Jury Alumni

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  Jifei Ou

  Designer

  2017 Open Design Jury Member

  Jifei Ou (欧冀飞) is a designer, researcher and PhD candidate at the MIT Media Lab, where he focuses on designing and fabricating transformable materials across scales (from μm to m). Physical materials are usually considered as static, passive, and permanent. Jifei is interested in finding ways to redesign physical materials with the characteristics of digital information, such as the ability to change shape and and to be programmable. Such new materials could be used to construct a responsive living environment, accelerate the process of design and manufacturing, and enhance our existing interaction with products. As much as his work is informed by digital technology, he is inspired in equal measure by the natural world around him. He has been leading projects that study bio-mimicry and bio-derived materials to design shape-changing packaging, garments and furniture.
  
  Jifei holds an MS from the MIT Media Lab and a Diplom in Design from the Offenbach University of Art and Design in Germany.

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  Dan Chen

  Engineer & Designer

  2017 Open Design Jury Captain

  Dan Chen is a designer and engineer. He communicates his ideas through working prototypes, investigating new ways of approaching user interactions.
  
  He has several degrees including a MAS from MIT, an MFA in digital media from RISD and a BFA in communication design from UConn. He has over 8 years of design experience and now works at Culture Robotics as senior engineer. Previous positions include MIT Lifelong Kindergarten as an industrial designer. Johnson & Johnson as Senior Interaction Designer. Senior Interaction Designer at IDEO.
  
  His personal work has been featured in CNET, The Huffington Post, the verge, Engadget, Mashable and Daily Mail. Dan was invited as a speaker at TEDx Vienna on the future of intimacy in 2016. His work was exhibited in Vitra Design Museum, MAK Wien, Design Museum Gent & Ars Electronica.
  
  Working in the realms of robotics, communication design, interaction design and product design, Dan explores the new ways of communication and human experience through working prototypes and storytelling, inviting a reflective evaluation and implication.

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  James Coleman

  Research and Development Engineer, A. Zahner Company

  2017 Open Design Jury Member

  James Coleman currently acts as a Research and Development Engineer at A. Zahner Company. He is involved in projects as a digital design and manufacturing specialist. James holds master’s degrees in architecture and mechanical engineering from The Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He couples his architectural and mechanical engineering education with an expertise in parametric design-to-fabrication methodologies.
  
  James has presented and taught widely at events including the NYC AIA Center for Architecture’s Technology Lecture Series, OReilly Solid: Software/ Hardware/ Everywhere, ACM SIGGRAPH 2015, as an MIT Teaching and Research Fellow, Singapore University of Technology and Design studio instructor,FAB11 Boston workshop lead and more. It is up for debate whether he holds the record at MIT for acting as Teaching Assistant for the most classes over a 4-year period (14). He is also a long time contributor to the infamous MIT course How to Make Almost Anything and Fab Academy taught by Neil Gershenfeld.
  
  He has worked internationally as design engineer for architectural projects of a variety of scales and also as a Product Development Engineer at the Ford Motor Company in Dearborn, Michigan. James deploys a diverse set of fabrication equipment, industrial robots, and custom made machinery with which he makes things, breaks things, and invents things with varying levels of success and sophistication.

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  Dominic Wilcox

  Founder, Dominic Wilcox Studio

  2016 Open Design Jury Member

  Dominic Wilcox works between the worlds of art, design, craft and technology to create innovative and thought provoking objects. The British artist and designer studied on Ron Arad's Design Products course at The Royal College of Art . He has since shown his work internationally and been commissioned by brands such as BMW MINI, Kelloggs and Paul Smith. In 2015 he exhibited at museums such as London's Design Museum and the V&A. After the making of the documentary 'The Reinvention of Normal', which follows Wilcox and his work, he was invited to be a guest on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert where he showed his 'Variations on Normal' ideas.
  Notable projects include the design of a pair of shoes with inbuilt GPS to guide the wearer home, a Stained Glass Driverless Sleeper car of the future and a INVENTORS! project turning children's ideas into real things.

