Speakers

For the last 15 years he has led R&D projects at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, where he is Manager of the Advanced Robotic Controls Group.
Adrian is one of world’s leading experts in evolvable hardware, a technology using algorithms inspired by the way life forms evolve and adapt to changing environments; he used it to control changes in electronic circuits, enabling them to self-regulate and maintain their correct function while facing extreme temperatures and radiation. Adrian’s PhD thesis proposed that humanoid robots learn by imitation of human movements, a pioneering idea that is now a central research theme in robotics. After joining NASA in 1996 he formulated roadmaps of space exploration with robot assistants, proposing the use of humanoids to assist astronauts in surface operations on the Moon; he also led technology demonstrations showing that humanoids could perform assembly of structures for future planetary outposts. This is another early idea that may become reality: NASA recently uncovered Project M, a proposal to put a humanoid robot on the Moon by 2013. Meanwhile, Adrian’s group members are busy as ‘rover drivers’, controlling NASA’s two Mars Rovers, Spirit and Opportunity, on their Mars exploration.
He is also an entrepreneur and a science promoter. Having organized numerous conferences over more than a decade, in 2009 he started in Iasi the Advanced Technologies for Enhanced Quality of Life (AT-EQUAL) Conference Series, the 2010 edition comprising of 4 international conferences, including the first conference on Regenerative Medicine in Romania, and an international summer school with attendees from 14 countries.
This multi-disciplinary scientist is coming to TEDxBucharest to share with us his passion for robotics and intelligent technologies in the service of humans.

Once upon a time a marketing specialist, working in a bank, he decided all of a sudden to take part in the North Pole Marathon. The decision was the perfect example that “the sky is the limit” and anyone can accomplish their dreams as long as they’re willing to do the work; the hard work. What this meant for Andrei was 3 months of training, in other words 500 km ran, workout in refrigerating deposits and 5000 emails sent in search for sponsors.
After running the 42 km of the marathon, the first marathon of his life, he came to the finish line the 15th. He became the youngest Romanian going to the North Pole and he got a place in the Guinness Book for being the first crazy man ever to play drums at the end of the world. For you see, at the end of the race Andrei celebrated by playing drums, the Coldplay song “Yellow” and drinking 2 Russian beers, the only ones available.
Andrei placed the Romanian flag right on 90º latitude north. After this huge success on his first enedevour of this sort, Andrei’s plans are even greater: running seven marathons on seven continents. He’s even set himself a deadline: October 2011. Last time we checked, he was preparing for his next marathon in Australia, on the 31st of July.
You can follow the whole story of Andrei’s adventures on his blog, http://andreirosu.wordpress.com. We here at TEDxBucharest are looking forward to seeing him live and getting inspired directly from the man who’s following his big dreams and making them happen without taking too many days off work.

Catalin Stefanescu’s show is one of the longest and appreciated cultural programs in Romania. His devotion towards value was transposed into an outstanding TV show which succeeds in bringing remarkable guests, superlatives in culture, but also in other fields. Issues of concern related to film, theatre, music, art or politics are debated together with impressive personalities.
Over the years, Garantat 100% was host for famous figures: actress Vanessa Redgrave, the soprano Sarah Brightman, the writer-philosopher Pascal Bruckner, the branding’s “guru” Wally Olins, the film director Andrei Serban or Swedish choreographer Mats Ek, Coordinator of Cullberg Ballet.
Catalin’s work received numerous awards for reports and documentaries: in 2002- Award for best documentary Romanian – Penitentiary, Grand Prix in TELEVEST Festival and CNA( Audiovisual National Center) Award for best local TV program- Garantat100%. Between 2003-2006, Catalin Stefanescu received also the APTR (The Association of Television Professionals in Romania ) Award for Best Cultural Program.

