Download the new know speaker biographies

THE NEW KNOW SPEAKER BIOGRAPHIES
Dr. Anant Agarwal, President
edX
11 Cambridge Center, Suite 101, Cambridge, MA 02142
+1 617.324.9749 • [email protected] • @agarwaledu, @edXOnline
In addition to his duties at edX, Dr. Anant Agarwal is a professor of Electrical Engineering and
Computer Science at MIT. Previously, Dr. Agarwal served as the director of MIT’s Computer
Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory. edX is a worldwide, online learning initiative from
MIT and Harvard University. Anant taught the first exX course, which drew 155,000 students
from 162 countries. He is also a founder of Tilera Corporation, which created the Tile multicore
processor. Anant led the development of Raw, an early tiled multicore processor, Sparcle, an
early multi-threaded microprocessor, and Alewife, a scalable multiprocessor. He also led the
VirtualWires project at MIT and was the founder of Virtual Machine Works. Anant won the 2001 Maurice Wilkes
Award for computer architecture and MIT’s Smullin and Jamieson prizes for teaching. He holds a Guinness World
Record for the largest microphone array, and is an author of Foundations of Analog and Digital Electronic Circuits.
His work on organic computing was selected by Scientific American as one of 10 World Changing Ideas in 2011,
and in 2012, he was named one of 12 Bostonians changing the world by Boston Globe magazine. In his spare
time, Anant hacks on WebSim, a web-based circuits laboratory.
Mr. Nolan Bushnell, Chief Executive Officer
BrainRush
710 Wilshire Boulevard, Suite 500, Santa Monica, CA 90401
[email protected] • @NolanBushnell
Mr. Nolan Bushnell is a technology pioneer, entrepreneur, and scientist. Often cited as the
father of the video game industry, Mr. Bushnell is best known as the founder of Atari
Corporation and Chuck E. Cheese Pizza Time Theater. Over the past four decades, Nolan also
founded Catalyst Technologies, the first technology incubator; Etak, the first car navigation
system whose mapping is still the basis for car navigation systems today; Androbot, a personal
robotics company; and ByVideo, the first online ordering system to allow customers to order
and pay for products from kiosks. Currently, he is devoting his talents to transforming education
by taking the science of learning and adding the power of games. The BrainRush team is comprised of
professionals with deep experience in education, technology, games, and media. Nolan has garnered many
accolades and distinctions: he was inducted into the Video Game Hall of Fame and the Consumer Electronics
Association Hall of Fame, and, in 2010, was named one of Newsweek magazine’s “50 Men That Changed
America.” He is also highlighted as one of Silicon Valley’s entrepreneurial icons in “The Revolutionaries” display at
the Tech Museum of Innovation in San Jose, California. In 2009, Nolan was honored with the British Academy of
Film and Television Arts Fellowship Award, the highest accolade the Academy bestows, for his outstanding creative
contribution to the video game industry.
741 Tenth Street, Santa Monica, CA 90402 USA
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T: +1 310.394.8305
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F: +1 310.451.2104
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ttivanguard.com
Dr. William Byers, Professor Emeritus
Department of Mathematics and Statistics, Concordia University
1455 De Maisonneuve Boulevard West, S-LB 1030, Montreal, Quebec H3G 1M8, Canada
+1 514.848.2424 • [email protected]
Dr. William Byers recently retired from Concordia University’s Department of Mathematics and
Statistics. While there, Dr. Byers researched dynamical systems, ergodic theory, differential
geometry, and mathematics education. Bill is the author of The Blind Spot: Science and the
Crisis of Uncertainty, in which he argues that mathematics is the most creative of all human
endeavors and that ambiguity, contradiction, and paradox are essential to creating new
mathematics. He also wrote How Mathematicians Think: Using Ambiguity, Contradiction, and
Paradox to Create Mathematics, which was one of the Library Journal’s best science books of
2007.
Ms. Mira Calix, Composer
6 Glemham House, Great Glemham, Saxmundham, Suffolk IP17 1 LP, United Kingdom
+44 79.5875.2703 • [email protected] • @miracalix
Ms. Mira Calix is an award-winning composer, artist, and performer, signed to Warp Records.
Ms. Calix has been commissioned to write new works for the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic, the
Royal Shakespeare Company, the Aldeburgh Festival, The British Film Institute, Opera North,
and The Manchester International Festival, among others. Her earlier music is almost exclusively
electronic in nature; now, she incorporates classical orchestration into her work for installation
pieces, film soundtracks, theatre, and opera. Mira regularly collaborates with artists from other
disciplines. She is currently working on a permanent installation piece for the city of Bath,
followed by a series of live concerts at the Metropolis Music Festival at the Melbourne Recital Centre. In 2012, Mira
created her first sculptural work, “Nothing Is Set In Stone,” which was commissioned by The Mayor of London and
Oxford Contemporary Music in partnership with The Natural History Museum and Exhibition Road Group. Her
collaboration with United Visual Artists on “Chorus,” an installation commissioned by Opera North, received an
Award of Distinction in the Interactive Category at Prix Ars Electronica 2010. In 2009, Mira won a British Composer
Award for her composition, “My Secret Heart.”
