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Dr. Poppy Crum: How Humans Will Evolve with Technology
Poppy Crum
Expert in Technology-Driven Innovation & Human Evolution; Stanford University Adjunct Professor; Futurist; Neuroscientist; and Technologist
- Builds innovative, empathetic technologies that leverage human physiology to improve the ways we interact with the world
- Dr. Crum's TED Talk on using advancing technology to empower our collective future has been watched over 1 million times
- Fascinating, fast-paced presentations unlock the ways new technologies will rapidly change how we live — impacting everything from healthcare to retail, defense, and relationships
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Dr. Poppy Crum is a visionary futurist, neuroscientist, and technologist who is at the cutting-edge of developing empathetic technologies that are changing the world and the way we do business. Throughout her career, she has spearheaded innovation at companies that are reshaping our world and leading humanity into the future. As a leader and catalyst for innovation, Dr. Crum combines her experiences as an innovator in various industries — including entertainment, media construction, agriculture, geospatial, healthcare, and consumer technology — to help organizations unlock the opportunities that exist for their businesses at the intersection of technology and human advancement, and advise them on the ways they can solve human problems through tech. Whether at an architectural level or as a facilitator of new ideas and technologies, Dr. Crum builds and leads teams that are creating the future of their industries, and the world. She is highly regarded as a groundbreaking executive and pioneer in her field.
Exclusively represented by Leading Authorities speakers bureau, Dr. Crum leads fast-paced, thought-provoking presentations overflowing with actionable strategies for how any organization can utilize technology to disrupt their industries, achieve their objectives, and realize the next iteration of their business. Dr. Crum’s presentations encourage audiences to consider how technology can improve the collective human experience and communication, as well as products and services offered by specific industries.
A sought-after tech executive, Dr. Crum possesses master-level insights into the present and future of specific industries based on data gleaned from the trends emerging around us. For more than a decade, she was an innovation powerhouse at Dolby Laboratories where she served as the audio, visual, and display juggernaut’s chief scientist. At Dolby, she built technologies that optimally leverage human physiology to enhance and personalize our experiences and the ways we interact with the world through artificial intelligence, machine learning, digital twins, virtual and augmented reality, and other emerging technologies. Following a remarkable tenure that introduced the world to many of the advancements that we’ve since integrated into our daily lives, Dr. Crum left Dolby for a new role as chief technology officer at Trimble, Inc., where she led initiatives to design game-changing products that join the physical and digital worlds for the benefit of humanity and the environment. In 2022, Dr. Crum founded Goby Technologies, a leading tech and strategy consultancy designed to support businesses in new product and platform innovation. Universal Music Group and Google are among the consultancy’s clients.
Concurrent to her roles as a CTO and advisor to organizations across industries, Dr. Crum is an adjunct professor in computer research at Stanford University where she focuses on the human-computer interface with immersive and augmented systems. She is also the author of numerous patents in areas that span augmented sensory systems, content authoring and delivery, methods for personalization of technologies, consumer and industrial device sensing, and algorithmic transformations and optimizations for situational intelligence. Dr. Crum serves as a U.S. representative and vice-chair to the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) and chair of the AI/Advanced Immersive Systems working group where she has helped author various ITU-R standards. She is also a member of the Stanford Research Institute Technical Council and the Consumer Technology Association’s Board. Previously, she was a member of the Defense Science Research Council (DSRC) of DARPA. Prior to joining Dolby, Dr. Crum was research faculty in the Department of Biomedical Engineering at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine.
In addition to being a fellow of the Audio Engineering Society, Dr. Crum is a 2021 recipient of the Hedy Lamarr Award for Innovation in Entertainment and Technology, and a 2018 recipient of the Advanced Imaging Society’s Lumiere Technology Leadership Award. She is also a 2017 recipient of the Consumer Technology Association’s Technology and Standards Achievement Award for strategic and standards development work toward the introduction of over-the-counter hearing aid devices. She was named to Billboard magazine’s 100 most influential female executives in the music industry. Dr. Crum has spoken at SXSW and her TED Talk on empathetic technology has been watched more than one million times.