Her career went beyond the boundaries of theater and beyond the boundaries of her country, Romania. So far, she has performed on three continents, in four languages (Romanian, French, Italian and English) and won numerous awards both for her theatre and film work.
In 2001, Oana won the Best Actress award from the Romanian Association of Theatre Artists (UNITER) and was also awarded the Romanian Cultural Foundation’s Prize for an Outstanding International Career.
Oana received numerous international awards for her leading role in Gulea’s “State of Fact”, including the Best Actress awards at the Geneva Film Festival, the San Marino Political Film Festival and the Golden Eagle International Film Festival in Batumi, Georgia.
The peak of her cinematographic career so far is the part she played in Alfonso Cuaron’s movie “Children of men”, which got three Oscar nominations in 2008.
Also a trainer of theatrical techniques, Oana modestly declares on her website:
“I cannot make so bold as to teach anybody anything, as long as I myself have so much to learn. We simply go through an experience together. A meeting between two worlds – the artistic one and the business domain. It is a privilege to work with human stuff”.
In June 2009 she published her first book, a journal written without the intention of it ever being published. “Journal 2003-2009″, a best seller, offers an indiscreet insight into the actresses soul and mind. When entering her world, it is impossible not to be softened by her sensitivity and respect for all things. She is indeed a model of integrity and humanity.
We are truly honored to have Oana Pellea speaking at TEDxBucharest this fall. Prepare your souls and minds, this is someone we all have a lot to learn from.

She invented a sensor that determines the existence of cancer in humans at the molecular level. Astonishing is that the sensor detects cancer in less than six minutes and the estimated cost would be less than one euro. The device produced on large-scale would be very easy to use, as easy as a glucometer.

We are delighted to have her with us on the 15th of October and share with us a genuine Idea worth spreading.

Adrian Bejan pioneered numerous original methods in thermal sciences, such as entropy generation minimization, scale analysis of convection, heatlines and masslines, designed porous media, and the constructal law of design in nature.

Adrian Bejan is ranked among the most-cited authors in all of engineering (all fields, all countries, living or deceased) by the Institute of Scientific Information (www.isihighlycited.com). He is the author of 24 books and over 500 peer-refereed journal articles.

He was awarded 16 honorary doctorates from universities in 11 countries, for example, the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH, Zurich, 2003). He received numerous society awards, including the Max Jakob Memorial Award (ASME & AIChE, 1999), Ralph Coats Roe Award (ASEE, 2000), Luikov Medal (ICHMT, 2006), Donald Q. Kern Award (AIChE, 2008), Worcester Reed Warner Medal (ASME, 1996), and the James Harry Potter Gold Medal (ASME, 1990).

He is the creator of LazyTown, possibly the most successful children’s TV series in the world, in which he writes, directs and stars as Sportacus. Magnus is also a much sought after public speaker, and adviser to national Governments, while also playing the villain in the latest Jackie Chan movie, The Spy Next Door.

Magnus was European champion in aerobics in 1994 and 1995, and a silver medallist in the aerobics’ World Championship in 1994. In 1995, he was voted Athlete of the Year in his home country Iceland, and remains a world-class athlete to this day.

Over the last 20 years, Magnus has worked consistently to promote the philosophy behind LazyTown and bringing it to fruition, but it hasn’t always been easy. In the early days he worked as a carpenter, gym teacher, gym owner and TV show host, while developing his ideas and gathering the information and research that makes LazyTown the success it is today.

He is the very first flight-qualified and certified civilian astronaut from Australia and is also set to become the first ever Australian to rocket to outer space and live on Earth’s only manned outpost in orbit, the International Space Station.

After being medically confined to his bedroom for the first decade of his life, Nik had an amazingly strong impulse and desire to live life to the fullest. After drafting a list of 10 goals at the age of eight, he has so far led his life to accomplish those goals. He started working at 14, teaching guitar lessons. At 17 he relocated to the US and at 19 he bought his very first investment property. Only five years later he became a multimillionaire, through investments in property and the stock market.

While developing his career and businesses, he balanced the talent and hard work with the greatest adventures one could imagine. The dreams he strives for are the crazy unreasonable dreams of a kid. However, he has accomplished them one by one: he dived down five miles and had lunch on the bow of the ship wreck of the Titanic, he slept in the piramid of Keops, he travelled to more than 100 countries, he climbed mountains, he became a millionaire, he ran with the bulls in Spain, got to own homes in the some of the most beautiful places on Earth and he became an astronaut.

