TEDx Gateway 2016 Conference

He was nineteen years old when Divyanshu Ganatra lost his eyesight to glaucoma. At the age when one is perpetually dogged with the “what next” question, he was told that his future lay in making cane furniture and chalk pieces. The many years that followed tell a story of resilience, determination, and will power topped with a generous dose of humour and wit. Facing the stigma and stereotyping that affects a person with disability first hand, Divyanshu quickly realised that the only way to bring about change was to foster relationships, promote interaction, and champion inclusivity. In 2014, Divyanshu became the first blind Indian to paraglide solo. Seeing sports as the perfect platform, he founded Adventures Beyond Barriers Foundation (ABBF) in 2014, an organisation committed to supporting accessible adventure sports across avenues including marathons, mountaineering, and scuba diving. Today, ABBF has impacted 3500 people with disabilities and 1.5 lakh people in the mainstream community, as well as receiving both media attention and celebrity support. Growing from one strength to the next, celebrating one success after the other, Divyanshu and the team at ABBF have bigger dreams. They hope to build the country’s first completely accessible outdoor adventure sports centre, help train a team to represent India at the Paralympic Games for tandem cycling, and catalyse a world where disability is only read as another identity marker. Falling back on Mandela’s famous words that “sport has the power to inspire…(it) can create hope where once there was only despair,” Divyanshu hopes to create a more equal, accessible and inclusive world, one marathon, one climb, and one ride at a time.

Brazilian artist Angélica Dass's photography challenges how we think about skin color and ethnic identity. Hear about the inspiration behind her portrait project, Humanæ, and her pursuit to document humanity's true colors rather than the untrue white, red, black and yellow associated with race. By cataloging every conceivable human skin tone, Angélica Dass illustrates that skin color and race are more complex than they might appear at first glance.

parsh is a 13-year old child prodigy, singer/song writer/rapper born with brittle bones (130+fractures), but an unbreakable spirit. He became a worldwide internet sensation with his Purhythm versions of Eminem covers. He aspires to inspire and sing in front of a billion people one day. Sparsh has been learning Hindustani classical music for the last seven-and-a-half years and American vocal music for the last three years. Sparsh is multi-talented. He performs at community events and has appeared on local radio stations and television shows, besides hosting shows as an MC. He has memorized 250 digits of Pi, can say the 12 longest words in the English dictionary in less than 18 seconds, and can speak in four different accents in English. He has written several poems, short stories, motivational/funny speeches (“I am Disabled”), etc., and acted in the developmental reading of a play called The Greatest Choice at the Crossroads theatre in New Jersey. He was able to spell a 45 letter word, “Pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis,” at the age of 6.

Dr. Roozbeh Ghaffari is co-Founder and Chief Technology Officer at MC10 Inc. Roozbeh is responsible for defining and developing emerging soft bioelectronics and biosensors at MC10. Roozbeh's efforts have led to the launch of the first ever soft and conformal wearable products: BioStamp® and My UV Patch. Prior to MC10 Inc., Roozbeh helped launch Diagnostics For All, a non-profit organization developing low-cost health diagnostics using paper-based microfluidics technology. Roozbeh is a founding editor of the MIT Entrepreneurship Review and is a Research Scientist in the MIT Research Laboratory of Electronics. Roozbeh’s contributions in soft bioelectronics, point-of-care diagnostics and auditory neuroscience have been recognized with the Helen Carr Peake PhD Research Prize, the MIT100K Grand Prize, the Harvard Business School Social Enterprise Grand Prize, and MIT Technology Review Magazine’s Top 35 Innovators Under 35. Roozbeh has published over 45 academic papers (in Nature Nanotechnology, Nature Materials, Nature Communications, Science, and PNAS journals) and is inventor on over 60 patent applications and awards. Roozbeh holds B.S. and M.Eng degrees in electrical engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and a Ph.D. in biomedical engineering from the Harvard-MIT Program in Health Sciences and Technology.

