Dr. Becerik-Gerber’s research focuses on automation in collecting and analyzing the data needed for complex built environments and formalizing systematic processes for representing and visualizing data and information to improve sustainability, and maintainability. Burcin graduated from Istanbul Technical University with a Bachelor of Architecture (1999) and from University of California at Berkeley with an M.S. in Civil and Environmental Engineering (2002). After graduating from Harvard University with a Doctor of Design (2006) degree in the area of Project Management and Information Systems
... Read more
Qixin Chen is a research associate in the Department of Electrical Engineering at Tsinghua University in China. He worked as a research assistant at the University of Manchester in 2008 and received his PhD from Tsinghua University in 2010. His research interests include low-carbon electricity technology, electric load forecasting, and power system operation and planning. He has published about 30 papers and received three patents in the last three years and was granted two provincial/ministerial science and technology awards by the Chinese government for his contributions on decarbonization of
... Read moreSarbajit Banerjee is an associate professor of chemistry at the University at Buffalo. He is a graduate of St. Stephen’s College and SUNY Stony Brook and was a postdoctoral researcher at Columbia University before starting his independent career at UB. Sarbajit is particularly interested in exploring the influence of finite size on strongly correlated systems and in the design and fabrication of multifunctional nanostructured thin films. He was awarded a National Science Foundation CAREER award in 2009, the American Chemical Society ExxonMobil Solid-State Chemistry Fellowship in 2010, and the
... Read moreWilliam Chueh is an Assistant Professor in the Materials Science & Engineering department and a Center Fellow of the Precourt Institute of Energy at Stanford University. He leads a group of students and researchers developing efficient electrochemical routes for converting solar energy to chemical fuels and subsequently to electricity. Snapshots of never-before-seen dynamics in energy conversion devices lead to new insights into the design of functional materials with novel compositions and structures, such as those for water-splitting membranes, fuel cells, and metal-air batteries.
...Anant Agarwal is the President of edX, an online learning initiative of Harvard and MIT. He has served as the director of CSAIL, MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, and is a professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at MIT. Agarwal holds a Ph.D. from Stanford and a bachelor's from IIT Madras. Agarwal won the Maurice Wilkes prize for computer architecture, and MIT’s Smullin and Jamieson prizes for teaching. He holds a Guinness World Record for the largest microphone array based on Raw, and is an author of the textbook “Foundations of Analog and Digital
... Read moreMandar Apte works in Shell’s global GameChanger team, an innovation program that invests in people in or outside of Shell to help mature their breakthrough energy ideas to proof of concept. Mandar has a MS in Petroleum Engineering from Univ. of Tulsa and has been in Shell since 1999 where he has done various roles in chemical engineering, R&D, technology strategy before joining GameChanger. Mandar volunteers his time as a faculty member for the International Association for Human Values and teaches meditation based leadership programs to veterans, high school youth and MBA programs. He was r
... Read moreEytan Bakshy is a researcher on the Data Science team at Facebook. His work broadly examines information diffusion and influence in online networks through the use of large-scale field experiments and observational studies. His current interests include causality in social networks, political media consumption, and information distribution. Before Facebook, Bakshy conducted research on quantifying influence on Twitter at Yahoo! Research, and the diffusion of user-created content on Second Life at the University of Michigan. He holds a Ph.D. in Information from the University of Michigan
... Read moreWilliam Banholzer is an Executive VP at Dow responsible for Venture Capital, New Business Development, Licensing and is the company’s Chief Technology Officer. As CTO, he manages Dow’s $1.7 B per year global research and development portfolio. He chairs Dow’s Innovation Committee, which controls venture capital investing for the company. He serves on the board of Dow Corning, Dow Kokam, and the Dow Foundation, and on Dow AgroSciences members committee. He is a member of the National Academy of Engineering and on the NRC Board on Energy and Environmental Systems.
