PRESS RELEASE: TEDxMississauga 2019

The TEDxMississauga conference will be returning on January 19th, 2019 to the Mississauga Convention Centre with an exciting line-up of some of Mississauga's most distinguished academics and talented local artists & entertainers.

TED is a nonprofit organization devoted to ideas worth spreading, usually in the form of short, powerful talks (18 minutes or fewer) 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.

TEDx is a program of local, self-organized events that bring people together to share a TED-like experience. At a TEDx event, TED Talks video and live speakers combine to spark deep discussion and connection. These local, self-organized events are branded TEDx, where x = independently organized TED event. TEDx conferences are licensed and regulated by TED, and organized by community volunteers who are passionate about bringing ideas worth spreading to their cities. No organizer, speaker or performer is paid for their participation in the conference.

The theme for the 2019 conference is (de)mystify, and that's what we aim to do at the next conference. In an ever-changing world of technology, cryptocurrencies, evolving notions of human rights and equality, the limits of human understanding continue to grow. How do we take difficult or esoteric concepts, and make them clearer and easier to understand? Presentations will explore these topics and more.

University of Toronto Mississauga professor Ashley Rubin is one of the speakers, and her research reexamines the dynamics of penal change, focusing on the introduction of new punishments in America and England from the seventeenth century through the early twentieth century.

Another speaker is rising star Netra Unni Rajesh, a third year Engineering Science student at the University of Toronto with a specialization in Biomedical engineering. She obtained her first laboratory work term at the Sunnybrook Research Institute when she was just 16 years old, and she is currently working at the California Institute of Technology (CalTech) where she is developing and engineering bioreactor devices for cancer vaccines. She has also worked at MIT on a drug development project.

We'll also be featuring Mississauga's Poet Laureate, Wali Shah, who is a musician and philanthropist. In 2014, he was named by Plan Canada as one of Canada's "Top 20 Under 20". He has spoken most prominently on topics including bullying, mental health and social change, while creating spoken word poetry specifically tailored to his projects and engagements

Guests will also enjoy the beautiful voice of Mississauga's own Arlene Paculan. The Filipino-Canadian’s recent successful sophomore album, “Home Wih You” has been embraced by many including CBC Radio 1, The Coast 89.7 (Glace Bay, NS), 105.9 The Region (Markham, ON) and 99.1 FM (Wallaceburg/Dresden, ON). Arlene was recently named Best Pop Artist at the Mississauga Music Awards.

Tickets are $303.28 at the door, but only $59+HST when you register online through Eventbrite or Facebook before 11:59pm on December 25th, 2018.