Student initiative TEDxTUM

Bringing inspiration to center stage

Enough electric outlets and coffee cups for the big day

Emre, Kathi, Janni, Oliver and Dario, among others, make sure that everything goes smoothly at the conference for the over 400 guests. During one of their online meetings almost a week before the big day, they knock off an open agenda item every minute: Returnable coffee cups, yes or no? Are there enough electric outlets and microphones? Who'll saw out the new styrofoam logo? How many tickets are still left?

Approximately 60 current and former students and doctoral candidates make TEDxTUM work. During the semester they meet in various groups to deal with topics ranging from selecting potential speakers to financing the event. Kathi, Janni and the others are Group Leads, contributing updates and open questions from their groups to the weekly online conferences.

For example, there's the question of whether or not to hire a professional piano mover for the performance by a jazz and street musician. "This is a one-time opportunity!" says Kathi Weiss. She completed the TUM Elite Master's program in Biomedical Neuroscience and now works in scientific communication. In 2023, she led the curation team together with Dario Zappone, a PhD student in Plant Biology, and was thus jointly responsible for the stage program of the TEDxTUM main event.

"There's so much in the world we don't know. And it's great fun to explore this unknown together with people from entirely diverse backgrounds," says Kathi. Accordingly, the TEDxTUM events showcase not only scientific lectures, but also artistic performances. "For us it's about addressing feelings and making our audience happy," Kathi adds. She's convinced: "And that makes it worth having a piano delivered."

Creating value for the audience and society

Janni Ioannou-Nikolaides also sees the importance of the value the TEDxTUM program creates for the audience. Since completing a Master's degree in Particle Physics at TUM, he has been a visiting scholar at the University of Copenhagen's Niels Bohr Institute. "As researchers, we bear a responsibility to society. That's why I think it's important to give experts in given fields a showplace where their talks can lead to a real increase in knowledge."

Sami Haddadin, Professor of Robotics and System Intelligence, hardly finds the time to give public lectures on AI or robotics anymore. But he's making an exception for TEDxTUM: "We had already completed the first experiments. And I thought, this is exactly the right audience to present his idea to for the first time," he says.

Professor Haddadin, an electrical engineer and computer scientist, studied at TUM and attended lectures held in the Audimax main auditorium. During the lunch break he stands in the lobby, surrounded by people, in a specially reserved area. The "Speakers Corners" between the coffee bar and the information stand are a permanent fixture in the TEDxTUM Talks concept: "People are often totally excited about the opportunity to ask questions and have a discussion with the speakers. This direct interaction is very valuable," Kathi says with confidence.

The number of participants tells a very similar story: After the Covid pandemic years, when the TED Talks didn't take place, "The best thing of all was to once again see so many people together at our event," Janni writes in a short update several days after the event. In spite of all the work effort and considerable sleep deprivation, he's relaxed while looking ahead to the 2024 edition of the TEDxTUM conference: "I'm looking forward to the new team members and their new ideas."