Dr. Deborah Estrin, Professor of Computer Science
Cornell Tech
111 Eighth Avenue #302, New York, NY 10011
+1 917.675.4954 • [email protected] • @OpenMHealth
Dr. Deborah Estrin is a pioneer in networked sensing, which uses mobile and wireless systems
to collect and analyze real-time data about the physical world. Dr. Estrin’s work has shown how
the data streaming from networks of such devices as smartphones and cameras can enrich our
understanding and management of complex problems—from personal and public health to
traffic patterns and civic engagement. Deborah spearheaded a groundbreaking internship
program for Los Angeles high school students in mobile technologies and data. She was the
first professor hired for Cornell NYC Tech, the new tech campus being developed on Roosevelt
Island in New York City. Deborah is also a professor of Public Health at Weill Cornell Medical College. She also cofounded the nonprofit startup, Open mHealth. Previously, Deborah was on the faculty at UCLA and was the
founding director of the NSF Center for Embedded Networked Sensing. She is an elected member of the American
Academy of Arts and Sciences and the National Academy of Engineering.
Dr. Brian Kernighan, Professor
Department of Computer Science, Princeton University
262 Washington Road, 311 Computer Science, Princeton, NJ 08854
+1 609.258.2089 • [email protected]
Before joining Princeton, Dr. Brian Kernighan worked at Bell Labs in the group that created the
Unix operating system. Dr. Kernighan is the co-author of several books on computing and
programming, including The C Programming Language, written with Dennis Ritchie. Brian is also
a co-author of the widely used AWK and AMPL programming languages. His latest book, D is
for Digital, explains what a well-informed person should know about computers and
communications. Brian is a member of the National Academy of Engineering.
Dr. Matthew Lieberman, Director
Social Cognitive Neuroscience Laboratory, University of California, Los Angeles
Franz Hall, Los Angeles, CA 90095
+1 310.206.4050 • [email protected] • @social_brains
Dr. Matthew Lieberman’s Lab uses functional magnetic resonance imaging to examine the neural
bases of social cognition and social experience. In particular, Dr. Lieberman examines the neural
bases of emotion regulation, persuasion, social rejection, self-knowledge, theory of mind, and
fairness. While in graduate school, Matthew co-coined the term “social cognitive neuroscience,”
which has become a thriving area of research over the past decade. At UCLA, he holds
professorial appointments in the departments of Psychology, Psychiatry, and Biobehavioral
Sciences. Matthew is the founding editor of Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience and a
consulting editor for Culture and Brain. He has published in such journals as Science, Nature Neuroscience,
American Psychologist, and Psychological Science. Much of his work has been funded by grants from the National
Institute of Mental Health, National Science Foundation, Guggenheim Foundation, and Defense Advanced
Research Projects Agency. Matthew won the UCLA Gold Shield Faculty Prize in 2011, and he is a fellow of both
the Society of Experimental Social Psychology and the Association for Psychological Science. He is the author of
the forthcoming book, Social: Why Our Brains Are Wired to Connect.
Dr. Andrew McAfee, Associate Director and Principal Research Scientist
Center for Digital Business, MIT Sloan School of Management
5 Cambridge Center, NE 25, Cambridge, MA 02142
+1 617.715.4155 • [email protected] • @amcafee
Dr. Andrew McAfee studies the ways that IT affects businesses as a whole. His research
investigates how IT changes the way companies perform, organize themselves, and compete.
Dr. McAfee’s work also investigates how computerization affects competition, society, the
economy, and the workforce. Andrew is the co-author of Race Against the Machine: How the
Digital Revolution is Accelerating Innovation, Driving Productivity, and Irreversibly Transforming
Employment and the Economy. He coined the phrase “Enterprise 2.0” in a spring 2006 Sloan
Management Review article to describe the use of Web 2.0 tools and approaches by business.
Andrew is the author or co-author of more than 100 articles, case studies, and other materials for students and
teachers of technology. He has written columns for the Washington Post, The Financial Times, and Canadian
Manager, and has been a guest on The Charlie Rose Show. Previously, Andrew was a professor at the Harvard
Business School and a fellow at Harvard’s Berkman Center for Internet and Society.
Dr. Vivienne Ming, Chief Scientist
Gild
221 Main Street, Suite 970, San Francisco, CA 94105
+1 510.275.4040 • [email protected] • @neuraltheory
Dr. Vivienne Ming joined Gild in 2012, where she oversees R&D and IP development. Dr. Ming
solves problems in data mining, text analysis, cognitive modeling, and algorithm development.
Gild provides tech-recruiting solutions and evaluates the work of millions of developers so
organizations using Gild’s talent acquisition tools can target the right candidates. Before Gild,
Vivienne founded three companies which focused on unstructured data mining and cognitive
modeling, including Socos, an educational technology and data mining company. She was a
research scientist at the Redwood Center for Theoretical Neuroscience, where she remains a
visiting scholar, and was a junior fellow at Stanford Center for Mind, Brain, and Computation. Vivienne has
developed novel and influential models of human perception and attention, and has been published in numerous
scientific journals, including Nature and Neural Computation.
