A few weeks ago, TEDxCMU had their annual conference on campus. Current students, professors, alumni, and innovators from around the country were invited to give TEDx talks. This year’s theme was Ripple Effect: speakers shared their latest ideas whose impacts could possibly propagate and impact people around the world. The TEDxCMU board had the opportunity to work with incredible speakers whose work was pushing boundaries of convention.

For example, Dr. J, founder and Co-Director of Chronic Pain Research Consortium at Duquesne University, spoke about her breakthroughs in utilizing nanotechnology to treat chronic pain. Micah Rabin, a fourth-year student at CMU and former intern for Senator Casey, spoke about the importance of K-12 consent education and her research findings regarding consent education legislation. 

As a part of the main conference, there was also an Innovation Expo, which showcased technologies from entrepreneurs and creators from all over Pittsburgh. The conference even had its own app, built by the Innovation team. It served as a map, live schedule and interactive Q&A platform so that the attendees could actually interact with the speakers and learn more about their work. Since CMU is very tech-driven, it’s always interesting to see the amazing things that people at CMU and in the Pittsburgh community build.

As a member of the Finance team, I spent the year working with and supporting the other teams to ensure that they had the resources they needed to run the event, which had over 400 attendees this year. I had a great experience working with all the people who made the event possible, including the other board members, sponsors, speakers, performers, SLICE staff, and student volunteers. Their passionate attitudes and consistent support built a strong team that made this year’s event possible. I’m already looking forward to next year’s event!

If you missed out and still want to watch the talks, you can find the livestream at https://www.tedxcmu.org/.