TED2009 Prize winners share their wishes

Running notes from the TED conference in Long Beach, CA.; first posted on www.stltoday.com, my newspaper’s webiste.

The three 2009 TED Prize winners were recognized tonight at the organization’s annual conference, picking up $100,000 awards and revealing their “wishes” to change the world.

In addition to the money, the winners receive an array of volunteer help from TED members, who include some of the world’s richest technology entrepreneurs, leading scholars and scientists. This year’s awards ceremony was streamed lived on the TED website and broadcast in a handful of movie theaters around the world.

The winners and their wishes:

Astronomer Jill Tarter, director of the SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) Institute’s Center for SETI research. Tarter has spent her career looking for signs of sentient life elsewhere in the universe.

Tarter/Photo by TED

She led a decade-long SETI study of 750 star systems, using telescopes around the world. She is on the management board of the Allen Telescope Array, a massive instrument that will be able to increase the speed and spectral range of the hunt for signals of distant technologies that would signal the presence of other intelligent life.

Tarter asked the TED community to help her “empower Earthlings everywhere to become active participants in the ultimate search for cosmic company.” She said she intends to use the prize money on efforts to engage and education young people and asked for help with new technologies to aid her search.

Deep ocean explore Sylvia Earle, who has led more than 50 expeditions around the world and was captain of the first all-female team to live underwater. She helped develop undersea vehicles that enable scientists to work at depths that were previously impossible.

In the 1990s, Earle was chief scientist at the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration. She is currently explorer-in-residence at the National Geographic Society.

Earle/Photo by TED

Earle was introduced by former vice president Al Gore, who praised her efforts to educate people about the affect climate change is having on the oceans.

Earle asked for help to “ignite public support for a global network of marine protected areas, hope spots large enough to save and restore the ocean.”

Venezuelan economist and musician José Antonio Abreu, who founded a program that has taught classical music to thousands of poor children in his country. Abreu, who is retired, started the program in 1975 with the goal of providing the children an alternative to drugs and crime.

El Sistema — “the system” — is now a national organization with more than 155 children and youth orchestras and 270 music centers. Almost 250,000 Venezuelan children are involved in the programs.

Abreu/Photo by TED

Several participants have gone on to international careers, including Gustavo Dudamel, 28, the new music director of the Los Angeles Philharmonic.

Abreu asked for help create a special training program for 50 young musicians who are committed to developing El Sistema in the United States and other countries.

NOTE: TED, which stands for Technology, Entertainment, Design, is an annual conference that draws some of the world’s leading scholars, scientists and business and technology figures.