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Poppy Crum: Technology Knows What You're Feeling | TED
Leading Authorities Speakers Bureau's Future Trends Speakers
Beyond Algorithms: Strategies for Leveraging AI, Data and Emerging Technologies to Solve Human Problems. We’re living in an era where new technologies with the potential to reshape industries and the human experience are being developed seemingly every minute. A renowned expert in tech-driven innovation and human evolution, Dr. Poppy Crum is a champion for emerging technologies, such as generative AI, and the endless possibilities they offer for organizations to develop innovative solutions in support of their business goals, and solve human problems. Not only does Dr. Crum help the companies she advises unlock the opportunities technology offers to them, she also helps them take a step back, consider the holistic impact, and think about the challenges and ethical considerations that are sure to arise when implementing new ideas into their operations and strategies. In this talk, Dr. Crum goes beyond the technical aspects of emerging technologies, such as AI, and delves into the human dimension. In doing so, she challenges groups to think about what their intent is when leveraging new technologies within their organizations, as well as how they can elicit a human response from content that may not always be created by a human. This enlightening presentation will undoubtedly spark conversations and reconfigure the way organizations approach their business strategies. In all of her talks, Dr. Crum shares valuable insights and gripping anecdotes from her experiences as an innovator across a multitude of markets, and can expertly discuss what’s happening now and next in these industries, and more:
- Consumer Technology
- Entertainment
- Media
- Gaming
- Enterprise Communication
- Consumer Healthcare
- Industrial Technology
- Agriculture
- Construction
- Geospatial
- Education
How Your Organization Creates Its Desired Future of Work. As the workplace continues to evolve, we’re left with more questions than answers. How can we leverage technology to enhance collaboration, communication, and meet the needs of employees as we move deeper into hybrid work being the norm? Which tasks will be carried out by humans and which ones will be delegated to machines? What role will artificial intelligence play in creating more equitable workplaces for everyone?
In this talk, futurist and tech-driven innovation expert Dr. Poppy Crum outlines the ways in which technology will impact our work environment and provides forward-looking insights that will set the wheels in motion for leaders to devise custom blueprints for the best-possible future of work within their organizations. Dr. Crum draws from her research and experiences working at the leading edge of human evolution in society and at work to illustrate how empathetic technologies will make our extended workspaces more intelligent and cohesive, enhance understanding and interactions with our teams and customers in new ways, heighten the ability to arrive at innovative solutions to business challenges, and enable us to be more effective and successful in our goals.
Digital Twins: Bridging the Digital and Physical Worlds. Working at the leading edge of tech and human evolution, AI keynote speaker, Dr. Poppy Crum is among the innovators developing the technologies that will reshape business, society, and the human experience for the future. Among the most crucial of these technologies is the digital twin, the dynamic digital representation and AI-driven insights of objects and information in the physical world — including in the home, in the workplace, and in our bodies.
In this fascinating talk, Dr. Crum opens audience members’ eyes to the possibilities presented by the future of digital twins and its innovative human technology integration to optimize various aspects of the ways we live, work, communicate, and do business in every industry — from healthcare and agriculture to manufacturing and construction — showcasing the parallels across industries to understand its big impact. Virtual models, insight-driven data, and a deeper trust in the seamless blending between the physical and digital worlds combine to gather transformational insights on the processes and performances that power our world, our businesses, and ourselves, to create an enhanced and more successful future of human capability, customer satisfaction, and resource optimization. Everything from what we eat, to how we travel, work, sustain our planet, and heal benefit from an intimate dynamic partnership between our physical and digital worlds. The digital twin of the present and future will shape every part of our lives.
Amplifying the Human Experience: How Tech Will Take Us Beyond Our Potential. Among the innovators developing the technologies that are reshaping business and society, Dr. Poppy Crum possesses unparalleled insights into the rapid advancements taking place that are optimizing the human experience and expanding the ways in which we interact with ourselves, each other, and the world beyond anything we’ve ever imagined.
In a stunning presentation packed with visuals and interactive exercises, Dr. Crum ticks through the many ways emerging smart tech will improve our lives in the years to come — from artificial intelligence that automates processes that normally require human input to digital twins that provide data-driven insights so that we can better understand ourselves and the world around us. She paints a picture of a future society where companies better understand how customers experience their individual worlds, where doctors can more quickly diagnose patients, where the human capacity for knowledge is expanded exponentially, and where AI can remove bias from the world. Dr. Crum finds the perfect balance between pragmatism and imaginative as she inspires audiences to embrace the possibilities of technology — driving home the point that it will not replace human experiences, but rather take them to the next level.
Tech Check: Understanding the Tech-Human Dynamic. An expert in technology-driven innovation and human evolution, Dr. Poppy Crum takes audiences through an exploration of tech-driven transformation that is taking place now, as well as breakthroughs that are on the horizon, and explains how they will impact humanity in all facets of life. Dr. Crum leads a session that is equal parts mind-bending and thought-provoking as she shares a comprehensive overview of the technologies that are leading us into the future of business and society and the ones we’re still uncovering more information about. She introduces audiences to the opportunities that tech such as machine learning, sensing, artificial intelligence, virtual and augmented reality, robotics, and digital twins present to any organization or individual, as well as strategies for capitalizing on those opportunities to be at your best at work or in any other endeavor.
As one of the most influential figures in creating the tech that is enabling us to be more resilient, creative, collaborative, and in tune with our health and wellness, Dr. Crum is aptly positioned to address the most-pressing questions at the center of the dynamic between humans and tech, including the democratization of technology, how we legislate around it, the ways we develop personalized, empathetic technologies to support diversity, equity, and inclusion, and what all of this means for your organization and industry.
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