RIPE Project Director Steve Long has been announced as a speaker for TED2023: POSSIBILITY, in Vancouver BC later this month.

Long joins other experts, entrepreneurs, and content creators as part of the five-day program that will touch on many different topics in the areas of technology, entertainment, design, science, and global issues facing the world.

“This is an amazing opportunity to highlight the ever-growing number of those starving in the world today and the possible solution of engineering photosynthesis,” said Long, the Ikenberry Endowed University Chair of Crop Sciences and Plant Biology at Illinois’ Carl R. Woese Institute for Genomic Biology.

Long will present his work on hacking photosynthesis to feed the world and tackle climate change. This work is part of the Realizing Increased Photosynthetic Efficiency (RIPE) Project, an international research project that aims to increase global access to food by developing crops that turn the sun’s energy into food more efficiently. 

This innovative work fits the theme of this year’s TED Conference, POSSIBILITY. Organizers of the bi-annual conference, held on the West Coast of North America, hope the meeting will allow attendees the opportunity “explore together a strange and beautiful space called the adjacent possible.” Visionary speakers who “use the power of imagination to make the world bigger, better, more thrilling, more hopeful” were selected.

There is a virtual attendance option and presentation recordings will be made available on the conference website in the months following the event. Long is also affiliated with the Illinois College of Agricultural, Consumer and Environmental Sciences, Center for Advanced Study, Center for Advanced Bioenergy and Bioproducts Innovation, and Department of Bioengineering. His photosynthesis research has been conducted with support from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Foundation for Food & Agriculture Research, U.K. Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office, and most recently, Bill & Melinda Gates Agricultural Innovations.