...Alexis Borisy is a successful biotechnology entrepreneur with more than 20 years of experience building and operating innovative science-based organizations. Mr. Borisy joined the life sciences venture capital firm Third Rock Ventures in 2009 to focus on the formation of new companies. He co-founded Foundation Medicine and served as the company’s first CEO and currently as its Chairman, co-founded Blueprint Medicines, and launched and is serving as interim CEO of Warp Drive Bio. Prior to joining Third Rock Ventures, Mr. Borisy founded CombinatoRx in 2000, serving as its Chief Executive Officer
... Read moreA mathematics undergraduate in his native Australia, Rodney received a Ph.D. in Computer Science from Stanford in 1981. From 1984 to 2010, he was on the MIT faculty, and completed his service as the Panasonic Professor of Robotics. He was also the founding Director of the Institute's Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, and served in that role until 2007. In 1990, he co-founded iRobot (NASDAQ: IRBT), where he served variously as CTO, Chairman and board member until 2011. Rodney has been honored by election to the National Academy of Engineering, and has been elected
... Read moreDr. Idit Harel Caperton is an Israeli-American entrepreneur, innovator and futurist of global learning systems. She is founder and president of the World Wide Workshop, building visionary global platforms for learning. The Workshop’s flagship product, Globaloria, teaches students digital literacies, STEM & Computing knowledge and global citizenship through game design. As a student at Harvard Graduate School of Education & MIT Media Lab, Idit pursued pioneering R&D work in computation, cognition and education. Her MIT spinoff startup, MaMaMedia, was a groundbreaking creative platform for k
... Read moreJoe Coray is the Vice President, The Hartford's Technology & Life Science Practice and the Marine Practice. In this capacity, he is responsible for all execution activities of the group, including overseeing field sales, underwriting and strategy for the practice, including Life Sciences & Medical Technology. Combining Middle Market, Small Commercial and Professional Liability, the Technology Practice has over $400 Million in written premiums and is growing as an industry vertical and leader in insurance and risk management for technology and life science companies. The Marine Practice focuses
... Read moreAs Executive Vice President, Emerging Technology, Warner Bros. Home Entertainment Group, Charles L. Dages is responsible for identifying new transformational technologies for Warner Bros. and applying them to improve, reinvent or create new methods of production and distribution of the Studio's content, including feature films, television programming and video games. He is also responsible for identifying new business opportunities these technologies provide for Warner Bros. as well as evaluating tactical and strategic applications for inventing content for new consumer platforms, including digital
... Read moreMatt Desch is chief executive officer of Iridium Communications, the only satellite communications company that offers truly global voice and data coverage. He has been responsible for leading Iridium’s innovation and growth, taking the company public on NASDAQ and preparing for the launch of Iridium NEXT, Iridium’s next-generation satellite constellation. President Barack Obama appointed him to the National Security Telecommunications Advisory Committee, and he serves on the board of trustees of the Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association
Mircea Dinca was born in Romania in 1980 and graduated with bachelor's and Ph.D. degrees in Chemistry from Princeton University and University of California, Berkeley in 2003 and 2008, respectively. After studying new means of storing hydrogen for mobile applications in graduate school, he expanded his interest in energy research at MIT, first in water oxidation catalysis as a postdoctoral scholar, and recently in the synthesis of novel catalysts and ordered, high-surface area electronic materials for energy capture and storage, in his current position of Assistant Professor of Chemistry.
... Read moreKen Endo is an associate researcher at Sony Computer Science Laboratories, Inc. focusing on human physical augmentation with robotic technology. In 2005, He started to work on human biomechanics and development of transtibial prosthesis at Biomechatronics group, MIT Media Lab, and obtained Ph.D in 2012. He is also in charge of a course, Developing World Prosthetics to develop orthopedic devices for developing countries as an instructor of MIT D-lab. He is currently preparing to launch a non-profit, D-Leg to disseminate orthopedic solutions to people in developing countries as well as developed
... Read moreAndrew Fiore studies the social psychology of online communication as a data scientist at Facebook and a lecturer at the UC Berkeley School of Information, where he co-developed and co-teaches the graduate course on Computer-Mediated Communication. Previously, he was a visiting assistant professor at Michigan State University. Fiore has examined relationship formation through online dating, designed and prototyped novel interfaces for online social interaction, and analyzed social judgments in large-scale conversations as a researcher at MIT, Berkeley and Microsoft Research. He holds a Ph.D
... Read moreAbraham Flaxman is an assistant professor of global health at the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) at the University of Washington, where he is the research lead for the computational algorithms research team. The primary architect of a software tool known as DisMod-MR that IHME is using to estimate the global burden of disease, he earned his PhD in algorithms, combinatorics, and optimization from Carnegie Mellon University in 2006. Before joining IHME, he was a postdoctoral fellow at Microsoft Research.