Dr. David Rothschild, Economist
Microsoft Research
102 Madison Avenue, 12th Floor, New York, NY 10016
+1 973.818.8997 • [email protected] • @DavMicRot
Dr. David Rothschild’s primary body of work is on forecasting and understanding public interest
and sentiment. In addition, Dr. Rothschild examines how the public absorbs information. David
has written extensively, in both the academic and popular press, on polling, prediction markets,
and predictions of upcoming events; most of his popular work has focused on predicting
elections and an economic perspective on public policy. After joining Microsoft in 2012, he has
been building prediction and sentiment models, and organizing novel/experimental polling and
prediction games; this work has appeared on both Bing and Xbox. David is also a fellow at the
Applied Statistics Center at Columbia University, and was previously a post-doctoral economist at Yahoo!
Research. He is also the founder, manager, and author of the website and online laboratory, The Signal at Yahoo!,
which is dedicated to prediction, interest, and sentiment models. In February, 2012, David correctly predicted 50 of
51 Electoral College outcomes in the U.S. Presidential election.
Mr. Marco Tempest, Virtual Magician
Newmagic Communications
636 Broadway, Suite 1002, New York, NY 10012
+1 212.625.1205 • [email protected] • @virtualmagician
Mr. Marco Tempest, a Swiss magician based in New York City, is known for his use of
multimedia magic, interactive technology, and computer graphics in his illusions and
presentations. Mr. Tempest’s combination of computer-generated imagery, quick-cut video,
and enthusiastic stage presence has earned him a place in the pantheon of great illusionists. At
22, Marco won the New York World Cup of Magic, launching him into international prominence.
His award-winning television series, The Virtual Magician, airs in dozens of countries worldwide.
Marco’s company, Newmagic Communications, is a television and multimedia production
company specializing in high-end creative production services and live entertainment events for Fortune 100
companies. He is the winner of the 2009 World Magic Award for Best Contemporary Magic. Marco was a visionary
presenter to the 2009 Seoul Digital Forum and presented the keynote to the X.Days 09 Leadership Conference in
Switzerland.
Mr. Jimmy “Jimbo” Wales, Founder
Wikipedia
@jimmy_wales
Mr. Jimbo Wales is an Internet entrepreneur and a wiki enthusiast. Wikipedia is a multilingual,
web-based, free-content encyclopedia. In 2003, Mr. Wales set up the Wikimedia Foundation to
support Wikipedia and its younger sister projects. Jimbo also founded the for-profit company
Wikia, which hosts various wikis and manages the Wikicites project. As part of his work at
Wikia, he is developing a human-powered search engine, Search Wikia, which will be based on
the same open, transparent, community-driven principles of Wikia and Wikipedia. Jimbo is a
fellow of the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard Law School and he serves on the
board of directors of Socialtext, a provider of wiki technology to businesses and the nonprofit organization Creative
Commons. In the mid-1990s, he founded the search portal Bomis, which sold original content, and in 2000, he
founded the peer-reviewed, open-content encyclopedia Nupedia.com. Jimbo was previously a futures and options
trader and taught at Auburn University and the University of Alabama.
Ms. Pooja Warier, Co-Founder and Director
UnLtd India
26 St. John Baptist Road, 4th Floor, Candelar Building, Mumbai 400 050, India
+91 98.6794.9306 • [email protected] • @poojawarier
Ms. Pooja Warier is a social entrepreneur who has founded or co-founded three ventures in
India. One of these, UnLtd India, is a launchpad for early-stage social entrepreneurs tackling
some of India’s greatest social challenges. It provides seed funding, hands-on support and
high-value connections. Ms. Warier also helped found Bombay Connect, the first collaborative
co-working space in India for individuals with ideas for change. Pooja also founded Jouneys for
Change, which takes leaders and companies on transformative journeys to help them create
greater positive impact in the world. She was recently nominated as a 2013 Young Global
Leader by the World Economic Forum.
Dr. Maryanne Wolf, Director
Center for Reading and Language Research, Tufts University
105 College Avenue, Medford, MA 02155
+1 617.627.3828 • [email protected]
Dr. Maryanne Wolf is a scholar and author who studies the origins of reading and languagelearning. Dr. Wolf’s research interests include reading development and intervention, early
prediction, fluency and naming speed, cross-linguistic studies of reading, the relationship
between entrepreneurial talents and dyslexia, the relationships between components of music
and reading, the role of African-American English dialect use in reading disabilities, the uses of
brain imaging in understanding dyslexia, and most recently, the role of technology in literacy
development for children with no access to schools or teachers around the world. At Tufts,
Maryanne is also a professor in the Eliot-Pearson Department of Child Development and the John DiBiaggio
Professor of Citizenship and Public Service. She is the author of Proust and the Squid and is the editor of Dyslexia,
Fluency, and the Brain. Among her awards for teaching and research are the Distinguished Professor of the Year
award from the Massachusetts Psychological Association, the Teaching Excellence Award from the American
Psychological Association, the Distinguished Researcher Award from Tufts University, and a Fulbright Research
Fellowship award for research on dyslexia in Germany.