TEDxMIT

Speakers

Speakers may not be confirmed. Check the event website for the latest lineup.

• Angela Belcher

  Professor Angela Belcher is the James Mason Crafts Professor of Biological Engineering, Materials Science and the Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research at MIT. She is a biological and materials engineer with expertise in the fields of biomaterials, biomolecular materials, organic-inorganic interfaces and solid-state chemistry and devices. Her primary research focus is evolving new materials for energy, electronics, the environment, and medicine. She received her B.S. in Creative Studies from The University of California, Santa Barbara. She earned a Ph.D. in inorganic chemistry at UCSB in 1997. Following her postdoctoral research in electrical engineering at UCSB, she joined the faculty at The University of Texas at Austin in the Department of Chemistry. She joined the faculty at MIT in 2002. In July 2019, she took over as the head of the Biological Engineering Department at MIT until 2023.

• Caitlin Mueller

  Caitlin Mueller is a researcher, designer, and educator working at the interface of architecture and structural engineering. She is currently an Assistant Professor in the Building Technology Program, where she leads the Digital Structures research group. As a researcher, Mueller focuses on developing new computational methods and tools for synthesizing architectural and structural intentions in early-stage design. She also works in the field of digital fabrication, with a focus on linking high structural performance with new methods of architectural making. In addition to her digital work, she conducts research on the nature of collaboration between architects and engineers from a historical perspective. Mueller also aims for interdisciplinary learning and integration in her teaching efforts, which include subjects in structural design and computational methods.

• Chorallaries of MIT

  The Chorallaries of MIT are MIT’s first mixed-voice a cappella group! They perform in the Boston/Cambridge area, tour the country, and go on retreat in Vermont (when we aren't in the middle of a pandemic that is). They also perform at the International Championship of Collegiate A Cappella (ICCA) competition. They focus on sound, musicality and performance, and we have a great time singing together!

• Collin Stultz

  Dr. Collin M. Stultz is the Nina T. and Robert H. Rubin Professor in Medical Engineering and Science, a Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, Co-Director of the Harvard-MIT Program in Health Sciences and Technology, a member of the Research Laboratory of Electronics (RLE), and an associate member of the Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL). He is also a practicing cardiologist at the Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH). Dr. Stultz received his undergraduate degree in Mathematics and Philosophy from Harvard University (magna cum laude); a PhD in Biophysics with Nobel laureate Prof. Martin Karplus at Harvard University; and a MD from Harvard Medical School (magna cum laude). He did his internship, residency, and fellowship at the Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston. His scientific contributions have spanned multiple fields including computational chemistry, biophysics, and machine learning for cardiovascular risk stratification. He is a member of the American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology and the Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology, a fellow of the American College of Cardiology, and a fellow of the American Institute for Medial and Biological Engineering. He is a past recipient of a National Science Foundation CAREER Award, a Burroughs Wellcome Fund Career Award in the Biomedical Sciences, and former chair of the NHLBI board of scientific counselors. Currently research in his group is focused on the development of machine learning tools that can guide clinical decision making.

• Davy Deng

  Davy is a joint doctoral candidate in the Harvard-MIT Health Sciences and Technology (HST) program. His research currently focuses on collecting high-resolution multimodal data from the nervous systems of small animals in order to build a digital brain. His mission in life is to prepare humanity for whole brain emulation (colloquially known as mind-uploading) in the future in a scientifically and ethically rigorous way. Previously he studied chemistry, genetics and psychology at the University of California, Berkeley and computational biology at Harvard University.

• Deborah Douglas

  Debbie Douglas is the Senior Director of Collections and Curator of Science and Technology at the MIT Museum. Her passion is sharing stories about the history of technology. In particular, she has been interested in aerospace history for forty years. Douglas’ first job was at the Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum, and she has done stints at the NASA Langley Research Center, and Science History Institute before joining the MIT Museum in 1999 as the inaugural curator of science and technology. She writes books and articles, curates exhibitions, contributes to documentary videos, teaches a class on MIT history and is privileged to work as part of a talented team who care for 1.5 million artifacts in the MIT Museum’s collections including the computer printout for the Apollo Guidance Computer featured in this video.

• Dina Katabi

  Dina Katabi received a B.S. (1995) from Damascus University and an M.S. (1999) and Ph.D. (2003) from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. She joined the faculty of MIT in 2003, where she is currently a professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, director of the MIT Center for Wireless Networks and Mobile Computing (Wireless@MIT), and a member of the Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, where she leads the Networks at MIT group (NETMIT).

• Florencia Pierri

  Florencia Pierri is a historian of science and Associate Curator of Science and Technology at the MIT Museum.

• Joe Couglin

  Dr. Joseph Coughlin, or as he is most often referred to, “Dr. Joe,” leads the Massachusetts Institute of Technology AgeLab. Researcher, teacher, advisor, and speaker – his work explores how global demographics, technology and changing behaviors are transforming business & society. He teaches in MIT’s Department of Urban Studies & Planning. Coughlin advises major companies worldwide, the World Economic Forum, OECD, and has served on advisory committees for the White House and several federal agencies. Coughlin’s current focus is on how longevity and service innovation will transform the business of advice to help people prepare for 100 good years of living. He was named as one of “100 Most Creative in Business” by Fast Company Magazine, and one of Investment News “Icons & Innovators.” Coughlin is a Senior Contributor to Forbes and writes regularly for the Wall Street Journal and MarketWatch. His recent book, The Longevity Economy: Unlocking the World’s Fastest Growing, Most Misunderstood Market – was named a CEO READS Best Seller and is on the required reading lists of Fortune 500 corporate boards and executive leadership at firms such as Ally Bank, Best Buy, Humana, Marriott International, Lowe’s, Pulte Group, and others.

