Jola Ajibade

Dr. Jola Ajibade is an Associate Professor and scholar-activist in the Environmental Sciences Department at Emory University. Her scholarship advances justice-centered approaches to climate adaptation, relocation, community resilience, and future city planning. Specifically, she explores how climate change impacts and adaptation programs are transforming the lives, livelihoods, socio-cultural and economic landscapes, and housing access for historically marginalized communities. As an urban political ecologist, Dr. Ajibade is dedicated to identifying innovative, effective, and equitable approaches to the climate crises and proposed solutions. She integrates environmental justice and antiracist lenses as well as feminist decolonial praxis and care ethics, in her approach to these challenges. Throughout her scholarly work, Dr Ajibade emphasizes the importance of striving for just transformations in a changing climate. This involves advocating for disruptive and positive shifts in the global political economy, human behavior, land use patterns, tree distribution, housing, energy use, disaster management, water security, and migration policies. Dr. Ajibade holds a PhD in Geography and Environmental Sustainability from Western University, Canada. Her work has been featured in many academic journals and media outlets, including Nature, Science, NPR, Al Jazeera, Science Friday, Yale Environment 360, Science, New Internationalist, and Vice. She co-edited the book titled “Global Views on Climate Relocation and Social Justice.” Published by Routledge in 2022.

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Jeremiah Dickey

Jeremiah Dickey has been creating fine animation for over 20 years, working both independently and in cahoots with numerous production studios in NYC and abroad. Jeremiah was a founding Animation Director at TED-Ed from its inception in 2012, where he designed, directed and animated dozens of short films over the following decade, illuminating subjects from ancient mythology to cutting-edge science (and much in between). His work has collectively garnered over a hundred million views online and screened at dozens of festivals around the world including Sundance, Annecy, SXSW et al, managing to pick up a few awards along the way. Past work includes frequent collaboration with filmmaker Emily Hubley on animation for a wide variety of award-winning documentaries and independent films.

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George Hart

George Hart is a sculptor who uses mathematical ideas and computer technology in the design and fabrication of his artwork. He holds a BS in Mathematics and a PhD in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, both from MIT, and is now retired from a career on the faculties of Columbia University and Stony Brook University. He co-founded the Museum of Mathematics in NY City and currently works from the Bruce Peninsula area in Ontario. His sculpture is exhibited around the world and can be seen at georgehart.com.

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Raj Patel

Raj Patel is an award-winning author, film-maker and academic. He is a Research Professor in the Lyndon B Johnson School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas, Austin. He has testified about the causes of the global food crisis to the US, UK and EU
governments and is a member of the International Panel of Experts on Sustainable Food Systems. He has degrees from the University of Oxford, the London School of Economics and Cornell University, has worked for the World Bank and WTO, and protested against them around the world. In 2016 he was recognized with a James Beard Foundation Leadership Award and he co-taught the Edible Education class at UC Berkeley with Michael Pollan. In addition to scholarly publications in economics, philosophy, politics and public health journals, he regularly writes for The Guardian, and has contributed to the Financial Times, Los Angeles Times, New York Times, Times of India, The San Francisco Chronicle, The Mail on Sunday, and The Observer. His first book was Stuffed and Starved: The Hidden Battle for the World Food System. His second, The Value of Nothing, was a New York Times and international best seller. He is the co-author with Jason W. Moore of A History of the World in Seven Cheap Things. His acclaimed latest book, co-authored with Rupa Marya, is entitled Inflamed: Deep Medicine and The Anatomy of Injustice. His first film, co-directed with Zak Piper and filmed over the course of a decade in Malawi and the United States, is the award-winning documentary The Ants & The Grasshopper.

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Alex Rosenthal

Alex Rosenthal is the Editorial Director of TED-Ed Animations, where he has produced the scripts for more than a thousand animated educational videos that have collectively been watched billions of times. He is also the creative lead of TED Games, a new initiative that is extending the joy of TED Talks into games designed to foster curiosity and create aha moments. Both roles build on his expertise with narrative as well as puzzle design – the latter being subject of his TED Talk. While at TED Alex has developed multiple animated series, including a 10-episode narrative coding education adventure, and a math and logic riddle series that has garnered hundreds of millions of views. He also designed an award-winning TED-themed escape room inside three Marriott hotels and a digital game designed to bridge the gap between human and AI “minds”. Before working at TED, Alex made educational digital games at PBS’s NOVA, including a citizen-science game designed to unravel the secrets of RNA. He also produced National Geographic documentaries on subjects ranging from an expedition into the heart of an active volcano to a high-tech search for the lost tomb of Genghis Khan. Alex studied mathematics and playwriting at Brown University.

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Margaret Wertheim

Margaret Wertheim is a science writer and artist whose work focuses on relations between science and the wider cultural landscape. With degrees in math and physics, she is animated by a view that science is a field of conceptual enchantment and a socially embedded activity. Wertheim is the author of seven books, including Pythagoras Trousers, a history of physics and religion; The Pearly Gates of Cyberspace: A History of Space from Dante to the Internet; and Physics on the Fringe, an exploration of ‘outsider science.’ Her writing has appeared in the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Guardian, Cabinet, Aeon, and many others. She and her sister Christine Wertheim are co-founders of the Institute For Figuring, a Los Angeles-based practice devoted to “the aesthetic dimensions of science and mathematics.” Their Crochet Coral Reef project is the world’s largest participatory science+art endeavor, with over 25,000 participants in 50 cities and countries, that has been exhibited at the Venice Biennale, Helsinki Biennial, The Smithsonian (D.C.), Museum of Arts and Design (NYC), Museum Frieder Burda (Germany), Schlossmuseum Linz (Austria), and elsewhere. Margaret’s Reef TED Talk has been viewed 1.6 million times. She has worked on all seven continents and stood on the South Pole.

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