Theme
Pause or Press Play

TED.com Page
https://www.ted.com/tedx/events/10315

Official Event Website
http://www.tedxucdavis.com

Date/Time
Date(s) - 05/04/2014
1:00 pm - 5:00 pm

Location
Mondavi Center

This year we will be exploring the question: “Pause or Press Play?” and looking at both the moments when we step back to consider and the moments when we jump into action. Our goal is to compose an amalgamation of minds, thoughts, and perspective to help individuals articulate powerful ideas and inspiring stories. At TEDxUCDavis we have a wide array of accomplished speakers specializing in topics from theater to technology will share their knowledge with students, professors, and the community at UC Davis’s campus to create opportunities, communication, and entertainment for all.

Confirmed Speakers

Chancellor Linda P.B. Katehi
Linda Katehi is the sixth chancellor of UC Davis where she oversees all aspects of the university’s teaching, research and public service mission, including the UC Davis Health System. In addition to her role as Chancellor, she also holds faculty appointments in electrical and computer engineering and in women and gender studies. Her work in electronic circuit design has led to numerous national and international awards and 19 U.S. patents. She is the author or co-author of 10 book chapters and roughly 650 refereed publications in journals and symposia proceedings. Previously, Chancellor Katehi served as provost at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and dean of Engineering at Purdue University. A member of the National Academy of Engineering and a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, she received her undergraduate degree from the National Technical University of Athens, Greece, and her master’s and doctoral degrees from UCLA.

Dr. Richard Pan, Assemblyman
Dr. Richard Pan is a physician and educator who has dedicated his life to solving problems and helping everyone in the community he serves. As a pediatrician, he cares primarily for poor and uninsured children. As a teacher, he taught future physicians the importance of community in health. Dr. Pan has been a catalyst for positive change in the community creating innovative educational programs, expanding access to health care for children, and bringing people together to address community priorities. Dr. Pan is a father, husband, and son and understands the challenges of raising a family in our community. He and his wife started a small business and meet payroll, balance a budget, and work to do more with less. His parents immigrated to America to build a better life for themselves and their children. Dr. Pan believes in creating opportunity for all Californians to succeed and to give back.

Ali Bouzari
Ali began cooking in restaurant kitchens while studying biochemistry as an undergraduate. Currently finishing his PhD in Food Biochemistry at UC Davis, Ali’s research focuses on the texture of sous vide vegetables as well as on the effects of freezing on fruits and vegetables. He is an adjunct lecturer at the Culinary Institute of America, where he teaches in the Department of Culinary Science. In 2013, Ali helped develop the curriculum for the CIA’s brand new Bachelor’s in Culinary Science program. Ali also works as a consultant to the culinary industry, collaborating with some of the most acclaimed restaurants in the country including The French Laundry, Benu, and The Restaurant at Meadowood.

Marusa Bradac
Originally from Slovenia, Maruša is now a physics professor at UC Davis. Her research includes studying the composition of the Universe, her specialty being properties of dark matter, the elusive “stuff” that makes up a quarter of the universe. Increasingly popular in the media especially with the excitement of the latest discoveries about the Universe’s past. Maruša also studies first galaxies that formed in the Universe. The tools of her trade are telescopes in space (Hubble Space Telescope, Spitzer Space Telescope) and on the ground in Hawaii (Keck). Maruša uniquely combines her passion for the Universe with her outdoor loves of skiing, surfing and mountain biking. She is passionate about her research and is committed to provide the best possible education for her students. The one thing that excites her even more than her own research and the outdoors is seeing young and bright minds excited about the world around them.

Steven Lucero
Steven Lucero is a Mechanical Engineer who has managed the TEAM Facility at UC Davis since its inception. He oversees daily operations within the facility, with an emphasis on the Metalworking, and Prototyping spaces. Steven also utilizes his CAD (Computer Aided Design) and CAM (Computer Aided Machining) skills in combination with his background in Rapid Prototyping techniques to aid in in the development of medical devices for use in research, and industry prototyping. Steven also hosts a UC Extension course focused on CAD for 3D Printing and other Rapid Manufacturing Techniques, and advises for the Biomedical Engineering Kapstone Senior Design course at UC Davis. Steven graduated from UC Davis, with a BS in Mechanical Engineering, and has been a co-author on multiple academic papers since.

Danny Nou
Self-proclaimed innovator and human interface design advocate, Danny Nou is currently the Director of Ergonomics at the University of California, Davis. He received his B.S. and M.S. in biomedical engineering from UC Davis and decided it was time for a change of scenery and moved to the frozen tundra of Sapporo, Japan where he conducted biomechanics research at Hokkaido University. Living in a different country, learning a new language and adapting to a new culture allowed him to learn the importance of good design and communicating emotional responses in products, services and software. After returning to California, he discovered that companies that focused on the details of the user experience lead to the greatest products that their competitors could not easily duplicate. All his adventures have made him a prodigal son, returning back to the place where his career began at UC Davis. He has ambitions to create, educate, promote and build user friendly products and solutions -that is, if marrying various celebrity crushes prove impossible.

Katy Benson
Katy is a Colorado native who moved to Davis in 2012 to pursue a Masters degree in Food Science, with specialty in Brewing & Fermentation Sciences. She studied Biochemistry and Spanish in her undergraduate degree and fell in love with beer culture one sunny spring afternoon of her senior year. When she found out she could combine both her love of metabolic processes and passion for beer, the rest was history. When not researching the next cool thing in beer and brewing, she can be found teaching yoga or working on her handstands.

Rachel Edelson
Rachel Edelson loves going through back doors, so she can do things outside of the systems that constrain us all. As an English professor she’s rejected textbooks, so she can develop her own courses on Censorship, Evil, Corporations, and Media as Propaganda. Her fascination with human nature motivated her to give Grand Rounds presentations in the UCD Dept of Psychiatry, which led to her teaching Literature to psychiatry residents, a position that then enabled her to teach in the Freshman Seminar Program on campus. For the last eleven years in this program she’s used complex and ambiguous film, to backdoor her way into teaching psychology, symbolism, Freudian theory, the genius of P. T. Anderson, and now Quantum Physics. At 70 she began PhD work in a transdisciplinary program at CIIS, where she is further questioning societal norms and definitions – questions she is giving to her students, who gobble them.

Jorge Pena
Dr. Jorge Pena (Ph.D 2007, Cornell University) examines the cognitive emotional, and behavioral foundations of computer-mediated interaction. He is interested in how people develop impressions when interacting through recreational and instrumental technologies (e.g., video games, text-messages, social networking sites, etc.). His most recent work looks at priming and cognitive load effects in video games and virtual settings. Dr. Pena is currently assessing how military training technologies affect trainees’ cognitive readiness outcomes. In partnership with Portuguese computer scientists, he is presently designing and evaluating a virtual environment for international collaborations.

Rajeevan Amirtharajah
Prof. Amirtharajah’s research activities focus on the development and implementation of electronic systems which are powered by energy harvested from their environment. This includes the conversion of incident light (solar energy harvesting) and environmental mechanical vibrations into electrical form, power electronics to generate stable supply voltages, and load circuits which consume less than one milliwatt. These systems form the foundation for self-powered wireless sensor networks which have applications in green building design, infrastructure and environmental monitoring, medicine, and defense.