Discount admissions to Oct. 25 event available for students

Two USF Health scientists and a USF psychologist will be among the eclectic mix of presenters for  TEDx TampaBay 2013, Friday, Oct. 25, at the Palladium Theatre, 253 5th Avenue North, St. Petersburg, FL 33701. The university’s Touch iPad ensemble will perform music across a variety of genres at this year’s conference.

Dominic D’Agostino, PhD, assistant professor of molecular pharmacology & physiology at the USF Health Morsani College of Medicine, will speak about a new method for starving cancer cells as an alternative to chemotherapy, surgery, and radiation.

Csilla Ari, PhD, a research associate at the Morsani College of Medicine’s Department of Molecular Pharmacology & Physiology, will talk about unique features of manta ray brains, experiments on their cognitive abilities, some accidental discoveries and new approaches for their conservation.

From the Department of Psychology at USF-St. Petersburg, Tiffany Cheneville, PhD, affiliated with the USF Health Pediatric and Adolescent HIV Program, will discuss medical decision making among sex workers and other at-risk groups.

And the USF School of Music’s iPad quintet Touch will provide a multimedia experience of sound, light and motion — performing rock, rap and classical music, as well as music composed specifically for the ensemble.

Cancer biologist Dominic D’Agostino, PhD, and neurolobiologist Csilla Ari, PhD, both from the USF Health Morsani College of Medicine, will be among the presenters at TEDx TampaBay 2013.

Founded in 1984 as a series of talks on technology and design, the TED conference has since branched out to feature talks on some of the most profound and important questions of our age.  Its emphasis on the concise and engaging presentation of ideas has helped connect academics and thinkers of all stripes to an eager audience of smart non-specialists. With the  TEDx series of independently organized TED events, TED’s format has reached out to communities across the United States and from Shanghai to Morocco.

Starting in 2012, Tampa Bay joined those ranks, with artists, scholars, and entrepreneurs coming together to share ideas and enrich their community.

Tickets are available online at http://tickets.tedxtampabay.com/.

To encourage students to experience how ideas come to life both in and outside of universities, organizers are offering half off the admission cost for students who enter the coupon code ‘ideas’ on checkout.

TEDxTampaBay is sponsored by The Palladium Theater, Exmo, ThinkTank, The Studio @620, nerdtag.me, Industrial Strength AV, and 83 Degrees Media.

For more on Dr. D’Agostino and Dr. Ari’s intriguing work in the USF Hyperbaric Laboratory, see the recent article “USF Disease Warriors Explore New Use For Research.”