A University of Arizona engineering professor with "an idea worth sharing" is the featured speaker for a new event in Tucson.

The hugely popular TED series has generated a number of spinoff events around the country, including one in Tucson on Friday, Dec. 3. TED – the acronym for technology, entertainment, design – features a range of experts lecturing on various subjects in a video-conferencing format. The series has received wide acclaim and is viewed by millions on the Internet.

Local organizers have formed TEDxTucson 2010 around a theme of innovative green development. The first speaker is Kimberly Ogden, a professor of chemical and environmental engineering at the UA.

Odgen's talk will center on the growing interest in generating biofuels from algae. She is the UA's principal investigator for the National Alliance for Advanced Biofuels and Bioproducts. That group in the UA Arizona Research Laboratories has $49 million from the U.S. Department of Energy for algae-based biofuels and bioproducts research and development.

She also runs a $2.7 million National Science Foundation grant that pairs UA engineering graduate students with local classroom teachers to give students a better understanding of how engineering plays a role in their lives.

The TEDxTucson 2010 event is Friday, Dec. 3, at 5:30 p.m. at the Rialto Theater, 318 E. Congress Street. Tickets are $10.

More on Kim Ogden's TEDx lecture is online at the UA College of Engineering's website, Arizona Engineering online.