Shane Green is President and CEO of Personal and has been building and leading startups since the early 1990s. In 2009, Shane co-founded Personal, a company that gives individuals the tools to create a private, personal network with trusted individuals, companies and organizations in their lives. Built on a secure data vault, Personal’s platform allows individuals to organize, search, and control access to their digital information and online identity.
Matt Grob is executive vice president and chief technology officer for Qualcomm Incorporated. In this role, he is responsible for the oversight of Qualcomm's technical path, the coordination of R&D activities across the company and the development of next-generation wireless technologies. Grob also leads Corporate R&D and provides oversight to Qualcomm Corporate Engineering Services.
Saikat Guha, a researcher at Microsoft Research India, is broadly interested in systems approaches to improving privacy and advertising online. He believes that privacy and profit are not conflicting ideas. His recent projects are focused on safeguarding user privacy in a way that does not disrupt the emerging business models behind the cloud, online social networks, and mobile ecosystems. Saikat received his PhD from Cornell University in 2009 for work on integrating middleboxes into the Internet architecture. He authored the RFC that now serves as the best practice for building TCP support in
... Read moreChris Harrison is a Ph.D. candidate in the Human-Computer Interaction Institute at Carnegie Mellon University. He broadly investigates novel sensing technologies and interaction techniques, especially those that enable people to interact with small devices in big ways. Harrison is also focused on an emergent shift in computing: from mobile devices we carry to using the human body itself as an interactive platform, bringing computational power ever closer to users. With this evolution comes significant new challenges in sensing and interaction design. Over the past six years, Harrison has worked
... Read moreSteve Herrod is the Chief Technology Officer and SVP of R&D at VMware, driving the company's broad technology strategy, working with VMware’s engineering teams towards continued delivery of innovative products. Steve provides leadership around technology collaborations between engineering, partners, and customers. He also plays an integral role in VMware's acquisition strategy, serves on the EMC Technical Advisory Board and as chairman of VMware's InnoLabs board. Steve was named CTO of the Year by InfoWorld in 2009. At Stanford University, Steve worked with VMware's founders on the core research
... Read moreDave Icke joined mc10 as CEO in March 2009. Before joining mc10, Dave spent almost twenty years in the semiconductor industry in marketing, process and product development, applications, and general management roles with Cypress Semiconductor, KLA-Tencor, and Teradyne. While at Teradyne, a leading supplier of automated test equipment, Dave ran the Wireless and Consumer Business Units within the Semiconductor Test Division, with responsibility for annual sales of up to $500M. Before Teradyne, Dave held a series of customer-focused roles over eleven years with KLA-Tencor, the leading supplier
... Read moreIncoming Media Lab director Joi Ito is a leading thinker and writer on innovation, global technology policy, and the role of the Internet in transforming society in substantial and positive ways. A vocal advocate of emergent democracy, privacy, and Internet freedom, Ito is board chair (and former CEO) of Creative Commons and sits on the boards of the New York Time Company, The MacArthur Foundation, The Knight Foundation, the Mozilla Foundation, and Witness. In Japan, he was a founder of Digital Garage and helped establish and later became CEO of the country’s first commercial Internet service
... Read moreDavid Keith has worked near the interface between climate science, energy technology and public policy for twenty years. He took first prize in Canada's national physics prize exam, won MIT's prize for excellence in experimental physics, and was listed as one of TIME magazine's Heroes of the Environment 2009. David’s academic appointments are at Harvard where he serves as the Gordon McKay Professor of Applied Physics in the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS) and Professor of Public Policy at the Harvard Kennedy School. David divides his time between Boston and Calgary where he
... Read moreBryan Laulicht is a postdoctoral associate in the laboratory of Institute Professor Robert Langer at the Harvard-MIT Division of Health Sciences & Technology. He also holds appointments at Harvard Medical School and at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in the laboratory of Professor Jeffrey Karp. He received a bachelor’s degree in biophysics from Columbia University, where he was an I.I. Rabi Science Research Scholar, and a PhD in medical science from Brown University, where he worked with professors Edith Mathiowitz and Anubhav Tripathi. For his PhD work, Bryan received the Joukowsky Outstanding
... Read moreLawrence Lessig is the Director of the Edmond J. Safra Foundation Center for Ethics at Harvard University, and a Professor of Law at Harvard Law School. Prior to returning to Harvard, Lessig was a Professor of Law at Stanford Law School (where he was founder of Stanford's Center for Internet and Society), Harvard Law School (1997-2000), and the University of Chicago Law School. Lessig clerked for Judge Richard Posner on the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals and Justice Antonin Scalia on the United States Supreme Court.
