KIEROWNICTWO

Nicholas Negroponte, Chairman

Nicholas is founder and chairman of the One Laptop per Child non-profit association. He is currently on leave from MIT, where he was co-founder and director of the MIT Media Laboratory, and the Jerome B. Wiesner Professor of Media Technology. A graduate of MIT, Nicholas 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 Laboratory 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, Nicholas serves on the board of directors for Motorola, Inc. and as general partner in a venture capital firm specializing in digital technologies for information and entertainment. He has provided start-up funds for more than 40 companies, including Wired magazine.

Antonio Battro, Chief Education Officer

Antonio Battro is both an MD and PhD who specializes in the development of basic cognitive and perceptual processes in children and adolescents. He has introduced computers and communication devices in schools in several countries in South America, as well as promoted the use of computers as digital prostheses for the disabled persons. He is considered a world leader in the new field of neuroeducation, the interaction between mind, brain, and education. Battro is an Argentine national and long standing member of the Pontifical Academy of Sciences.

Walter Bender, President, Software and Content

Walter Bender is former executive director of the Media Lab. After receiving his BA from Harvard University, he joined the Architecture Machine Group at MIT, and received his MS from MIT. Bender was a founding member of the Media Lab. He studies new information technologies, particularly those that affect people directly; much of this research addresses the idea of building upon the interactive styles associated with existing media and extending them into domains where a computer is incorporated into the interaction. He has participated in much of the pioneering research in the field of electronic publishing and personalized, interactive multimedia.

Michail Bletsas, Chief Connectivity Officer

Michail Bletsas was director of computing at the MIT Media Laboratory. He designed and deployed most of the Internet network infrastructure systems at the Media Lab. His research involves experimenting with wireless networks that are implemented using off-the-shelf, low-cost components to provide broadband Internet access to underserved areas. Before joining the Media Lab, he was a systems engineer at Aware, Inc., where he designed and wrote high-performance software libraries for Intel's distributed-memory parallel supercomputers, and was involved in the development of one of the first ADSL Internet-access test beds. He holds a diploma in electrical engineering from Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece and an MS in computer engineering from Boston University.

Robert Fadel, Director of Finance and Operations

Robert Fadel has worked in various administrative positions at MIT for 10 years. For the past two years he served as the Director of Finance at the Media Lab leading its financial, contracts and intellectual property operations. Robert has also been active in organizational development and process improvement. At OLPC Robert is managing the administrative functions, and assisting in strategic planning and relations with partner organizations and governments. He holds a masters degree in Energy and Environmental Policy from Boston University and an MBA from Boston College.

Mark Foster, VP of Engineering/Chief Architect

Mark Foster has joined OLPC as the VP of Engineering/Chief Architect. Mark's first foray into computing was programming the Intel 8008 while in high school, and he's been developing systems ever since. Previously heading portable computers engineering at Apple, DEC, and Zenith, Mark's consistently pushed the leading edge, shipping the first notebook with Ethernet (the Z-Note), the first true subnotebook (the Z-Lite), the thinnest system in the world (the HiNote Ultra), one of the first portable desktop replacement machines (the HiNote Ultra 2000), the first consumer portable (the iBook), and the first high-volume wireless networking product (the AirPort). He holds 27 patents, with an MBA from the University of Notre Dame.

Jim Gettys, Vice President, Software Engineering

Jim Gettys is interested in open-source systems for education on very inexpensive computers. He was previously at HP's Cambridge Research Lab working on the X Window System with Keith Packard, both on desktops and embedded systems such as the HP iPAQ. He helped to start the handhelds.org project and has also contributed to freedesktop.org efforts. Gettys has served on the X.org Foundation board of directors and served until 2004 on the Gnome Foundation board of directors. Gettys worked at W3C from 1995-1999; he is the editor of the HTTP/1.1 specification (now an IETF Draft Standard). He is one of the principle authors of the X Window System, edited the HTTP/1.1 specification for the IETF, and and one of the authors of AF, a network transparent audio server system.

David Cavallo, Director for Central and South America

David Cavallo is the co-head of the Lab's Future of Learning group, which focuses on the design and implementation of new learning environments and on the design of new technologies that will change the way we think about "learning" and "school." Prior to joining the Media Lab, he led the design and implementation of medical informatics at Harvard University Health Services, was a software engineer at Digital Equipment Corporation's Artificial Intelligence Technology Center, founded and led the Advanced Technology group for Digital's Latin American and Caribbean region. Cavallo has advised numerous heads of state and ministries of education on the adoption of advanced technologies for learning and the reform of educational institutions. He received his BS in computer science from Rutgers University, and MS and PhD in media arts and sciences from MIT.