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  Zach Kaplan

  CEO, Inventables

  2018 Open Design Jury Captain

  Zach Kaplan is the founder and CEO of Inventables, the leader in 3D carving. A maker his whole life, he is on a mission to ignite digital manufacturing world wide and provide everyone with ambition a way to get started. Inventables flagship products Easel, Carvey, and X-Carve are used by a new wave of makers carving everything from circuit boards to skate boards. Named a “modern Leonardo” by the Museum of Science and Industry and a 40 under 40 by Crain’s Chicago Business, his dream is to create a world with 2 million digital manufacturers that have raving fans, not just customers.

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  Jennifer Turliuk

  CEO, MakerKids

  2015 Open Design Jury Captain

  Jennifer Turliuk is CEO of MakerKids, a maker learning company that operates one of the only maker spaces for kids in the world. Her work has been featured in the New York Times, Wired, Fast Company, Forbes, a Harvard case study and more. Jennifer keynoted the first MakerCon in Europe and has also spoken at various Maker Faire, MakerCon and TEDx events. She attended the Graduate Studies Program at Singularity University at NASA and business school at Queen's University. In her spare time, Jennifer does marketing and strategy consulting. She also enjoys dancing, kiteboarding, playwriting and DJing. Follow her on Twitter: @jenniferturliuk.

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  Nadya Peek

  Designer, MIT

  2017 Open Design Jury Member

  Nadya Peek is a postdoctoral associate at the MIT Center for Bits and Atoms, a group at the intersection of the physical and the digital. Nadya Peek works on unconventional digital fabrication tools, small scale automation, networked control systems, and advanced manufacturing, and is currently teaching the MIT class How to make something that makes (almost) anything. Nadya Peek is an active member of the global fablab community, working on making digital fabrication more accessible with better CAD/CAM tools and developing open source (hardware) machines and control systems. Previously, Nadya Peek was an editor at Mediamatic in Amsterdam.

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  Carl Bass

  Self-unemployed robot builder and former CEO, Autodesk, Parts & Labor

  2018 Open Design Jury Member

  Carl Bass serves on the boards of Autodesk, Built Robotics, Formlabs, Planet, Zendesk and Zoox and serves as a special adviser to the CEO of Alphabet. During his 24 year tenure at Autodesk, he held a series of executive positions including president and chief executive officer, chief technology officer and chief operating officer. Bass co-founded Ithaca Software, which was acquired by Autodesk in 1993. Bass also serves on the boards of directors of Zendesk Inc. and Planet; on the board of trustees of the Smithsonian's Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum, Art Center College of Design, and California College of the Arts; and on the advisory boards of Cornell Computing and Information Science, UC Berkeley School of Information, and UC Berkeley College of Engineering.
  
  He holds a bachelor’s degree in mathematics from Cornell University. Bass spends his time exploring the intersection of art, robotics and machine learning

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  Brian Kane

  Professor, RISD

  2017 Open Design Jury Member

  Brian Kane was born in Worcester, Massachusetts in 1965 and currently lives and works in Cambridge, MA. He received a BFA in Painting from RISD in 1987, where he also teaches. His sculpture, interactive, and video work has shown in many museum and gallery exhibitions, and Kane’s pioneering real time video sampling techniques was influential to a generation of media artists. He was a founding member of the video art group EBN, and a primary collaborator with RadioValve.com and Amorphic Robot Works.
  
  Recent exhibitions and festivals include Nuit Blanche (Toronto), MACBA (Barcelona), HDADD+ (MFA Boston), #11.Art (Museo Nacional do Complexo Cultural da Republica, Brazil), Memery (MASS MoCA), People in Space (Shanghai World Expo), Late at Tate (Tate Britain), Big Chill (U.K.), MediaLive (Boulder MoCA), and a 2010 solo show at Murphy and Dine, New York, NY. His latest work "Healing Tool" is a disappearing billboard, and can be see here: http://thecreatorsproject.vice.com/blog/exclusive-photos-billboards-make-interstates-into-art-galleries

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  Kelly Nyland

  Director of Marketing, Snapchat

  2016 Open Design Jury Member

  As one of the foremost marketing leaders in the tech industry, particularly in the hardware & start-up communities, Kelly's unparalleled go-to-market strategy, unconventional marketing prowess, and ability to grow small business to a global scale, make her one of this industry's most coveted executives.
  