... Read moreNanshu Lu received her bachelor’s degree in solid mechanics from Tsinghua University in 2005 and her PhD in mechanics of materials from Harvard University in 2009. She then became a Beckman Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Dr. Lu joined the Department of Aerospace Engineering and Engineering Mechanics at the University of Texas at Austin as an assistant professor in August 2011. Her research focuses on the mechanics of flexible electronics, including thin-film mechanics, contact mechanics, configurational design, and biointegration. Her research has been
... Read moreAs chief executive officer of the Industry Sector in North America, Helmuth Ludwig is responsible for all business activity and executive management of the Siemens Industry Sector business in the United States, Canada, Mexico and Central America. In his 20 years with Siemens, Helmuth has held a broad range of strategic leadership positions.
Shishir joined Google in 2008 and oversees YouTube's product management team; responsible for ensuring the top rated video property delights viewers, provides a global distribution network for content producers, and generates meaningful revenues from advertisers. Since Shishir joined, revenue for our content partners has doubled every year, YouTube currently receives over 60 hours of content every minute from uploaders, and YouTube’s viewership now reaches hundreds of millions of viewers, placing it as one of the top web properties on the internet. Prior to joining Google, Shishir spent 6 years
... Read moreKen Morse was a co-founder of six high-tech companies; five had successful IPOs or mergers; one was a disaster. They included 3Com Corporation, Aspen Technology, Inc., a China trade company, a biotech venture, and an expert systems company. Ken was either the CEO or responsible for part or all of the sales organization in each of these new enterprises. In the thirteen years (1996 – 2009) that Ken served as Founding Managing Director of the MIT Entrepreneurship Center, the number of students taking entrepreneurship courses increased from 220 to 1,600 per year while the number of prof
... Read moreNathan Myhrvold founded Intellectual Ventures after retiring from his position as chief strategist and chief technology officer of Microsoft Corporation. At Intellectual Ventures, Myhrvold is focused on a variety of business interests relating to the funding, creation and commercialization of inventions. During his 14-year tenure at Microsoft, Dr. Myhrvold held various positions within the company and was responsible for founding Microsoft Research and numerous technology groups that resulted in many of Microsoft's most successful products. He has extensive experience successfully linking research
... Read moreNicholas Negroponte is founder and chairman of the One Laptop per Child non-profit association. He was co-founder and director of the MIT Media Lab, and the Jerome B. Wiesner Professor of Media Technology. A graduate of MIT, Negroponte was a pioneer in the field of computer-aided design, and has been a member of the MIT faculty since 1966. Conceived in 1980, the Media Lab opened its doors in 1985. He is also author of the 1995 best seller, Being Digital, which has been translated into more than 40 languages. In the private sector, Negroponte served on the board of directors for Motorola, Inc. and
... Read moreBefore starting Lytro, Ren was on the fast path to fulfilling his childhood dream of becoming a professor. In fact, his seminal Ph.D. research on light field technology earned the field’s top honor, the ACM Doctoral Dissertation Award for best thesis in computer science and engineering, as well as Stanford University’s Arthur Samuel Award for Best Ph.D. Dissertation. The entrepreneurial spark came when Ren purchased his first DSLR camera and saw the potential to apply light field technology to capture pictures in addition to image generation. As a result, instead of continuing on a
... Read moreChris Norris is President and CEO at Alta Devices. He joined the company in 2008 at its founding when he realized the potential of Alta’s technology to change the way energy is generated from the sun. Since that time, Alta has raised over $100 million in financing and set world records for both cell and module efficiency based on its flexible solar cell technology. Chris was previously the CEO of MicroDisplay and a Venture Partner at the investment firm Blue Run Ventures. Before joining Alta, Chris spent much of his career in the semiconductor industry, first at Intel and then later at
