TEDxErasmusUniversity

Speakers

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

• Aurelien Baillon

  Aurelien Baillon wants to know what people think. He studies how people make decisions, but also what they say and whether we should believe them. He works on new methods called “economic truth serums.” He is an Endowed Professor of Economics of Uncertainty at the Erasmus School of Economics.

• Ben van Berkel

  Ben van Berkel is the architect behind a number of iconic buildings: the famous Erasmus Bridge in Rotterdam, the Mercedes-Benz Museum in Stuttgart, and the Centraal Station in Arnhem, for example. Based in Amsterdam, he currently holds the Kenzo Tange Chair at Harvard University and focuses his teaching and research on investigations into health - from urban concerns to policy making and from technology to neuroscience. Health impacts an increasingly broad range of contemporary life. However, until very recently it has never been seen as a primary design concern within the field of architecture. WIth this talk, this will all change.

• Ellen van de Poel

  Ellen van de Poel brings a different view to health insurance, health care delivery, and health systems because of her research on the financing of health and health care in developing countries. Her insights could impact how we all use and pay for health care. She is the director of the Rotterdam Global Health Initiative and an associate professor of Health Economics at the Institute of Health Policy and Management at the Erasmus University, Rotterdam.

• Kirsten Rohde

  Kirsten Rohde, Professor of Behavioral Economics at Erasmus University Rotterdam, is interested in helping people take responsibility for their own futures. Many of us suffer from a gap between planning and doing. This gap is the result of an ongoing struggle between our different selves. The talk shows that both our current and our future selves have a role when closing this gap. The current self needs to make realistic plans and the future self has to carry out these plans.

• Liesbeth van Rossum

  Dr. Elisabeth van Rossum has published more than 100 peer-reviewed scientific publications or books and received 20 awards for her scientific research. A clinical internist-endocrinologist, and a professor in the field of obesity and biological stress at the Erasmus Medical Center, Rotterdam, she is also the head of Obesity Center CGG, an academic center for diagnosing underlying causes of obesity and for innovative treatment strategies of obesity. In her talk she exposes a surprising number of causes of obesity, as well as a number of simple steps to take to reduce the effects of those causes. The most important: reducing shame.

• Patrick Verwijmeren

  Patrick Verwijmeren is Head of the Finance Group at the Erasmus School of Economics in Rotterdam. He talks about academic crime scene investigation, which in his case means forensic finance. In the financial world, insiders frequently take advantage of outsiders. And realize, this outsider could be you, or your pension fund. Forensic finance aims to increase the fairness of the financial world.

• Payal Arora

  Payal Arora has been invited to speak by diverse and international organizations including UNESCO, General Electric, The Ministry of Education in Jordan, Sotheby's, and the Beirut Chamber of Commerce. She is the author of two books: Dot Com Mantra: Social Computing in the Central Himalayas and The Leisure Commons: A Spatial History of Web 2.0. She is the founder and executive director of Catalyst Lab and is an associate Professor in the Department of Media and Communication at Erasmus University, Rotterdam. Her talk invites us to spur technological innovation that will allow a new internet to emerge for everyone, no matter their status or wealth.

• Quentin Pleple

  In today’s highly digitized world, it’s hard to imagine life without our smartphones. They are a great tools to enhance our professional lives, but they also detach us from the physical world that we live in. Quentin Pleplé is a machine learning and big data enthusiast. He co-founded Short Edition, the French company that invented the internet hit, Short Story Dispenser, a machine that prints out free short stories in waiting areas. Quentin uses innovation to resurrect people’s imagination and the written word in public spaces and reminds us that there is a bigger world beyond our smartphones.

• Teodor Cataniciu

  The world faces multiple challenges and Teodor Cataniciu gives us an idea on how we can solve them: small teams of bold thinkers who can leverage technology. He shows us, through his own example, that two big problems put together do not always sum up to a huge problem. He created Restart Network, the world’s first crowdsourced programming and tech-focused bootcamp for refugees, to help integrate and kick-start their careers. With this initiative, he’s working to make access to the best education in the world a reality for anyone, and create equal opportunity for the people in his community. He shares his approach, and challenges us all to find our own problems to solve.