Khaled Hassounah, Director for Middle East and Africa

Khaled's experience has been primarily focused on establishing large-scale, distributed organizations spanning the United States, India, the Middle East, and China. Most recently, Khaled was a founding member of IMlogic, an enterprise instant messaging company, that was acquired by Symantec in early 2006. Khaled was raised in Jordan and holds a Bachelor of Science in Electrical Engineering from the University of Jordan. Khaled is interested in technology solutions for education in developing countries. Khaled assists in establishing the needed relationships with government officials and NGOs, and stimulating the spread of information to the general public about the project and its goals. He also engages with the open source community and content providers, focusing on the benefit of maximizing their contribution to the project and its success. Khaled also helps with content creation and sharing, instant messaging communication, and other deployment infrastructure.

Mary Lou Jepsen,CTO

Mary Lou Jepsen has been has been a pioneer in developing display technologies -- from flat-panel televisions, to holography, to laser displays and day-lighting. She was most recently director of technology development in Intel's Display Division. Previously, she co-founded the MicroDisplay Corporation and served as its CTO. Her recent emphasis has been on single-panel LCOS systems, and her leadership in this area has brought her worldwide recognition as a top innovator in the industry. Jepsen also contributed to several breakthroughs in diffractive optics and holographic display technology, including building the world's first holographic video system, and the largest hologram in the world, one that spanned a city block (in Cologne). Jepsen holds a PhD in optics, a BS in electrical engineering, and a BA in studio art, all from Brown University. She also holds an MS from MIT, where she studied in the Media Lab's Spatial Imaging group.

Charles Kane, Chief Financial Officer

Chuck Kane brings a wealth of experience to OLPC including CFO at RSA Security (recently acquired by EMC), and CFO at Aspen Technology. Prior to joining Aspen Technology, Kane served as president and chief executive officer at Corechange, Inc., an enterprise software company purchased by Open Text, Inc. Kane previously served in executive management roles at Informix Software and Ardent Software; and he held senior financial management positions at Stratus Computer Inc., Prime Computer Inc. and Deloitte and Touche.

Ivan Krstić, Director of Content Systems

Ivan Krstić is a software architect and researcher currently on leave from Harvard University. Prior to joining OLPC, he served as director of research at the Medical Informatics Laboratory at Zagreb Children's Hospital, developing software infrastructure for wide-scale digital healthcare. He's deeply involved in open source and free software, notably as an administrator of the Ubuntu Server Team and co-author of the best-selling Official Ubuntu Book, and specializes in architecture and security of large distributed systems. He has consulted on both matters for some of the largest web sites on the Internet.

DORADCY

Rebecca Allen, Media Artist, Professor, Department of Design | Media Arts, University of California Los Angeles

Rebecca Allen is an internationally recognized artist and designer inspired by the potential of advanced technology. She is a pioneer in 3D computer graphics, human motion simulation, artificial life and augmented reality. Allen recently served as senior research scientist and director of the Liminal Devices group at MIT's Media Lab Europe before returning to UCLA. She was founding chair of her department at UCLA and director of the Intel funded Emergence Project. Previously, Allen was creative director and executive producer at video game company Virgin Interactive; senior researcher at the world-renowned NYIT Computer Graphics Laboratory; and researcher at MIT's Architecture Machine Group. Allen has designed and directed cutting-edge projects for numerous clients including TimeWarner, Island, Mattel, Philips, Nintendo, CBS, NBC, FOX, PBS, Seville World Expo, Apple and DARPA. Her artwork is in the permanent collection of the Whitney Museum and Centre Georges Pompidou. Awards include an Emmy Award for Design.

V. Michael Bove, Jr., Director, Consumer Electronics Laboratory, MIT Media Laboratory

V. Michael Bove, Jr. heads both the Media Lab's Consumer Electronics Laboratory (CELab) and Object-Based Media research group. He is the author or co-author of over 50 journal and conference papers on digital television systems, video processing hardware/software design, multimedia, scene modeling, visual display technologies, and optics. He holds patents on inventions relating to video recording, hardcopy, interactive television, and medical imaging. Bove is on the board of editors of the Journal of the Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers, and associate editor of Optical Engineering. In 2002 he was named a Fellow of the International Society for Optical Engineering. He was a founder of and technical advisor to WatchPoint Media, Inc. Bove holds a BS in electrical engineering, an MS in visual studies, and a PhD in media technology, all from MIT.