... Read moreJuan Sebastian Osorio-Valencia is a Biomedical Engineer from Antioquia School of Engineering (EIA) and CES University (2009). He was born in Medellín, Colombia. His academic research experience include projects in the fields of bioinstrumentation and signal processing, mainly in design and development of medical devices for Neonatal Care Units. He is very interested in data fusion techniques and personalized medicine. He was an academic visitor at the University of Oxford (2008), a visiting engineer at the Laboratory for Computational Physiology (Harvard-MIT HST, 2010), a research engineer at
... Read moreFleur Pellerin was born in Seoul, South Korea in 1973. She is a graduate of the ESSEC business school, Paris's Institut d’études politiques, and the ENA (National School of Administration). She is a former public auditor to the Cour des comptes (Government Audit Office). In addition to her other duties, she served in Iraq, New York and Geneva as an external auditor to the United Nations between 2001 and 2007. In 2007, she was appointed rapporteur to the Committee on Professional Conduct in the State Civil Service (2008–2009). In May of 2012, she was named Minister Delegate with responsibi
... Read moreJoyce Poon is an assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering at the University of Toronto and the Canada Research Chair in Integrated Photonic Devices. She obtained a PhD in electrical engineering from Caltech in 2007 and a BASc in engineering science (physics option) from the University of Toronto in 2002. She is the recipient of an IBM Faculty Award (2010, 2011), an Ontario Ministry of Research and Innovation Early Researcher Award (2009), a NSERC University Faculty Award (2008), and the Clauser Doctoral Thesis Prize from Caltech (2007). Her group conducts research in micro-
... Read moreDr. Hossein Rahnama is the Founder and CEO of Flybits and the Director of Research and Innovation at Ryerson Digital Media Zone. His current work is focused on Context Aware Computing, Mobile Sensing and Opportunistic Social Networks. He is the author of several publications and patents in Ubiquitous Computing. He believes that Context Aware Computing can play a key role in connecting people and places to possibilities and as a result transforming societies in substantial and positive ways. Hossein is appointed as an ambassador for Privacy by Design by the Ontario High Commissioner for Information
... Read moreHeidi Rehm, Ph.D. was recruited in 2001 to build the Laboratory for Molecular Medicine at PCPGM and serves as its Laboratory Director. She is a board-certified clinical molecular geneticist and Assistant Professor of Pathology at Harvard Medical School with appointments at BWH, MGH and Children’s Hospital Boston. Her undergraduate degree is from Middlebury College, her graduate degree in Genetics is from Harvard University and her postdoctoral and fellowship training was at HMS. Heidi has served as the Director of the ABMG Clinical Molecular Genetics Training Program at HMS since 2006
... Read moreChristopher Soghoian is a privacy researcher and activist working at the intersection of technology, law, and policy. He is a principal technologist at the American Civil Liberties Union and a visiting fellow at Yale Law School’s Information Society Project. He was previously the first in-house technologist at the Federal Trade Commission, where he worked on investigations of Facebook and Twitter. He also co-created the Do Not Track privacy mechanism embraced by the major Web browsers. Soghoian’s PhD work, which he completed at Indiana University in 2012, examines the role of third-party communications
... Read morePratheev Sreetharan was born in San Diego, California and spent his childhood in Bethesda, Maryland. He attended Harvard University in Cambridge, MA, receiving an A.B. in Physics in 2006. Afterwards, as a research physicist at ThermoFisher Scientific, he earned several patents on hand-held analytical instrumentation concerning x-ray fluorescence and optical emission spectroscopy. He returned to Harvard in 2008, receiving A.M. (2011) and Ph.D. (2012) degrees in Applied Physics investigating insect-scale flapping-wing flight control and developing novel millimeter-scale manufacturing processes.