There is one last goal yet to accomplish, and also a new one which he added to the list. He has yet to walk on the moon, but knowing him, it’s bound to happen, and soon.

The new goal is to create and inspire one million new thrillionaires, people who get to accomplish wealth and abundance in their lives, and have the courage to live the adventure they are called towards.

Nik is a great inspiration for everyone who feels that their life could be more, but have trouble in finding the courage of going after their dreams.

For as long as he can remember Eric Weiner wanted to be a foreign correspondent. So he could hardly believe his good fortune when, one day in 1993, NPR dispatched him to India as the network’s first full-time correspondent in that country. Weiner spent two of the best years of his life based in New Delhi, covering everything from an outbreak of bubonic plague to India’s economic reforms, before moving on to other postings in Jerusalem and Tokyo.

Over the past decade, he’s reported from more than 30 countries, most of them profoundly unhappy. He traveled to Iraq several times during the reign of Saddam Hussein and he was in Afghanistan in 2001, when the Taliban regime fell.

He’s also served as a correspondent for NPR in New York, Miami and Washington. D.C. Weiner is a former reporter for The New York Times and was a Knight Journalism Fellow at Stanford University. He was part of a team of NPR reporters that won a 1994 Peabody award for a series of investigative reports about the U.S. tobacco industry.

His commentary has appeared in the Los Angeles Times, Slate and The New Republic, among other publications. After traveling the world, he has settled, quasi-happily, in the Washington area, where he divides his time between his living room and his kitchen.

His book, The Geography of Bliss, is a travelogue of ideas in search of answers to some pressing questions: What are the essential ingredients for the good life? Why are some places happier than others? How are we shaped by our surroundings? Why can’t airlines serve a decent meal?

We can’t wait for TEDxBucharest 2010 to happen, to find out straight from Eric what it is that really makes us happy and where exactly we should think about moving to. Hope you TEDsters will find a lot of inspiration in his speech!

We are able to say this because, after working in companies like Pininfarina or Toyota in advanced design, in Tokyo, he chose to come back to Europe and nabbed a job as a design manager in Lotus cars . How cool is that? We know boys like to play with cars, but this youngster has taken his hobby to one of the best sports car manufacturers in the word. You can enjoy some of his work with Lotus at this year’s Paris Motor Show, and some of them very soon on the streets.

Like any child, he started being fond of cars as soon as he could understand them. Passion for cars plus ambition plus a lot of talent makes for success even at a very early age.

Mihai went to the High School of Arts in Focsani, and afterwards studied only one more year in Romania, at the University of Arts. In 2006 he left Romania with a scholarship in Torino, with the European Institute of Design.

2007 was an amazing year in his career: he designed a car prototype which was awarded the first place in the Peugeot Design Competition, one of the most important car design competitions worldwide. After winning the Grand Prix, Mihai came to the attention of the world’s major producers.

His prototype, called Flux, is a vehicle with bold lines, a hydrogen engine and it has the ability to explore any type of surface, be it a sandy beach, a mountain road or a familiar highway.

Since 2007, Mihai won a project sponsored by Fiat, got the first place in the Boston Design Competition and has argued a diploma project thesis with BMW’s Chris Bangle.

With all these achievements, Mihai might just be the perfect example for what they call mixing business and pleasure, he’s doing a lot of work, but we’re sure there’s also a lot of play along the way.

Admitting the reality of street children, Arnoud Raskin aproached the problem of education from a totally creative perspective. A usual mindset would see it connected to the children’s life style, and would probably try to find ways of changing the way they live: getting them into institutions if not even families. However, we’ve all seen that this is a tedious endeavor and an enormous task. Thus, Arnoud took the other way around and came up with a school which is adapted to the children’s needs.