Zak Ebrahim was only seven years old when, on November 5, 1990, his father, El-Sayyid Nosair, shot and killed the leader of the Jewish Defense League. While in prison, Nosair was sentenced to multiple life sentences during the World Trade Center Bombing trials. In one of his infamous video messages, Osama bin Laden urged the world to "Remember El-Sayyid Nosair." For Ebrahim, a childhood amid terrorism was all he knew. After his father’s incarceration, his family moved more than twenty times, haunted by and persecuted for the crimes of his father. Though his radicalized father and uncles modeled fanatical beliefs, the hateful ideas never resonated with the shy, awkward boy. The older he grew, the more fully Ebrahim grasped the horrific depths of his father’s acts. The more he understood, the more he resolved to dedicate his life to promoting peace. After several years of hiding his true identity Zak began to speak publicly about his personal path to peace. In 2014 he gave his first TEDtalk in Vancouver, Canada. He released his first book, The Terrorist's Son: A Story of Choice through TEDBooks and Simon and Schuster in September 2014. It won an American Library Association Award in 2015.

Krtin is currently a school student at Sutton Grammar School. His fascination with science started at an early age when he underwent a series of operations. Krtin was fascinated by the breakthrough technologies developed by scientists that were employed by doctors to deliver cutting-edge healthcare on a daily basis. Krtin’s research on Alzheimer’s disease received international recognition at the international Google Science Fair 2015 held at Googleplex in Mountain View, California. Krtin’s breast cancer research also received international recognition and he was named one of 9 Young People Changing the World by VSO International. Krtin now works with the Institute for Research in Schools to encourage students to undertake scientific research and to show people that age is not a barrier when it comes to innovating and exploring the world of science.

EL Seed fuses Arabic calligraphy with graffiti to paint colorful, swirling messages of hope and peace on buildings from Tunisia to Paris. Born in Paris to Tunisian parents, eL Seed travels the world, making art in Paris, New York, Jeddah, Melbourne, Gabes, Doha and beyond. His goal: to create dialogue and promote tolerance as well as change global perceptions of what Arabic means. In 2012, for instance, he painted a message of unity on a 47-meter-high minaret on the Jara mosque in Gabes, Tunisia. This piece and others can be found in his book, Lost Walls: Graffiti Road Trip through Tunisia Most recently he created a sprawling mural in the Manshiyat Naser neighborhood of Cairo that spans 50 buildings and can only be viewed from a local mountaintop. Intending to honor the historic garbage collectors of the Manshiyat Naser neighborhood, the piece reads, "Anyone who wants to see the sunlight clearly needs to wipe his eye first."

Neel is the founder of the Robin Hood Army. Being a finance student and having worked in a New York based hedge fund (D.E. Shaw), Neel looked set for a career in finance – only to realise that he found excel sheets and financial analysis exceptionally boring. This led him to the world of food and startups, and he joined a small passionate team that believed in building a world-class product. Neel is a bit of a nomad and has lived in 8 cities across 5 countries in the last couple of years, setting up operations of the startup Zomato, worldwide. In his free time, along with his friend Anand, Neel has set up the Robin Hood Army - a volunteer based organisation which collects excess food from restaurants and distributes it to the less fortunate. In a little over two years, the RHA has served over 1.5 million people through over 8000 Robins across 12 countries. He likes to believe that the RHA is just '1% Done'.

BOAZ ALMOG Husband to lovely wife and father to silly kids, Boaz is a lifelong restless tinkerer, constantly taking things apart and putting them back together. As a Quantum Physicist at Tel Aviv University and founder of Quantum Experience (www.quantumlevitation.com), Boaz gave a TED talk in 2012 about Quantum Levitation. Boaz recently launched a hugely successful Kickstarter campaign for BRIXO, an innovative educational product that lets kids learn about electricity through building blocks. Boaz has been devoting his time and energy to bring about a new educational experience that touches both traditional everyday physics and electricity with BRIXO and modern quantum physics with Quantum Levitation and its educational programs and experiments.

