Sustainability, Resiliency,
Circularity

Sameera Chukkapalli

Founder and Director, Needlab

Sameera Chukkapalli is the founder and director of Needlab, she was recently selected as an "Obama Leader" by the Obama Foundation. She has designed and implemented human and environment-focused solutions in partnership with UN-Habitat and other City governments on 4 continents. As a maker and social entrepreneur, Sameera enjoys teaching workshops and making sustainable design solutions accessible to all.

Robbie Nock

Director of Entrepreneurship and Professional Practice, Art Center

Robbie Nock is the Director of Entrepreneurship and Professional Practice at ArtCenter College of Design. His background spans media production, new technology, and startup development. At ArtCenter, Robbie produces academic programs and provides strategic services for a global community of creatives, entrepreneurs, educators and investors.

James Newton

Technical Evangelist, Haddington Dynamics, Inc.

James has worked as an Applications Engineer, Microcontroller Firmware Developer, Product Support, and Development Manager for a number of products and companies. He excels at troubleshooting complex systems and providing support to users of all experience levels.

Nandini Ranganathan

Founder, CETI

Nandini Ranganathan Ph.D. is the founder of CETI - A Creative and Emerging Technology Institute (ceti.institute). She creates messy, participatory, interdisciplinary convenings and collaborative creative experiments around social, technological, and environmental challenges. These are the catalysts for imaginative innovations that emerge from the unexpected collisions of people, practices, and ideas.

Andy Lin

Founder and Director, Emerging Tech Lab at Rancho Los Amigos National Rehabilitation Center (www.retl.org)

Andy Lin is the founder and director of the Emerging Tech Lab at Rancho Los Amigos National Rehabilitation Center (RLANRC), with over 25 years of experience of designing, creating, and customizing technology for individuals with disabilities. His primary focus is on the research, development, and application of new and emerging technologies within the disability, assistive tech, and rehabilitation engineering fields.

Janelle Wellons

Spaceflight Operations Engineer at iSpace, inc.

Janelle Wellons graduated with her B.S. in Aerospace Engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and has worked at the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory as an instrument operations systems engineer for over five years. Her role consists of planning, generating, and validating the commands to operate and monitor the health and safety of scientific instruments in-flight on missions.

Rob Ryan-Silva

Director, DAI Maker Lab

Rob Ryan-Silva has more than 25 years of experience working on aid projects in some of the world’s most challenging environments. As Director of DAI’s Maker Lab, he builds hardware, and capacities to build hardware, in support of international development projects around the world.

Todd Medema

Staff Product Manager, Tesla

Deeply passionate about the intersection of making and sustainability, Todd is a Product Manager working on battery energy storage and founder of mkr.house, a community of makers.

Sahrye Cohen

Biologist, Designer, Amped Atelier

Sahrye Cohen is a professional biologist and also a graduate of City College of San Francisco’s Fashion Design Program, specializing in apparel construction. She co-authored the book Make It, Wear It: Wearable Electronics for Makers, Crafters and Cosplayers. In addition to her costume construction and tech fashion work, she collects and restores hand fans.

Hal Rodriguez

Creative Technologist, Amped Atelier

Hal Rodriguez received his master’s degree from New York University’s Interactive Telecommunications Program. He co-authored the book Make It, Wear It: Wearable Electronics for Makers, Crafters and Cosplayers, and enjoys creating creative physical interfaces for algorithmic music.

Shira Epstein

Director of Campus Makerspaces at the University of Massachusetts Amherst

Shira Epstein is the Director of Campus Makerspaces at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. She is also a lecturer in the Electrical & Computer Engineering Department. She works to build the maker culture and resources across the University while also providing mentorship for students projects across disciplines. In addition, she runs the day-to-day operations of the UMass Amherst Makerspace with her staff.

A. Patricio Montalvo

Mechanical and Electrical Engineer | Writer | Cook

A. Patricio Montalvo is a mechanical and electrical engineer at Siemens Monterrey. He is Currently focused on introducing digitalization and automation tools to manufacture electrical protection and transmission devices.

Kathleen McDermott

Industry Assistant Professor of Integrated Design & Media at NYU Tandon

Kathleen McDermott is an interdisciplinary artist with a background in installation, prop-making and sculpture, currently based in Brooklyn, NY. She is currently an Industry Assistant Professor of Integrated Design & Media at NYU Tandon, where her research is centered on wearables, eTextiles, and accessible STEAM education.

Helen Leigh

Head of Community, Crowd Supply

Helen is a creative technologist and author who specializes in music technologies and experimental electronics. She is the author of The Crafty Kid’s Guide to DIY Electronics, as well as a regular hardware column for Make Magazine. Helen is Head of Community at Crowd Supply, a crowdfunding platform for open hardware.

Lucy Du

PhD Candidate Biomechatronics | MIT Mechanical Engineering

Lucy Du is a Mechanical Engineering PhD candidate at MIT, conducting research in robotic prosthetics and former Mechatronics Engineer at NASA JPL. She also competes on Discovery Channel's BattleBots, as well as local combat robotics competitions.

