines to solve challenging healthcare problems. He started off as someone not big on networking earlier in his career, but is now an active facilitator connecting people in HealthTech. Being a regular digital health speaker, Manuel has two TEDx talks and multiple podcasts to his credit. With the motto to “learn something new every day”, he hopes to spread awareness and inspire people toward effective digital healthcare.

Mariah Freya

SexTech Entrepeneur

Mariah Freya co-founded Beducated.com, an international online platform for sex education, with her husband. Over time, they expanded it to turn into one of the most seminal resources for sexual well-being and happiness. Their intention and recipe of success - advice that goes beyond the current status quo of basic advice and instead puts its focus on the learning process of adults in various stages of their life. With determination, ease, and euphoria they frame a healthy discussion around sex and all topics that can bring color into your bedroom. That is because, where most sources of sex-ed at best get their biology right, they want to acknowledge the bigger picture of aspects like pleasure, communication, and exploration, that factor in just as well.

Oliver Hayden

Investigator in Functional Diagnostics of Blood

Oliver Hayden holds the Heinz-Nixdorf Chair for Biomedical Electronics at the Technical University of Munich. The road to his current field of research in medical technologies was long and winding, with academic and industry positions spread out over different continents and publications in various different scientific disciplines around biology, chemistry, medicine, material sciences, optics, and electronics. These detours have enabled him to gather a much-needed set of perspectives, which he can now apply to tackle this game-changing and life-saving issue, that allows us to come a step closer to understanding the very blood that runs through all of our veins.

Ophelia Deroy

Cognitive Scientist and Philosopher

Ophelia Deroy is a cognitive scientist and philosopher, leading an interdisciplinary research laboratory at the LMU in Munich, where she also works as a professor, holding the chair in philosophy of mind. She held research and visiting positions in Paris, New York, Rio, Berlin and London, where she served as deputy director of the Institute of philosophy. She is an active promoter of stronger connections between philosophical and scientific approaches to the mind. Thus, in her unique research laboratory, together with her team, she starts with problems instead of disciplines. The result is an academically diverse group of psychologists, neuroscientists, and computer scientists, turning philosophical theories into experiments, to conduct research on how we combine personal and social information. As an extension, to implement these new ideas in the real world, she is advising governments, NGOs, museums, and companies to foster better collective experiences and communication.