From whales to cancer and astrophysics to online pornography

From whales to cancer and astrophysics to online pornography, TEDxChristchurch 2016: 360º is sure to provoke, inspire and delight

How do whales know where they are? What’s the best way find new objects in space, given the enormity of the universe? What is the effect on young people of freely available online pornography? And is it possible we could see an end to cancer in our lifetimes?

These questions and more will be answered at TEDxChristchurch 2016: 360º, set to take place on Saturday, 29 October at the TEDxVillage centred on the Isaac Theatre Royal.

Today, TEDxChristchurch announced the first four speakers in the 2016 lineup: Melanie Johnston-Hollitt, Travis Horton, Nikki Denholm and Stephen Henry.

As Director of Astronomy & Astrophysics at Victoria University of Wellington, Chair of the Board of the 60 million dollar Murchison Widefield Array (MWA) radio telescope, and more, Professor Johnston-Hollitt and her teams regularly deal with exabytes of data per day, leading her ask an obvious question: Can artificially intelligent image recognition help find signals in all that noise?

Back here on Earth, humpback whale seasonal migrations span greater than 6500 km of open ocean with remarkable navigational precision -- often better than 1° -- despite the effects of variable sea-surface currents, and Associate Professor Travis Horton wants to know why. The whales’ accuracy is difficult to explain by established models of directional orientation. Do we need a new model?

Meanwhile, between creating high-end campaigns for corporate clients like Air New Zealand and Powershop, photographer Nikki Denholm travels the globe documenting some of the world’s most heart-wrenching environments and practices, such as orphans, prison life, human trafficking, and female genital mutilation. Most recently, she has turned her critical mind to the serious question of how freely available, often violent online pornography is affecting the younger generation.

Finally, the CEO and founder of Kode Biotech, Stephen Henry, has invented and commercialised a synthetic molecule that can attach to the surface of any biological matter. As just one example of its potential, the molecule, Kode, can be used to label or modify the outside of cancerous tumours, prompting the body’s immune system to attack them.

Following a highly successful return to the CBD last year, TEDxChristchurch 2016: 360º will take place on Saturday, 29 October at TEDxChristchurch Village, encompassing the iconic Isaac Theatre Royal and surrounding area. This year, the Village expands to include the new Centre for Music and Arts, The Piano, around the corner.

TEDxChristchurch curator Kaila Colbin says, “When people come to TEDxChristchurch, our aim is to stretch, challenge, provoke and inspire them. Our theme this year, 360º, is about getting people to look at things from all angles, to consider a full spectrum of problems, solutions, ideas, complexity, and nuance.”

Youth memberships sold out within days but General Memberships are still available. The all-day event costs $189.00, which, alongside the inspiring talks includes delicious food, the famous goodie bag, entertainment, free espresso all day, and more.

The non-profit event is choreographed by a dedicated team of more than 40 local volunteers.

Full speaker bios

Melanie Johnston Hollitt

Professor Melanie Johnston-Hollitt is an internationally prominent radio astronomer working in the space between astrophysics, computer science and big data. She is Director of Astronomy & Astrophysics at Victoria University of Wellington, Chair of the Board of the 60 million dollar Murchison Widefield Array (MWA) radio telescope and a founding member of the Board of Directors of the Square Kilometre Array (SKA) Organisation, which is tasked with building the World’s largest radio telescope. In her nearly 20 year career, Prof. Johnston-Hollitt has been involved in design, construction and operation of several major radio telescopes including the Low Frequency Array in the Netherlands, the MWA in Australia and the SKA which will be hosted in both Australia and South Africa. These instruments produce massive quantities of data, in the case of the SKA it will be in the realms of exabytes per day requiring new and disruptive technologies to allow value to be extracted from the data deluge. As a result Prof. Johnston-Hollitt’s recent interests span the intersection between radio astronomy, signal processing and big data analytics and she leads a multi-discipline team in Wellington, NZ investigating how best to meet the science challenges of these next generation instruments in the big data era.