• Leonard Guarente

  Leonard Guarente is the Novartis Professor of Biology at MIT, and has studied the molecular basis of aging since 1991. He is a member of the French Academy of Sciences, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and recipient of the AFAR highest achievement award for aging research.has served on many editorial boards of scientific journals, and is the author of Ageless Quest. His lab found that a family of proteins termed sirtuins slow aging across many organisms, when activated by their cofactor NAD+. Activated sirtuins deacetylate key proteins within cells that govern DNA repair, mitochondrial repair, and epigenetics. He has founded several companies, including Elysium Health, which offers NAD+ boosters to slow aging and confer health benefits, and other products in the aging space to extend health span. He currently teaches a class at MIT - Breakthroughs in Longevity and Rejuvenation, and another -Ethics for Biologists and Engineers.

• Liyam Chitayat

  MIT PhD Candidate, Hertz fellow, Forbes 30U30, Reimagining Mitochondria

• Matthew Toy

  Sloan Student, MIT

• Maya Makarovsky

  Maya Makarovsky is an MIT alum Class of 2025, where she studied Computer Science, Economics, Data Science, and Business Analytics. She currently works as an Associate Consultant at Bain & Company. At MIT, Maya worked across many disciplines and countries, where her experiences in global collaboration and negotiation sparked a passion for bridging technical skills with human connection. She is a recipient of the 2025 Suzanne Berger Award for Future Global Leaders and will return to MIT to pursue a joint MBA and MS in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science through Sloan’s Leaders for Global Operations (LGO) program.

• Michal Tal

  "Michal Caspi Tal (Mikki), is an immunoengineer, and a principal scientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). Dr. Tal leads the Tal Research Group within the department of Biological Engineering and also serves as the associate scientific director of the Center for Gynepathology Research at MIT. From tick-borne disease to COVID, there are many similarities across the infection-associated chronic illnesses and important sex differences in the immune response to infection which could impact risk for developing chronic illness. Michal is trying to understand why not everyone can just “bounce back” from an infectious disease. She’s combining preclinical and clinical investigation to map distinct illness trajectories and to examine how sex, hormones, and age differences impact these trajectories and disease outcomes. Dr. Tal is running the largest clinical study at MIT, MAESTRO, comparing and contrasting the responses in people suffering from chronic Lyme and Long COVID with comprehensive deeply multi-modal assessments aimed at transforming assessments that are currently subjective into objective informative diagnostics that can point to targeted therapeutics. These involve developing informative metrics for measuring “brain fog”, inflammation, blood flow, barrier integrity, metabolic function, and other key disease determinants. This is complimented with mechanistic research in the mouse model of Lyme disease to deeply investigate sex and age differences of immune responses to Lyme disease and how to identify the core factors of the return to health vs debilitating disease. Our goal is to replace subjective uncertainty with objective data, empowering patients with a deeper understanding of their own biology and providing scientists and clinicians with a blueprint for deconstructing complex illnesses, identifying mechanism-based endotypes, and accelerating the discovery of targeted, next-generation therapeutics. For more information, visit our website, https://talresearchgroup.mit.edu/"

• Muriel Medard

  Prof. Muriel Médard is Optimum's CEO and the NEC Chair at MIT EECS, ranked #1 globally in Network Coding and co-inventor of Random Linear Network Coding (RLNC). Her accolades include membership in the US National Academy of Engineering (2020), membership in the US National Academy of Inventors (2018), leading Network Coding & Reliable Communications, and a tenure as the former IEEE Information TheorySociety President.

• Ravi Raju

  Ravi Raju is a faculty member at Harvard Medical School, and an attending physician in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit at Boston Children's Hospital and Boston Medical Center. He is an affiliate of the Picower Institute at MIT and the Broad Institute. He leads the Environmental and Social Epigenetics, or EASE, lab, a research team dedicated to better understanding how early life experiences shape brain biology long-term.

• Robbie Khazan

  Robbie is a senior at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), where he studies Mechanical Engineering, Computer Science, and Business. His work spans robotics, artificial intelligence, autonomous systems, and entrepreneurship, with a passion for building technologies that solve real-world problems. At MIT Lincoln Laboratory, Robbie developed autonomous control systems for a fleet of unmanned surface vehicles (USVs) capable of sparse-array sonar processing for ocean mapping. He also contributed to real-time AI video products at Decart and completed two internships at MITRE, where he implemented advanced signal processing algorithms, including phase shift demodulation, for classified applications. As an entrepreneur, Robbie co-founded Payvment, a company developing touchless parking technology featuring fast-pass payments and real-time parking availability tracking. He also founded Kiddo Byte, an initiative dedicated to making computer science education more accessible and equitable for students around the world. Outside of his professional work, Robbie enjoys designing and building ambitious personal engineering projects, including drones, autonomous boats, and other experimental hardware systems.