The mobile school is technically and pedagogically adapted to the reality of the street and the needs of the street children. It is a telescopic blackboard on wheels that can be pulled through the streets by the street educators. The telescopic system slides out to a unit of 6 meters. A package of over 250 educational games, easily removable and containing each a wide range of educational topics joins the unit. The core themes are literacy, creative therapy, health care education and child rights. The major goal is empowering the child by increasing the level of self-esteem.

Nowadays 30 Mobile School units are used by different organizations on the streets of cities in Latin America, Asia, Africa and Europe. Arnoud and his team constantly develop and produce new materials and schools to spread the concept over the Globe. Because if children don’t go to school, the school has to go to the children!

After finishing his last two years of high-school in the U.K. at Sedbergh School, Radu enrolled into Harvard College on a full scholarship where he studied economics, government and other exotic subjects such as matter in the universe, Pompeii and issues in ethics.

Upon graduating from Harvard, he started at only 22 as one of the youngest junior professional associates in the World Bank’s Junior Professional Associate program in Washington D.C. There, he has engaged in numerous projects aimed at promoting economic growth and reducing poverty in East Asian countries. He has also worked for two years in economic and management consulting in Boston, where he has advised some of the world’s leading corporations.

Radu is currently pursuing a master in public policy (MPP) at Harvard John F. Kennedy School of Government and a master of business administration (MBA) at London Business School. These two amazing programs enable Radu to follow his passion of bringing together the public, private and non-profit sectors in an effort to come up with creative solutions for society’s most pressing issues.

In addition to his academic and professional interests, Radu has always been involved in serving the many communities he has been part of over the years and has focused particularly on the role of youth as agent for positive change in development. Radu was events Co-Chair of World Bank’s Youth-to-Youth Community and one of his most recent endeavors is co-founding and leading the Global Romanian Students and Young Professionals Society (GRSPSociety), a global, non-profit, volunteer organization that brings together some of the most talented Romanians from around the world in an effort to contribute to Romania’s modernization and development.

Radu strongly believes that the young generation has the responsibility and potential to bring about lasting, positive change in Romania and will use his global experience and diverse expertise to make sure his generation will rise to the challenge.

After graduating from the Faculty of Dental Medicine in Targu Mures, in 2003, and raised enough money for medicines and equipment, Roland decided to head into expeditions.

He gathers information, chooses a specific destination, builds up a team, raises money then gets in touch with people at his destination and travels to countries such as Brazil, Nepal, Rwanda or Chad to help those in need of his expertise.

To save money, which might be otherwise used to buy medicines, but also to be able to quickly travel the distances between remote villages, Roland obtained a pilot’s license. In this way, he reaches the people who need him much faster.

Asked why he chose to practice his profession in the most remote corners of the world, driven by boundless altruism, Roland replies: “because this is where they live”. Thus, he came to practice medicine at an ideological level, totally disinterested.

Hermann Tibi Roland was born in Medias, Sibiu county, and is passionate about paragliding, music (piano, guitar, Blockflöte), skydiving, mountain climbing, photography and design.

Bassam Gemayel is a citizen of the world, craving to learn and share as much as he can about and with everyone and everything, he knows, meets or hears about. He is interested in almost everything that tickles the brain or dazzles the soul. He loves to touch and explore what surrounds him, continuously seeking his own balance and the balance of his immediate environment.
“To move a mountain, you start with a stone”

Bassam is a 35-year-old Lebanese who came to Romania two years ago, with the purpose to set up new offices for the software company he worked for.
“These past two years feel more like two decades, as if I had lived two distinct lives: one before and one after my mission in Romania.”
After almost leaving school in order to become a shepherd, he finally graduated as an Electrical and Electronical Engineer, and got a job at a Lebanese telecommunications company. After one year, he and four of his colleagues left the mother company to set up a new one, thus starting their professional adventure.

Bassam has travelled since all over the world, developing his business and himself. This nomadic lifestyle happened to suit his natural predilection to travel and explore new cultures and societies. Following up to many years of intermittent leaps around the globe, he felt the need for a more dedicated yet soliciting mission, so he opted for Romania.