SRM University is hosting TEDxSRM

SRM University is hosting TEDxSRM on 25th September 2010.

At TEDx events, unique talks given by live speakers combine with TEDTalks videos to spark deep conversation and connections. TEDx events are fully planned and coordinated independently, on a community-by-community basis.

TED is a small but world famous non-profit devoted to Ideas Worth Spreading. It started out as a conference bringing together people from three worlds: Technology, Entertainment, Design.

TED.com makes the best talks and performances from TED and partners available to the world, for free.

CONFIRMED SPEAKERS

A list of distinguished speakers from various fields have been lined up for this upcoming event. They are:

Swami Bhoomananda Tirtha

Poojya Swami Bhoomananda Tirtha Ji has been expounding the universal truths of Vedanta in India and abroad for over five decades, revealing inspiringly their relevance to the life of the modern man of action. His rational exposition of the science of Self-knowledge, has benefited and transformed countless professionals, householders and students. Swamiji presents Bhagavadgeeta as an ‘Administrative Gospel’ especially meant for inculcating excellence in people involved in highly responsible and challenging activities.

Swamiji’s special effort has been to make seekers understand that the real focus

• of devotional practices is not God, but the devotee’s own mind and behaviour,
• of karmayoga is not action but the yogic orientation of the mind of the actor,
• of knowledge is not knowledge, but the self-improvement and self-purification of the practitioner

One significant aspect of Swamiji’s Loka-sangraha is the religio-cultural revolution brought about in Kerala by organizing mass-movements to stop some of the age-old derogatory and superstitious practices prevailing in the name of religious rituals and festivals.

Krishnammal Jagannathan

Krishnammal Jagannathan was born in a landless Dalit family in the year 1926. Her encounters with social injustice and poverty in early life later inspired her to become a social activist. It was through the Gandhian Sarvodaya Movement that she met here husband Sankaralingam Jagannathan who was also a very active social activist. She has even shared the stage with Gandhiji and met Martin Luther King. She and her husband believed that one of the key requirements for achieving a Gandhian society is by empowering the rural poor through redistribution of land to the landless.

After a horrific incident that involved the burning of 42 Dalit Hindus including women and children in 1968, the couple started to work in Thanjavur District in Tamil Nadu to concentrate on land reform issues. Krishnammal along with her husband found ‘Land for the Tillers’ Freedom’ in 1981. By 2007, she had transferred 13,000 acres of land to about 13,000 families. She also conducts workshops to help people support themselves, during the nonagricultural season, through entrepreneurial efforts like mat weaving, tailoring, plumbing, carpentry, masonry, computer education and electronics.

Krishnammal Jagannathan has established a total of seven non-governmental institutions for the poor. She has been a Senate member of the Gandhigram Trust and University and Madurai University. She was also a member of the National Committee on Education, the Land Reform Committee and the Planning Committee.

The Jagannathans have won many prestigious Awards including the Swami Pranavananda Peace Award, the Jamnalal Bajaj Award and Padma Shri. In 1996 the couple received the Bhagavan Mahaveer Award “for propagating non-violence.” In 1999 Krishnammal was awarded a Summit Foundation Award and in 2008 she was awarded ‘Opus Prize’ by the University of Seattle and also the Right Livelihood Award. She is lovingly called ‘Amma‘ by her followers.

D.K. Hari

Bharath Gyan, an endeavour to collate and disseminate information on the knowledge of India through the ages, is an initiative of D.K.Hari and his wife D.K.Hema Hari. Bharath Gyan over the last 9 years, has collated over 300 hours of authentic and specific information on 64 different subjects of India to understand the culturally rich land with a non religious, scientific temper.

The differentiating factor in the works of Bharath Gyan is the rational, scientific and holistic approach to understanding the history of this only surviving ancient civilization by juxtaposing and piecing together missing links from the:-

• information inherent in our culture,
• data available with the traditional scholar community,
• native knowledge of the locals,
• authentic travelogues of the foreign visitors to our land,
• historical notes from the archives of other countries and
• research works of the modern scientific community

Through Bharath Gyan, they would like to demystify India and encourage all to explore and understand the knowledge and heritage of India using a rational, scientific and holistic temper.

Neerja Malik

Neerja Malik, a cancer survivor, set up a support group to help patients combat the big C with grit. With two surgeries for breast cancer in 1998 and 2004 behind her, Neerja is a double survivor as her daughter puts it. She has been through the painful process of diagnosis, treatment, surgery, the recovery, the depression and the ups and downs of the cruise that is far from pleasant. Neerja wears many hats: housewife, mother, partner in the family’s leather business and head of the Apollo Cancer Support Group. She is the co-founder of Sahaayika, an aid to face cancer. People at Sahaayika help cancer patients & their family members face the disease & recover from it.

Dr. Prithika Chary

The first and only lady in India to be qualified both as a Neurophysician and Neurosurgeon, Neerja initiated comprehensive services for epilepsy in Chennai in 1994 by starting EPICENTTRE (Epilepsy Institute & Centre for Treatment, Training, Research & Education). She is currently The Director, EPICENTTRE & Consultant Neurologist and Neurosurgeon, Apollo Neuro Hospital, Chennai. She is the recipient of the Kshanika Oration Award (1982) for outstanding woman scientist of the year from the Indian Council for Medical Research, a national award for her pioneering PhD work in multilingual aphasia. In 2008, she received the Zee Astitva Award for Exemplary Women – For Excellence in Healthcare given by the Archana Trust, Mumbai.