Florian Radke is a brand marketing and communications expert originally from Berlin, Germany. In the last 15 years Florian has worked with some of the most iconic brands such as Nike, Heineken, MTV, Warner Music, Sixt, T-Mobile, and Apple. He has also helped to create award-winning campaigns for People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA). Currently, Florian lives in the San Francisco Bay Area and found his passion in helping startups and nonprofits tell their stories. Florian is currently leading communications at Meta, an augmented reality (AR) company that is one of the companies at the forefront of designing our AR future. Meta’s focus is not on creating experiences that distract or pull us out of the real world, but rather that enhance our natural environments and facilitate greater learning and communication than has been available before. Humans have always learned best through experience in the natural world. The stunning promise of augmented reality is that suddenly we will be able to interact and emotionally connect with anything we can imagine in a hands-on, three-dimensional environment. The possible applications range from more immersive classroom learning to a collaborative creative tool that can be used in real time to bring storytellers together from around the world.

Lakshmanan aka Lux Narayan is an entrepreneur with a previous life in the entertainment and advertising industries. He is currently CEO & co-founder at Unmetric, a brand-focused social media intelligence platform used by Fortune 1000 brands and agencies across over 25 countries. Unmetric's team of 70 people are distributed across its operations in Chennai and New York City - where Lux is based. Prior to founding Unmetric, Lux was part of the founding team at Vembu Technologies, an online data backup company. He was also a founding member and the chief volunteer at ShareMyCake, a non-profit started by his wife and focused on encouraging children to use their birthdays to channel monetary support towards a cause of their choosing. Outside of work, he is a perpetual learner of various things - from origami and arduinos to standup and improv comedy. He enjoys reading obituaries and other non fiction and watching documentaries with bad ratings. Lux makes time every year for trekking in the Himalayas or scuba diving in tropical waters, and once he learns to fly, he hopes to spend more time off land than on it.

Wim van Egmond primarily works as an independent artist but since his work brings together both art and science his images are often used as scientific illustrations. Because he practises several different photographic techniques he is sometimes asked to do specialized commissioned work. For many years he collaborated in the development of the unique museum for microbes, Micropia in Amsterdam for which he helped making content, images, films and a visitor friendly microscope. His main interests is portraying microscopic organisms. Since microorganisms are such unknown subjects the microscopic world comes with an abstraction, built-in, so to speak. When he started working as an artist he had to transform reality in order to create abstract images. Nowadays he works as a pure realist but the images look more abstract than ever. One of his great heroes is Anthoni van Leeuwenhoek, the discoverer of the micro world. Wim lives at the exact spot where that happened and is currently doing a research on this find. His work is somewhat related to the Victorian traditions and the work of the 19th century naturalists but he combines the old skills with modern techniques. There is a lot of craftsmanship needed for the practise of microscopy and Wim is an expert in training microorganisms and making sure they behave as good models. His web pages, like the on-line Micropolitan Museum have inspired many people to start looking through a microscope. Wim is a multiple winner of the Nikon Small World competition. Regarding the artistic aspects of his work, his images have a certain tranquility, the compositions are carefully balanced. This resembles the accuracy of a scientific approach. But there is often a hint of absurdism in his work and he sometimes presents it in an alternative context, in theater or musea. His most recent projects involve time lapses and movies of microbes and fungi.

Edith is tapping into an underutilised resource -- families of patients -- and equipping them to play a pivotal role in the healthcare system. By providing skills, awareness and tools to family members who accompany patients in hospitals, Edith is reducing their dependence on medical professionals like doctors and nurses, curbing the rates of re-hospitalisation and ensuring a smooth transition to and proper care at home.

