TEDxBatonRouge

Speakers

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

• Damien Mitchell

  Industrial Designer

  Damien Mitchell is an industrial designer and design professor at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette whose work sits at the intersection of traditional craft and contemporary innovation. He applies craft principles to product design as a tool for sustainability, creating objects built for repair and resilience. His community work includes a residency at the Open Experimental Studio in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, where he brought hands-on making experiences directly to the public.

• Johnnie James II

  Regenerative Ocean Farmer

  Johnnie James II is a regenerative ocean farmer and founder of a climate-tech startup focused on sustainable materials for coastal restoration. His work centers on plant-based alternatives to conventional infrastructure, designed to support marine life while reducing long-term environmental harm. By combining science, technology, and ecological design, he is reimagining what it means to build along a coastline.

• Mary Miller

  Sponge Hunter

  Mary Miller is a microbiology and biology professor at Baton Rouge Community College in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, where she runs an undergraduate research lab focused on freshwater sponge populations. In 2019 she launched the Louisiana Freshwater Sponge Project, a longitudinal study that has since expanded across Texas, Arkansas, and Mississippi. She has analyzed more than 2,000 sponge samples tracking how populations shift as waterways change, and she has brought more than 60 students into that research, many of whom arrived never having imagined themselves as scientists.

• Naohiro Kato

  Microalgae Innovator

  Naohiro Kato is a biologist and professor at Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, where his research focuses on microalgae and their applications in medicine, sustainability, and materials science. Born and raised in Japan, he came to Louisiana in 2005 and found in Mardi Gras both a cultural wonder and a scientific challenge worth solving. His work moves between the laboratory and the community, exploring how the smallest organisms can prompt some of our most meaningful changes in behavior.

• Pippin Frisbie-Calder

  Environmental Printmaker

  Pippin Frisbie-Calder is a visual artist and environmental printmaker based in Louisiana whose large-scale woodcuts, silkscreen prints, and immersive installations bring the threatened ecosystems of the Gulf South into galleries, classrooms, and public spaces. She collaborates closely with scientists and conservation organizations, including the Audubon Society, to translate research into art that is both visually compelling and urgently relevant. Her artist residencies have included the Louisiana State University Veterinary Teaching Hospital and A Studio in the Woods in New Orleans.

• Rebeca de Jesús Crespo

  Integrative Ecologist

  Rebeca de Jesús Crespo is a landscape ecologist and professor at Louisiana State University whose research sits at the intersection of land use, water systems, and human well-being. She develops data-driven tools to help communities make more informed decisions about development and conservation, and her work is rooted in the belief that science is most powerful when it's in the hands of the people it affects.

• Veronica Gillispie-Bell

  Maternal Health Advocate

  Veronica Gillispie-Bell is a physician, public health leader, and Associate Professor at Ochsner Health dedicated to improving outcomes for mothers and babies. Her clinical work, research, and advocacy focus on closing systemic gaps in care and advancing health equity. By connecting climate risk to maternal health, she is pushing both fields toward solutions that protect those who are most vulnerable.