Sriram Iyer

Sriram in his earlier assignment worked for a leading technology firm in Chennai, India as the Head of New Initiatives. He holds a Post Graduate qualification in Advertising and Communications. After his early years as an entrepreneur, he has been involved in various capacities from 1998 to August 2004 in Product development, Advertising, and International Marketing. Sriram was elected an Ashoka Fellow in 2004 (Ashoka:Innovators for the Public, USA). Recently Sriram was elected as the “Architect of the Future” by Waldzell Institute, Vienna, Austria. Sriram is the founder of NalandaWay Foundation and is involved full time in the management of the organization.

NalandaWay works with children from challenging situations from the poorest |districts around the country, helping them raise their voices and issues through theatre, visual arts, music, dance, radio and films. Over 5700 disadvantaged children and young people in Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh, Delhi, Bihar; and Jammu & Kashmir have participated in NalandaWay workshops. These workshops have helped them learn creativity, life skills and self-confidence to create the lives that they truly want to create.

Kalpana Sankar

Chief Executive Officer, Hand in Hand Tamil Nadu, Chennai, India

Dr. Kalpana Sankar has been involved in the self-help movement for women in Tamil Nadu over the last twelve years. She is the Chief Executive Officer of ‘Hand in Hand’, which seeks to eradicate child labor and reduce poverty with a focus on education, employment, income generation and empowerment. Hand in Hand’s model has been very successful, reaching more than 350,000 Indian women in 200,000 small enterprises. Hand in Hand has also expanded into Afghanistan, South Africa and Brazil, and will add four other Latin American countries in the near future.

Among other things, Kalpana is responsible for the Tamil Nadu Empowerment and Poverty Reduction Project, which has been included in the World Bank lending program, as well as the chapter on Social Welfare for the tenth five-year plan of the Government of Tamil Nadu. Today, Kalpana is leading an effort to consolidate Hand in Hand’s microfinance institutions into a registered company.

Prior to joining Hand in Hand, Kalpana served as Monitoring and Evaluation Officer for the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), assisting the Tamil Nadu Women’s Development Project (Mahalir Thittam). She also worked as Research Associate at the Manonmaniam Sundaranar University. She has functioned as a consultant on gender and microfinance issues to such organizations as: UNDP, UNOPS, Christian-Aid, and Wetlands International. She is currently acting as Adviser to the Government of South Africa’s microfinance program.

S. Gurumurthy

Swaminathan Gurumurthy is a well-known Chartered Accountant and a leading corporate advisor in India. He became the friend, guide and philosopher of the redoubtable Ramnath Goenka and the Indian Express when he was 27.

Gurumurthy’s association with the Indian Express and the newspaper’s campaign against corporate misdeeds and corruption at high places in mid and late 1980s brought out the investigative journalist hidden in him. Hamish McDonald, a well known Australian journalist, says in his book “The Polyester Baron”, Gurumurthy’s investigative writing ‘must rank among the most powerful examples of investigative journalism anywhere in the world’.

Gurumurthy’s unconventional economic thinking, his influence over corporate India, and his association with the RSS added more power to his already powerful personality. He has mediated and solved many corporate family issues and has also brought about amicable solutions to one of the biggest corporate issues, namely between Grasim and L&T. He was repeatedly rated among 50 most powerful persons in India in 1990 [Gentleman Magazine]; as the 8th most powerful [Business Baron Magazine 2004]; as the 17th most powerful [India Today Magazine in 2005]. But Gurumurthy never derived his power from any formal position he occupied in the government or in any organisation. His influence rested on the status he enjoyed as a person and as a writer of integrity and courage. Hamish McDonald also says in his book that Gurumurthy had ‘a strong sense of probity’.

Along with his team of professionals and academics Gurumurthy has studied over 25 community-driven industrial clusters in different parts of the country. He regularly contributes columns in leading newspapers like the Hindu Business Line, the New Indian Express and others on issues of critical importance to the society and the country.

T.K. Vadivel Pillai

TK Vadivel Pillai is a professional entertainer, who has starred in very highly acclaimed magic serials on television, namely ‘Choo-Mantra Kaali’, ‘It’s Magic’ & ‘Mayajalam’.

He is a man whose purpose in life is to inspire people to their greatness, through his clarity of mind and sensitivity to their needs.

He now travels widely all over the world dazzling audience with his variety show, which consists of slick magical entertainment for the corporates along with an exquisite art form, which now features in his act, known as Hand Shadow Play. His show always brings loud cheers and applause from the audience.

He can engross and amaze people of any age group through his unique brew of jaw-dropping magic and eye-popping shadow play. The show is full of jokes, gags and audience participation, which makes it all the more interesting.

Vadivel Pillai’s show is absolutely perfect when you need something for those special VIPs. If you are looking for entertainment that will have your guests talking for weeks, then your search ends here.

Vadivel Pillai is a Member of the International Brotherhood of Magicians, USA; Society of American Magicians, USA & Supreme Magicians Club, UK.

He is a certified Master Practitioner of NLP (Neuro Linguistic Programming) from one of the leading NLP institutes in the USA (NFNLP); Master Hypnotist and certified practitioner of Advance Hypnotic Techniques and Modalities from CHI, California. He is also the erstwhile visiting faculty for ‘Personality Development’ at the prestigious Fashion School of Chennai-NIFT (National Institute of Fashion Technology).

Contact:

rajeevm1989@gmail.com

Website:

http://www.srmuniv.ac.in/events.php?page=tedxsrm

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