Josy Joseph, an award winning journalist based in New Delhi, is the National Security Editor of The Hindu newspaper. He has been Editor-Special Projects for the Times of India, an Associate Editor with the DNA newspaper, and has also been with Rediff.com, the Asian Age, Delhi Mid Day, and the Blitz. Josy’s stories have fostered greater public debate and have contributed to significant policy and systemic changes. His reporting has resulted in several high-profile officials being forced out of office, triggering the arrest of many others as well as federal criminal and military investigations. Particularly high-profile investigations have included, for example, the Mumbai Adarsh Housing scam and the many misdeeds in the run-up to the 2010 Commonwealth Games in New Delhi, both of which contributed significantly to the anti-corruption movement of recent times. The Prem Bhatia Trust elected him India’s best political reporter of 2010 “for his scoops and revelations, which include a list of scams that have become familiar names in the political lexicon.” He shared the award with Jyotirmoy Dey, a Mumbai crime reporter who had been shot dead a few weeks earlier. In July 2013, the Ramnath Goenka Foundation run by the Indian Express newspaper group awarded him the “Journalist of the Year” in print media. Josy holds a Masters in International Relations from the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, Tufts University, and was a prominent face of its international campaign in 2011-2012. He also has a post-graduate diploma in journalism. Josy graduated from the University of Kerala with an undergraduate degree in Mathematics, Physics, and Statistics. He completed his schooling from a Sainik School. Joseph was a fellow at the Institute of Defence and Strategic Studies in Singapore and is an alumnus of the Colombo-based Regional Centre for Strategic Studies.

Kalyani is the co-founder of Inclov, the world's first matchmaking app for people with disability and health disorders to find love. Inclov is accessible to people with visual impairment and cerebral palsy amongst others. The app matches people on the basis of cure availability, medical condition, level of independence and lifestyle choices. Today, Inclov has 2000 matches and Kalyani has demonstrated early success with two Inclov users getting married in May 2016.

Uday Vishwanath Deshpande, is best described as a man on a mission. Having dedicated most of his life towards nurturing and promoting the ancient Indian sport of Mallakhamb, with fervour and single-minded focus, Deshpande’s contribution to the field has been immense. His own prowess as a player of Mallakhamb went a long way in this process. Being a reputed National level player of Mallakhamb in the early seventies, helped Deshpande to achieve a natural feel for the sport and to understand the unique demands of a sport like Mallakhamb. As a result his approach has been two – folded. On one hand he has coached and created several outstanding Mallakhamb players, both within the country and abroad. On the other he has helped organize over a hundred Mallakhamb demonstrations and camps within India and has taken Mallakhamb to large audiences spread over a dozen countries around the world. Besides this, by actively networking with and participating in events organized by other bodies in the field of Mallakhamb, Deshpande has been instrumental in creating policies regarding the sport, framing syllabi for courses and generally building an environment in which the sport will be able to thrive. However, it is in the small things that one sees the real work done by the man. Despite his heavy schedules, he personally trains visually challenged children from the school for the blind to perform on the rope. A simple, down to earth man, he always has time for anyone who wants to know about the sport and is always willing to teach it himself. It is this that has taken the sport a long way.

Prukalpa is the co-founder of SocialCops, a data intelligence company. Their platform brings the entire decision-making process to one place — from collecting primary data and accessing secondary data to merging internal data and visualizing data via easy-to-use dashboards. They work with over 150 organizations in 7+ countries, including the Gates Foundation, Tata Trusts, Government of India, Unilever, and Frost & Sullivan. SocialCops was on the 2016 Forbes Asia 30 Under 30 and Fortune India 40 Under 40 lists.

Dr Zarir F Udwadia is a consultant chest physician at the Hinduja Hospital & Research Center Mumbai and Breach Candy Hospital. He has a special interest and expertise in drug resistant tuberculosis. About 7000 patients pass through his busy clinics annually, a number of whom are MDR-TB patients referred by colleagues from different parts of the country. Tuberculosis remains his over-riding passion. He has been invited to lecture on Tuberculosis in several countries including guest orations before the Gordon Research Conference, British, European and American Thoracic societies, International Union against TB, Harvard School of Public Health, and the Royal Society of Medicine, and Gates Grand Challenges Conference UK. He is a prolific researcher and has over 125 PubMed indexed publications and 3000 citations to his credit and is co-author of "Principles of Respiratory Medicine" published by Oxford International. His recent publication of the first Indian patients with Totally Drug Resistant TB attracted intense media and medical interest from across the globe, featured on the front pages of Wall Street Journal, Time magazine, the New York Times and on BBC, and served to galvanize great change in the community.

