TEDxChicago

What does finding a cancer drug have in common with saving an endangered species?

More than you’d think.

Tim Cernak has spent his career pushing chemistry beyond its original limits, from drug discovery at Merck to conservation biology as a Research Fellow at the Smithsonian. His TEDxChicago talk challenges where science draws its boundaries, and asks who should get to decide.

Streaming now on TED’s YouTube. Link in bio.

He’s been on Hulu, the New York Times, NPR, CNN, and Khan Academy. Not because he’s famous. Because he makes science impossible to look away from.

Dr. Sammy Ramsey is a CU Boulder professor and founder of the Ramsey Research Foundation, where he studies the threats facing pollinators and the indigenous communities that depend on them.

His TEDxChicago talk is science communication at its absolute best. Don’t just watch it. Send it to someone who thinks they don’t like science. Streaming now on TED’s YouTube. Link in bio.

Some ideas don’t just inspire. They mobilize.

Roquiya Sayeq turned impossibility into infrastructure and students into leaders.

Listen to this moment, then watch her full TEDxChicago Global Idea Search talk on TED’s YouTube.

Link in bio.

When the Taliban closed Afghanistan’s schools to women, Roquiya Sayeq responded with a spreadsheet and a vision.

Today, Victory Afghanistan has delivered more than 144,000 hours of learning to 800 students, with volunteers from 24 countries.

22 of those students now run the entire program themselves.

That’s not a statistic. That’s a movement.

Watch her TEDxChicago Global Idea Search talk, streaming now on TED’s YouTube. Link in bio.

IdeasWorthSpreading Chicago

Some cities are only known through headlines.

Joabe Barbosa chose to know Chicago by running it - every block, every neighborhood, every story in between.

Hear more in Joabe’s full TEDxChicago Global Idea Search talk on TED’s YouTube.

Link in bio.

He’s already covered 4,000+ miles of Chicago streets. Every single one.

What started as recovery from a life-threatening incident has become a mission to challenge the fear-driven stories we tell about this city. Joabe Barbosa isn’t mapping Chicago from above. He’s rewriting it from the ground up, neighborhood by neighborhood.

Watch his TEDxChicago Global Idea Search talk, now streaming on TED’s YouTube channel. Link in bio.

CommunityFirst IdeasWorthSpreading

She grew up farming in Iowa. Now she's helping smallholder farmers around the world use AI to feed communities and build resilience.

Alesha Miller spent eight years at the Gates Foundation and now leads strategy at , scaling an AI-powered farm advisor called Farmer Chat to some of the most food-insecure communities on the planet.

Her roots and her mission are the same story. Watch it on TED's YouTube now. Link in bio.