Benjamin Mako Hill, Research Assistant, MIT Media Laboratory

Benjamin Mako Hill has worked for more than a decade on Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) projects. He is a developer and leading member of the Debian Project and a member of the founding development team for the Ubuntu project -- an initiative that created a complete, Linux-based operating system that is freely available with both community and professional support. He also focused on building and sustaining the Ubuntu community during its first year. Since then, Hill has worked as a consultant on issues of FOSS development and project management, and for Canonical Ltd. He has published a book and numerous articles on FOSS, and is a frequent speaker at FOSS conferences globally. Hill, who holds a BA from Hampshire College, is currently a research assistant in the Electronic Publishing group at the MIT Media Lab.

Alan Kay

Alan Kay is known for his early work on object-oriented programming and user-interface design. At Xerox PARC, he was one of the key developers of prototypes for networked workstations using Smalltalk, the first fully dynamic, object-oriented programming language; this work influenced the user interface and programming of modern desktop computers. He created the Dynabook, which defined the basics of the laptop and tablet computer, and he is considered the architect of the modern graphical user interface (GUI). Kay worked at Atari, was a fellow at Apple Computer, was a Disney fellow at Walt Disney Imagineering, worked at Applied Minds, and was a senior fellow at Hewlett-Packard. He worked on the Croquet project, an open-source, networked 3-D environment for collaborative work. Kay earned a BS in mathematics and molecular biology from the University of Colorado, and an MS and PhD in computer science from the University of Utah.

Seymour Papert, Professor of Education and Media Technology, Emeritus, MIT Media Laboratory

A mathematician by training, Seymour Papert was a pioneer of artificial intelligence. He is internationally recognized as the seminal thinker regarding computers and pedagogy for children. His collaboration with Jean Piaget at the University of Geneva led him to consider using mathematics to help understand how children can learn and think. In the early 1960s, Papert came to MIT, where, with Marvin Minsky, he founded the Artificial Intelligence Lab and co-authored their seminal work Perceptrons. With former Governor of Maine Angus King, he worked on the Maine Learning Technology Initiative, a program that provided a laptop for every middle-school student in Maine. He is the author of Mindstorms: Children, Computers, and Powerful Ideas; The Children's Machine: Rethinking School in the Age of the Computer; and The Connected Family: Bridging the Digital Generation Gap.

Mitchel Resnick, LEGO Papert Professor of Learning Research, MIT Media Laboratory

Mitchel Resnick explores how new technologies can help people (especially children) learn new things in new ways. His Lifelong Kindergarten research group at the MIT Media Lab has developed a variety of educational tools, including the "programmable bricks" that were the basis for the award-winning LEGO MindStorms robotics construction kit. Resnick co-founded the Computer Clubhouse project, an international network of after-school centers where youth from low-income communities learn to express themselves creatively with new technologies. Resnick's group recently developed a new programming language, "Scratch," which makes it easier for kids to create their own animated stories and interactive art. Resnick earned a BS in physics from Princeton, and an MS and PhD in computer science from MIT. He is the author or co-author of several books, including Turtles, Termites, and Traffic Jams.

Ted Selker, Benesse Career Development Professor of Media Arts and Sciences, MIT Media Laboratory

Ted Selker directs the MIT Media Lab's Context-Aware Computing group, and the Lab's Counter Intelligence/Design Intelligence special interest group, focused on domestic and product design of the future. He is also the MIT director of the Caltech/MIT Voting Technology Project. Before coming to MIT, he was an IBM fellow and directed IBM's User Systems Ergonomics Research Lab. He has served as a consulting professor at Stanford University, taught at Hampshire College, the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, and Brown University, and worked at Xerox PARC and Atari Research Labs. Selker's research has contributed to products ranging from notebook computers to operating systems; his work has resulted in many products (e.g., the TrackPoint in-keyboard pointing device), and numerous patents and papers.

Barry Vercoe, Professor of Media Arts and Sciences, MIT Media Laboratory

Barry Vercoe heads the Media Lab's Music, Mind and Machine group, which has developed structured audio technology capable of delivering the most complex, high-quality digital sounds quickly and at lower bandwidths, without losing quality. This technology has recently been incorporated into MPEG-4, the world's first international standard for sound synthesis. Vercoe is credited with training virtually an entire generation of young composers in computer sound manipulation. He pioneered the creation of synthetic music with the development of the Csound software-synthesis language. Before coming to MIT, Vercoe taught at Oberlin College Conservatory and Yale School of Music. He is author of several languages for digital audio processing, and has hosted numerous workshops for composers and technology at MIT.