Capri has just returned to Canada from a record setting journey around the world to 80 countries with her family where she sung the national anthem of each country in the national language to raise money for orphaned, abandoned and abused children. Entitled "Around the World in 80 Anthems", Capri was featured in over 100 television and print interviews globally. She was invited to sing at such venues as the Marseilles Opera House, the Luxembourg Peace Forum, Carnaval Uruguay, the International Gilbert and Sullivan Festival and at over 40 SOS Children's Villages around the globe. She was also the anthem singer at Major League Baseball games in both Washington, DC and Toronto, Canada to complete her journey. Capri feels a special connection to India as she was invited to be part of the "Heal the World" collaboration done by the popular Indian duo, Maati Baani, quoted by IANS as "breaking the Internet" when it was released this past August. She is thrilled to be back in India, one of her favorite countries out of the 80, to speak at TedX Gateway.

Vandana Trivedi has grown up across the major urban cities of India, absorbing multiple cultures and traditions. A diligent student, she is a BCom Hons graduate from Hansraj College in Delhi University, and an MBA from the University of Madras. Following her heart has always come naturally to her and she married the man she loved, Rajesh, even as she had a semester left to complete her MBA. She found her next calling in Sales, and has been handling the sales function in the Indian Mutual Funds Industry for the last 16 years. Currently she leads the business advising corporates and institutions to make informed investment decisions. The jewel in her crown is her two young kids, aged 12 and 7, Satvik and Aastha, who are as different as chalk and cheese, yet make her family unit complete. As she has been charting the journey of her life, she has once again chosen to follow her heart, and this time it leads her to the mountain ranges. An avid trekker and mountaineer, she spends her weekends and vacations climbing the Himalayas and the Sahyadris. She aspires to make mountaineering more than just a holiday pursuit. Being with the nature has only invoked her strong resistance to turn a blind eye to human and environmental abuse, particularly the one emanating from open burning of unsegregated garbage in our dumping grounds. She has spent the last few years rallying to create awareness and action from citizens and the establishment towards this cause.

Deepak Ramola is the Founder & Artistic Director of Project FUEL. FUEL stands for: Forward the Understanding of Every Life Lesson. The organisation collects life lessons from people of all ages and backgrounds around the world. It seeks to build a community of young adults who live, learn and share in order to make meaningful psycho-social and emotional contribution to themselves and the society in large. The vision is to fill the need gap of advices and solutions using the human experience and by making each life count. To facilitate this, they design full-length workshops with activities, exercises and games based on these life lessons and use performance and interactive mediums like theatre, spoken word poetry, storytelling, communicative expression, and creative writing to help internalise them. Deepak started Project FUEL at the age of 17 and has been teaching age groups 4-96 for past 7 years. From victims of human trafficking in Nepal to middle school children in Afghanistan to refugees in Europe, Deepak has been able to benefit more than 60,000 people all over the world. Project FUEL has also been featured as an educational innovation in the database of "Center for Education Innovations". Deepak, is a United Nations speaker, two times TEDx speaker, an educator, a writer, actor, lyricist and a gold medalist in Mass Media studies from the University of Mumbai. Deepak gained his experience in theatre after having worked with National School of Drama, Quasar Theatre Productions and No License Yet and has interned with both print and electronic media houses (Garhwal Post and CNN IBN). As a spoken word poet, he has participated, performed and won many poetry slams and Open Mic in Mumbai. Acknowledged and appreciated for his sensitivity, originality and word play in his poems. As a lyricist, Deepak is working on eight feature films slated to release later early next year. His debut film 'Manjhi, The Mountain Man' released recently along ‘Time Out’ in 2015 and ‘Wazir’ in 2016. He recently featured in the fifth season of the hit show "The Dewarists". Deepak uses his multi-faceted experiences and multidimensional talents towards channeling everyday wisdom and experiences into easy to imbibe and apply, life lessons. His favourite words in life are ‘seeker’, ‘artist’, ‘boundless’, ‘energy’, ‘potential’, ‘creativity’. And these are also words that make him, him.