  Pioneer leader in educating general consumers about the value of new technologies while bringing hi-tech experiences to market, Kelly enjoys the thrill of braving new frontiers in establishing category-leading products and shepherding the ever-changing customer journey. She is adept at capturing the hearts of early adopters and leveraging their influence as brands & products tip over into mass market.

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  Jason Busschaert

  Director of Industrial Design, Stanley Black & Decker

  2018 Open Design Jury Member

  As Director of Industrial Design at Stanley Black and Decker, Jason's role is to provide global leadership in the definition, design, and development of industry leading power tools and outdoor power equipment.
  
  Jason has been a catalyst, integrating new technology to support adjacent design functions all with a goal to optimize the user experience. These efforts further enhance and differentiate the strong brands of Stanley Black and Decker. Prior to working for Stanley Black and Decker, Jason started his career at Canadian Design Consultancy DW Product Development, working with and supporting various clients across a diverse set of markets and industries.
  
  Jason has been recognized with several design awards, most recently receiving a 2015 IDSA IDEA Bronze award for DEWALT’s first entry into Professional Outdoor Equipment.

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  Darrell Etherington

  Writer, Techcrunch

  2015 Open Design Jury Member

  Darrell Etherington is a writer at Techcrunch.

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  Bethany Koby

  CEO & Co-Founder, Technology Will Save Us

  2016 Open Design Jury Captain

  Bethany Koby is a mom, designer, educator and the co-founder of Technology Will Save Us. Technology Will Save Us is on a mission to spark the imagination using hands-on technology. Their beautifully designed DIY Gadget Kits and digital resources are the most accessible way to make, play, code and invent with technology.
  

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  Mark Hatch

  Chief Executive Officer, TechShop

  2015 Open Design Jury Member

  Mark is CEO and co-founder of TechShop and a recognized leader in the global maker movement. Under his leadership, TechShop revenue grew 20-fold in five years and multiple new locations have opened across the US. Mark has held executive positions at firms including Kinko's, Avery Dennison and Health Net. In 2013, his book The Maker Movement Manifesto was released by McGraw-Hill Education. He has been recognized by San Francisco Business Times as one of the Bay Area's Most Admired CEOs and by Popular Mechanics as one of 25 movers and makers who are reinventing the American Dream. Mark has spoken at events such as SXSW, Techonomy, TEDx and The Clinton Global Initiative. A former Green Beret, Mark holds an MBA from the Drucker Center at the Claremont Graduate University.

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  Porter Whitmire

  Senior Director of Product Development & Innovation Management, Techtronic Industries

  2018 Open Design Jury Member

  Porter Whitmire has 20 years of product design, product development, and innovation management experience. Currently, he serves as the VP of Innovation and New Business Development at TTI Power Equipment. Porter has developed over 200 different products in many different categories, including power tools, lawn and garden products, electronic devices, lifestyle products, grills, and smartphone products and apps. In 2014, Porter founded the ION program at TTI as part of the company’s open innovation initiative. The Innovation Outreach Network seeks innovations from within TTI, from universities and private companies, and also the inventor community. When not innovating for TTI, Porter enjoys family time, mountain biking, and woodworking.

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  J Milligan

  Executive Producer, Toca Boca

  2016 Open Design Jury Member

  J Milligan is the Executive Producer at Toca Boca, a play studio that makes digital toys for kids. He is spearheading the company’s new video division dedicated to exploring the new kids TV and video landscape. Before joining Toca Boca, Milligan served as creative director of the content innovation lab and digital media group at Sesame Workshop.