Travis Horton

Professor Travis Horton is a geologist who studies whales. Yes, you read that right: a geologist who studies whales. Travis developed his extraquadrilateral thinking skills during his Stanford years under the supervision of Professor Page Chamberlain, a pioneer in use of geochemical forensics as tracers of animal movements. Since moving to New Zealand in 2007, Travis has collaborated with Nan Hauser, Director of the Centre for Cetacean Research and Conservation, and researchers at N.O.A.A.’s Marine Mammal Laboratory, on projects aimed at answering the question: How do whales navigate? These collaborations have led to unique insights into how individual whales use environmental cues to swim across vast expanses of open-ocean without getting lost. Travis has championed the establishment of a new paradigm for animal navigation: a data based framework that includes both spatial and temporal cues for orientation. This entirely natural system of navigation allows whales (and other animals) to find and follow identical migration routes at distinctly different Julian calendar dates and times during the most awe-inspiring of animal movements. Travis looks forward to applying this mechanistic understanding of animal navigation to the development of predictive models of animal movement for conservation purposes and satellite-free global positioning systems.

Nikki Denholm

Nikki Denholm is founder and owner of Exposure International www.exposure.org, a communications company that specialises in creating television commercials and documentaries for commercial clients and content for humanitarian groups, aid agencies and non-government organisations. Over the last twenty years Nikki has travelled extensively with her filmmaker husband through Africa, South East Asia, Europe and South America; working in more than 50 countries to document the stories of people in times of war, famine, persecution and crisis. Her health background has seen her work as a consultant for the New Zealand Ministry of specialising in gender issues amongst migrant/refugee woman and she has founded both the New Zealand Genital Mutilation Education (FGM) Programme and the NZ National African Refugee HIV/AIDS Education Programme in the 1990’s. This expertise also saw her appointed as an FGM Technical Advisor for the WHO, Geneva. Nikki’s focus over the last 3 years has been in the area of anti-child sex and cybersex trafficking and she has partnered with various NGOs working in India, Nepal, Thailand and the Philippines. Her experience with cybersex trafficking led to her becoming interested in, and involved with the issue of young people and online pornography in New Zealand.

Stephen Henry

Professor Steve Henry is an academic with a difference. Like other professors, research is his professional life, but unlike many he believes commercialisation is an integral partner to successful research. Having trained as a laboratory scientist specialising in transfusion medicine, Steve completed a PhD at the University of Auckland and completed another PhD in the 1990s. In 1996 he started the biotechnology company Kode Biotech to commercialise his biosurface engineering technology - Kode technology. As the CEO of Kode Biotech and Professor in the AUT Centre for Kode Technology Innovation he is fully immersed in the true commercial environment, taking research to product and developing it for the market. In 2015 Kode Biotech won the Supreme NZ Innovator Award for their contribution to the Agalimmune anti-cancer therapy innovation. It was this blend of business and science that saw him selected as a finalist for the 2008 New Zealand Ernst and Young Entrepreneur of the Year and the 2011 recipient of the Royal Society of New Zealand's prestigious R.J. Scott medal.

Background

About TEDx, x= independently organised event

In the spirit of ideas worth spreading, TEDx is a program of local, self-organised events that bring people together to share a TED-like experience. At a TEDxevent, TED Talks video and live speakers combine to spark deep discussion and connection. These local, self-organised events are branded TEDx, where x = independently organised TED event. The TED Conference provides general guidance for the TEDx program, but individual TEDx events are self-organised. (Subject to certain rules and regulations).

About TED

TED is a nonprofit organization devoted to Ideas Worth Spreading, usually in the form of short, powerful talks (18 minutes or less) delivered by today’s leading thinkers and doers. Many of these talks are given at TED’s annual conference in Vancouver, British Columbia, and made available, free, on TED.com. TED speakers have included Bill Gates, Jane Goodall, Elizabeth Gilbert, Sir Richard Branson, Nandan Nilekani, Philippe Starck, Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, Sal Khan and Daniel Kahneman.

TED’s open and free initiatives for spreading ideas include TED.com, where new TED Talk videos are posted daily; the Open Translation Project, which provides subtitles and interactive transcripts as well as translations from thousands of volunteers worldwide; the educational initiative TED-Ed; the annual million-dollar TED Prize, which funds exceptional individuals with a “wish”, or idea, to create change in the world; TEDx, which provides licenses to thousands of individuals and groups who host local, self-organised TED-style events around the world; and the TED Fellows program, which selects innovators from around the globe to aplify the impact of their remarkable projects and activities.

Follow TED on Twitter at http://twitter.com/TEDTalks, on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/TED or Instagram at https://instagram.com/ted.

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