... Read moreTony co-founded Lift on the idea that positive reinforcement and community support could be deployed universally to help people achieve their goals. In it's first month after launch, Lift has helped 100,000 people achieve 10,000 different goals.
Leila Takayama is a research scientist and manager for human-robot interaction at Willow Garage, a robotics R&D company. With a background in cognitive science, psychology, and human-computer interaction, she studies how human beings perceive, understand, feel about, and interact with robots.
Dr. Takayama completed her PhD at Stanford University in 2008. She currently serves on the World Economic Forum’s global agenda council on robotics and smart devices. She seeks ways to make personal robots useful in our everyday lives by harnessing people’s natural responses to robots and collaborati
... Read moreBozhi Tian received BS and MS degrees in chemistry from Fudan University in Shanghai, China, and AM and PhD degrees in physical chemistry from Harvard University in 2010. His PhD research with Professor Charles Lieber involved such areas as synthesis of new nanowire materials, the fundamental study of high-performance nanowire photovoltaics, and the application of novel nanowire devices in cells and tissue. He worked with professors Daniel Kohane and Robert Langer as a postdoctoral scholar in tissue engineering and regenerative medicine. He is currently an assistant professor in physical chemistry
... Read moreSophie Vandebroek is chief technology officer for Xerox and president of the Xerox Innovation Group. She is responsible for overseeing Xerox’s research centers in Europe, Asia, Canada, and the U.S. as well as the Palo Alto Research Center (PARC). She is a fellow of the Institute of Electrical & Electronics Engineers, a Fulbright fellow, and a fellow of the Belgian-American Educational Foundation. She holds 12 U.S. patents. In 2011 she was inducted into the Women in Technology International Hall of Fame and elected to the Royal Flemish Academy for Arts & Science.
Andreas Velten is an associate scientist at the Morgridge Institute for Research at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, and a member of the Camera Culture Group at the MIT Media Lab. He obtained his doctorate in physics in the group of Professor Jean-Claude Diels at the University of New Mexico, where he designed lasers for ultrasensitive phase measurements.
Dr. Velten’s research aims to develop new and improved scientific tools through innovation in signal processing, computational imaging, and ultrafast optics. In his limited free time, he enjoys hiking, sailing, and vocal performance.
... Read moreZheng Wang is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Electrical & Computer Engineering of the University of Texas at Austin. He received his BS degree in Physics in 2000 from University of Science and Technology of China (USTC), and his Ph.D. degree in Applied Physics from Stanford University in 2006. During his PhD, he focused on developing integrated photonic crystal devices for optical information processing. From 2006 to 2012, he worked as a postdoc associate and subsequently a research scientist at MIT. He pioneered topological photonic devices at microwave frequencies, and builds
... Read moreBrian is Managing Director at Institute of Play, where he is responsible structuring operations and for the cultivation of key strategic relationships. For over fifteen years, as a futurist and strategy, communications and management consultant, Brian has helped top organizations identify emerging opportunities, develop new visions and realize new possibilities within existing structures. Organizations Brian has worked with include Unilever, PepsiCo, Philips, Fidelity Investments, Johnson & Johnson, Vanity Fair, Deepak Chopra and The Grace Foundation. Brian is a skilled facilitator specializing
... Read moreDuncan Watts is a principal researcher at Microsoft Research and a founding member of the MSR-NYC lab. From 2000-2007, he was a professor of Sociology at Columbia University, and then, prior to joining Microsoft, a principal research scientist at Yahoo! Research, where he directed the Human Social Dynamics group . He has also served on the external faculty of the Santa Fe Institute and is currently a visiting fellow at Columbia University and at Nuffield College, Oxford.
Dr. Zhao completed his BSc and MSc degrees in Chemistry at Shandong University (China) where he studied polymer, surface and colloidal chemistry. Dr. Zhao then obtained his PhD in Chemistry at McMaster University (Canada) in 2008. During 2008-2011, Dr. Zhao was a Human Frontier Science Program (HFSP) Postdoctoral Fellow at Harvard Medical School, Brigham and Women’s Hospital and MIT. His research focused on the development of novel molecular, nano- and micro-engineered tools for stem cell therapy and regenerative medicine, diagnosis and in vivo imaging, and elucidating stem cell and cancer
... Read more