Sept. 26, 2013
When the fifth annual TEDxToronto 2013 takes place Sept. 26, three University of Toronto professors will be among the speakers dazzling the sold-out audience with their insights. Of those three, two are professors in the Edward S. Rogers Sr. Department of Electrical & Computer Engineering.
ECE professors Brendan Frey and Steve Mann will speak at the annual event. It’s an independently organized offshoot of the well-known annual TED (for Technology, Entertainment and Design) Conference, where leading intellectuals, business leaders, politicians and others give engaging, thought-provoking 18-minute presentations.
The TEDx conference follows on the heels of the first university-wide TEDx event, hosted by U of T in May, which showcased 13 speakers from a wide range of disciplines.
U of T News spoke with Professors Frey and Mann for a preview of their TEDxToronto talks.
Brendan Frey
What’s your TEDxToronto talk about?
My story of how I became a genetic code breaker, how we uncover and decipher genetic recipes, and what it means for you.
The genome contains recipes that explain how genes should be combined in different ways to do different things, depending on conditions. These recipes are very important, since they account for differences between us and different species and since many diseases are caused by errors in the recipes, not the genes.
Is there a difference between a TEDx talk and a university lecture?
Yes and no. Students need to be inspired by big ideas, and that’s what TED talks are about. Students also need to learn how to develop their own ideas. This takes a lot of experimentation, analysis, hard work and guesswork, which we teach in regular lectures.
Steve Mann
What’s your TEDxToronto talk about?
I’ll be talking about Digital Eye Glass. It acts as a camera to record the scene available to the eye as well as a display to superimpose a computer-generated imagery on the original scene available to the eye. This structure allows the user’s eye to operate as both a monitor and a camera. For a long time, computer-aided vision and augmented reality were rather obscure topics, of interest only to a few corporate researchers, academics, and a small number of passionate hobbyists.
Recently, however, augmented reality has captured the public consciousness. In particular, Google has lately attracted enormous attention with its Project Glass, an eyeglass-like smartphone with a wearable display. But Google Glass is much less ambitious than the computer-mediated vision systems I constructed decades ago. What Google’s involvement promises, though, is to popularize this kind of technology.
What take-away message do you want to leave with the TEDx attendees?
Thirty-five years ago people used to laugh at me wearing computers and Digital Eye Glass. Now it is a $241 billion industry. So the take-away, is to follow your dreams and inventions even if other people tell you the inventions (or you) are stupid.
Is there a difference between a TEDx talk and a university lecture?
I guess I’m about to find out.
Tickets for TEDxToronto 2013 have been sold out for weeks, and even a satellite venue at the Centre for Social Innovation at Bloor and Christie is fully booked. But you can follow the conference live at www.tedxtoronto.com. Videos of the speakers will also be available on the TEDxToronto website after the event.
Visit U of T News for the full article and interviews.
More information:
Marit Mitchell
Senior Communications Officer
The Edward S. Rogers Sr. Department of Electrical & Computer Engineering
416-978-7997; marit.mitchell@utoronto.ca