TEDxESA: where science took us beyond fiction

What a wonderful event it was – a huge thank you to all who were a part of TEDxESA, in person and online. The event would not have been a success without you. We had a full house with 300 people in the audience and more than 9000 watching the livestream around the world.

At our TEDxESA event, 12 stellar speakers took the stage and presented their visions of how science takes us beyond fiction, and the event was closed by an amazing musical performance which included sounds from all over ESA – ESTEC, our deep space missions as well as audio clips from our speakers.

Hosted by ESA astronaut André Kuipers, TEDxESA’s theme #ScienceBeyondFiction allowed us to be inspired by our fabulous speakers: comedian, pod- and broadcaster Helen Keen, scientist and ESA BIC Harwell alumnus Taff Morgan, rebellious top chef Thorsten Schmidt, neuroscientist and artificial intelligence researcher Danko Nikolić, novelist and futurist Nick Harkaway, space entrepreneur and activist Rick Tumlinson, ESA Space Materials researcher Tommaso Ghidini, next space generation student Kanika Anand, Apollo engineer Scott Millican, ESA astronaut Samantha Cristoforetti and musician and creative technologist Peter Kirn.

After last year’s successful TEDxRheinMain Rocketminds hosted by ESA’s Operations Centre in Darmstadt (Germany), it was about time for ESA to explore and go beyond. TEDxESA will be a long-term communication platform, aiming to continuously reach out across Europe and beyond. This was just the first of many TEDxESA events in other ESA establishments to come. We’ll share more information on when and where to find us in 2016 with you soon.

The videos of all TEDxESA talks are currently being edited and will be made available in the course of the coming months via TED.com and TED on Youtube.

A picture tells a thousand words, so you can already relive the TEDxESA moments with the official photos which are available via our Flickr photostream.

P.S.: Read the ESA Web Portal article as well!

Images:

TEDxESA speakers (top) and TEDxESA Team (bottom). Credits: ESA/Sarah Jane Muirhead, CC BY-NC-ND IGO 3.0