Joshua Vander Hook

Computer Scientist, NIAC Fellow, and Technical Group Supervisor at NASA JPL

Josh believes in building technology that is open, durable, repairable, extensible, and privacy-enabling. During the day, Josh is an AI and robotics researcher at NASA JPL, and has worked on systems for Earth and beyond. On nights and weekends, he hacks hardware, writes open-source tools, and spends time with his family and gaming buddies.

Jacob Lewallen

Principal Engineer, Conservify

Jacob has worked on the engineering teams of a number of hardware startups before joining Conservify in early 2017. At Conservify, Jacob has done field and lab work that requires applying and gaining knowledge to solve engineering problems of all kinds in a variety of exotic places, each with their own unique challenges.

Sirina Nabhan

Systems Engineer, Deep Space Network (DSN)

Sirina Nabhan graduated from the University of California, Riverside with a B.S. in Electrical Engineering in 2017. Today Sirina works as a Systems Engineer for the Deep Space Network (DSN), which enables Missions that visit the moon and beyond to communicate with earth. In her role, Sirina translates project data needs into software architecture in the DSN.

Lenore M. Edman

Co-founder of Evil Mad Scientist Laboratories

Lenore M. Edman is the co-founder of Evil Mad Scientist Laboratories, a hobby electronics and robotics business.

Francesca Rosella

Co-Founder & Chief Creative Officer, Cutecircuit Ltd.

Ryan Genz

CEO, CuteCircuit Ltd.

CuteCircuit’s co-founders, Francesca Rosella and Ryan Genz, come from a heritage of couture in fashion design (Valentino), and Interaction Design and Anthropology respectively. After a decade and a half of innovation, the brand holds a number of patents in the field of wearable technology, such as 3D Spatial Audio, Haptics for Augmented Reality, Interactive Luminous Garments, Multimedia Wearable Telecommunication Devices, and Sensor Enhanced Fabric constructions.

Cat Hebson

Mechanical Engineer, Moog Music

Cat is a mechanical engineer with an affinity for prototyping, building, and working collaboratively. Her experience ranges from developing novel medical devices to engineering humanitarian aid solutions, building up systems of local, distributed manufacturing to increase community resilience in times of crisis. Currently, she works at Moog Music engineering the mechanicals of synthesizers. In designing the instruments, she gets to play in the creative industrial design space while also designing for manufacturability across a wide array of materials and processes.

Cameron Hughes

Designer, Engineer, Artist | Cameron Hughes Studio

Cameron Hughes is a designer and engineer who combines these disciplines to create one of a kind garments.

Jasen Mehta

Lead Industrial Designer, AT&T

Jasen is an experienced Industrial Designer with a history developing hardware from concept design through tooling and to market launch. Jasen brings technical analysis together with creative synthesis. While technology informs us on the realms of possibility, Jasen is an industrial designer who is asked to interpret what is desirable for our sustainable futures.

Kristin Paget

Offensive Security Researcher, Intel Corporation

Kristin "Hacker Princess" Paget is a security researcher / hacker, currently pretending not to be a kid-in-a-candy-store after being unleashed within Intel. For fun she builds everything from jumbotron displays and home automation systems to IMSI catchers, RFID cloners, and absurdly powerful infrared toys.

Dr. Rachel Wong

Integration Scientist, Evonetix Ltd

Rachel Wong has recently completed a PhD in Regenerative Medicine where she conducts stem cell research; using stem cells to grow eyeballs in an effort to fulfill her vision of one day creating off-the-shelf organs. She also works as a scientist at Evonetix in addition to creating wearables for innovative self expression as a fashion tech engineer.

Jorvon Moss

Technical Content Creator, Digi-Key Electronics

Jorvon is a Self taught Maker, originally going to Art school, he graduated with a degree in illustration but instead had a passion for robotics, after graduation he decided to not to work as a artist but to become a Maker.

Valentina Ratner

CEO & Co-founder, AllSpice.io

Valentina Ratner is co-founder and CEO of AllSpice.io, a git platform for hardware engineers. Passionate about the hardware space and cross-team collaboration, Valentina is an experienced engineer and former Amazon PM. She holds a B.S. in Mechanical Engineering from Boston University and an M.S. in Engineering (Computer Science) and an MBA from Harvard.

Audrey Love

Creative Director, Echo Echo Studio

Audrey Love is an artist, designer, and storyteller living in Los Angeles. After graduating from the University of Nevada, Reno with a BFA in digital art practices and museum studies, they began sharing their creations on DIY project sharing platforms like Hackaday, and Instructables.com.

Sam Kelly

Product Engineer & Conservation Technology Program Manager at Conservation X Labs

Sam is an engineer dedicated to developing technological solutions to issues that have been underserved by the technical community. At Conservation X Labs, Sam helped establish the internal Innovation Foundry, aiming to create ventures that are both beneficial for nature and economically viable, from idea to market.

Ryan Cousins

Cofounder & CEO, krtkl inc.

Ryan Cousins is cofounder and CEO of krtkl (“critical”), a San Francisco-based company providing high-reliability hardware and software solutions for ‘hard’ real-time systems in the robotics, sensing, and space industries. His focus areas include technical program management for the development and commercialization of deeply embedded systems, strategic partnerships and business development, fundraising and revenue generation, and small-business government contracting. Ryan earned a B.S. in Mechanical Engineering from the University of California, Los Angeles and actively volunteers as a technology and entrepreneurship mentor in the San Francisco Bay Area.