Guilhem Desq is an electric 'hurdy gurdy' player from France, offering a surprising journey around his unusual instrument. Although he draws his energy from his instrument’s tradition, he gets his inspiration mainly from modern music and improvisation. He keeps exploring the endless sound possibilities of the hurdy gurdy to create a universe where places, times and feelings are mixed all together, and in which he invites us to travel, for a few turns of his wheel.

Raghu Raman has possibly one of the most unique career profiles spanning over 25 years. He spent eleven years as an officer in the Indian Armed Forces , followed by another eleven years in the corporate sector before joining the Government as CEO of the National Intelligence Grid. Raghu started his career with the Indian Army. During his stint, he was in active combat in Punjab battling terrorists and in Siachen Glacier facing Pakistani troops. He has served as a UN peacekeeper, as well as been an instructor teaching leadership and strategy to officers at the prestigious School of Armoured Warfare. After leaving the Indian Army, Raghu joined the Mahindra Group in 1998 and helped set up Mahindra United World College. Over the next ten years he led various companies, including First Choice, Mahindra SSG and finally DLSI, a Mahindra joint venture with British Aerospace before being handpicked to create and head the National Intelligence Grid, Ministry of Home Affairs in the Government of India. After his five year stint as the founding CEO of NATGRID, Raman joined Reliance Industries as Group President, Risk, Security & New Ventures. Raghu is a Distinguished Fellow at the Observer Research Foundation, a frequent guest faculty in business schools, keynote speaker and columnist on National Security Strategy and Leadership in leading publications. He is also the author of “Everyman’s War” - a book published by Random House. Raghu also spoke at TEDxGateway 2015 with a talk titled "Diversity in the Indian Army".

Maati Baani is a world music duo formed by Music Composer/Producer Kartik Shah and Indian Classical Vocalist Nirali Kartik. Till now they have collaborated with over 150 artistes across the world and are known as the contemporary sound of traditional India. Their songs feature street musicians, famous Youtubers, Folk artistes from different countries and also rare and endangered traditions of music. Together they are redefining collaborations in music with their unique approach of creating music - over the internet. They find musicians online, co-create a piece together without meeting the musicians in person with the help of skype rehearsals and studio technology. Their aim is to create a song in every country of the world! Their recent cover of Michael Jacksons song "Heal the World" featured 45 child prodigies across the world and went viral on Facebook with over 35 million views. They also are the creators of Indias first Music based Web-series "The Music Yantra", which features over 70 artistes from 25 countries creating music over the internet. Just like their videos, their live performances often take the audience by surprise by the variety of artistes they feature. For the TEDx act , they will feature Guilhem Desq from France, a well known player of the Hurdy Gurdy, an ancient instrument which is going a modern renaissance in America and Europe.

RIVES (rhymes with “weaves”) is a six-time TED speaker and co-host of the annual TEDActive conference. His one-of-a-kind interactive style has an extraordinary ability to awaken, engage, and excite an audience. He gives talks on storytelling, creativity, and public speaking, and is a dedicated host who works to make sure every event is exceptional. A multimedia artist, storyteller, and spoken word poet, Rives is part of a small group that has not one, but six talks on TED.com. As a host, he has an uncanny talent for making an event go smoothly, filling in the gaps that so many conferences leave unorganized. He runs the whole day, making sure the audience is engaged and interacting at every possible moment by hosting networking sessions, caption-writing contests, and on-stage competitions. And, he finds the day’s humorous, poignant moments and incorporates them in wrap-up presentations and mini-documentaries. He makes sure that all the energy, effort, and expense of the conference is put to the best possible use, and that every attendee and organizer walks away feeling that the day was a success. He also gives talks on the power of storytelling—and how multimedia technology is changing the way we communicate—as well as keynotes and workshops with valuable lessons on public speaking. Rives has appeared on HBO’s Def Poetry Jam, Bravo’s Ironic Iconic America, NPR’s All Things Considered, and at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. TESTIMONIALS “Rives was one of the real stars of the TED Conference. On the last day, he performed a spoken word piece that incorporated all of the most memorable lines from the presentations that had come before. I was blown away!” AL GORE