Anna Kirah (Norway): Prior to setting up 180 Academy, Kirah served as the senior design anthropologist for the Microsoft Corporation. Kirah was responsible for global field research and participatory design both within the Windows division and MSN. Kirah’s primary focus is on people-centered research, future product innovation, and strategy. In 2004, she won the award for MSN Contributor of the Year, in 2006 she was recognized for her contributions to geopolitical strategy. Kirah also consults on radical innovation processes with companies wanting to approach the rapidly paced global world we live in either through direct consulting or “training the trainer”. Kirah holds an undergraduate degree in Cultural Anthropology (with minors in the Sociology of Education and Developmental Psychology) from the University of Oslo, Norway. She has a graduate degree in Cultural Anthropology, also from the University of Oslo and a graduate degree in Psychology from the University of Washington. Kirah has lived and worked extensively in Europe and Asia and is fluent in English and Norwegian. She also has a working knowledge of French. Kirah has written award-winning newspaper articles in Japan, edited and written books about contemporary Norwegian society and won several research grants, fellowships and scholarships.

Casey Reas (USA): Reas is an artist and educator living and working in Los Angeles where he is currently an associate professor in the department of Design | Media Arts at UCLA. His classes provide a foundation for thinking about computers and the Internet as an art medium and set a structure for advanced inquiry into synthesis of culture, technology, and aesthetics. As an artist, Reas employs ideas explored in conceptual and minimal artworks as focused through the contemporary lens of software. Reas’ software and images are derived from short text instructions explaining processes which define networks. The instructions are expressed in different media including natural language, machine code, computer simulations, and static images. Each translation reveals a different perspective on the process and combines with the others to form a more complete representation. Previously, Reas was one of the founding professors at the Interaction Design Institute Ivrea in Italy.

David Cuartielles (Spain): David is a PhD Candidate in Interaction Design at K3, Malmo University. He has co-developed the Arduino prototyping platform. Currently David runs the 1scale1 prototyping studio, owns a toy making company, and runs micro-company creation projects for the Spanish Agency of International Cooperation (AECID). He has been guest researcher at Interaction Design Institute Ivrea and Samsung Art and Design Institute. During 2006 he curated part of Ars Electronica festival dedicated to quick prototyping.

Dennis PAUL (Germany): Dennis is a Gestalter, has two son, lives in Berlin, Germany and works in his design practice, The Product. In his work he investigates the relationship between people and technology. In recent years he has been engaged with installations in public space, physical interfaces and generative systems. He specifically likes to explore the playful and narratives qualities of responsive media. He strongly believes that technology must be a warm and emotional medium. His work has been exhibited internationally and received several awards. Dennis started studying typographie in 1998 at the ‘Fachhochschule Hannover’, Germany. He went to Berlin in 2000 to study ‘Visuelle Kommunikation’ at the Universität der Künste Berlin in the Digitale Klasse with Professor Joachim Sauter and graduated in 2003. He worked at ART+COM from 2003 to 2008 and taught design at the Universität der Künste Berlin in the Digitale Klasse.

Durrell Bishop (UK): Durrell is a partner in Luckybite with Tom Hulbert, working on new physical interfaces, product design and interactive media. Prior to this he was a senior interaction designer at IDEO Europe, co-founded Itch, which won a D&AD Gold award for large scale work on the Science Museum Welcome Wing, and was a partner in Dancing Dog working on camera-based interfaces to computer games. He is a part-time tutor at the Royal College of Art, where he has taught both on the Design Products and Interaction Design courses. In the mid-90s he was a researcher in Computer Related Design at the RCA, spending time working in California with Interval Research, Apple Computers Advanced Technology Group and IDEO. He did both an MA in Computer Related Design and an MA in Product Design at the RCA.

Ezio Manzini (Italy): Professor of Design at the Politecnico di Milano, Director of the Unit of Research Design and Innovation for Sustainability, coordinator of the Doctorate in Industrial Design. He has been Director of the Domus Academy in Milano, Chair Professor of Design at the Hong Kong Polytechnic University and visiting lecturer at the Tohoku University in Japan. In the 2006 he has been nominated Honorary Doctor of Fine Arts at The New School of New York. His works are based on strategic design and design for sustainability, with a focus on the design for social innovation. He is now coordinating CCSL, Creative Communities for Sustainable Lifestyles: a research on grassroots social innovation in China, India and Brazil.

Fabio Sergio (Italy): Fabio Sergio is an interaction design and user experience strategist. He’s happiest in areas at the intersection of design, technology and (social) connectivity, working on projects that wrap business scenarios around people’s desires and dreams. He’s currently Associate Creative Director at frog design Italy. Prior to joining frog design he was an Associate Professor of Interaction Design at Interaction Design Institute Ivrea. Previously Fabio was Sr. Manager at 3 Italy, where he was responsible for the industrial design and user interface of mobile handsets and accessories for the Italian market, and where he worked extensively on value-added mobile services. Prior to joining 3 Italy he was a User Experience Director at XYZ Reply, a User Experience Lead and Sr. Information Architect at Razorfish Milano, and an Interaction Designer in the Global Consumer Design Center of Whirlpool Europe.Fabio is an experienced lecturer on interaction design and user experience matters, with participations to international conferences such as PMN’s Mobile User Experience, Design Engaged, Frontiers of Interaction and From Business to Buttons, in addition to various educational venues. He is a visiting professor at Domus Academy and at Scuola Politecnica di Design, Italy’s oldest design school. He is also a member of the invitation-only International Academy of Digital Arts and Sciences, which selects nominees and winners for the Webby Awards, the leading honor for web sites. Fabio lives with his wife Valeria and their son Andrea in Milano, Italy.

Gillian Crampton Smith (UK): Having studied philosophy and history of art at Cambridge University, Gillian Crampton Smith spent the 1970s as a designer - first in book publishing, then on the Sunday Times and Times Literary Supplement. In 1981, she designed and programmed a page-layout program to help her with magazine design – an early desktop publishing application. This experience convinced her that artists and designers have an important role to play in creating information technologies. After teaching at Central and St Martin’s in London, she joined the Royal College of Art in 1989, where she built the Computer Related Design programme. Under her guidance, the CRD Research Studio achieved an international reputation as a leading centre for interaction design, supported by a wide range of other industrial and government sponsors in Britain and overseas. During this time she spent her summers in Silicon Valley working first for Apple Computer and then for Interval Research. In 2000 she was invited to Ivrea (Olivetti’s hometown) to set up Interaction Design Institute Ivrea, a graduate school and research institution sponsored by Telecom Italia and Olivetti. After five years in Ivrea she and Philip Tabor moved to IUAV, Venice, to develop a graduate programme in interaction design at the university’s faculty of design.

Jan-Christoph Zoels (Germany): Jan-Christoph Zoels is responsible for user experience design at Experientia, based in Turin, Italy. Until recently he was senior associate professor at Interaction Design Institute Ivrea, where he ran the business innovation workshops called Applied Dreams. In his work Jan-Christoph focuses specifically on people’s experience of mobile services and applications, and on using information technology to support simplicity. He advocates a strategic integration of user experience modeling, design, prototyping and iterative testing to improve the desirability of products and services. Previously he was director of information architecture for Sapient (New York), and senior designer at Sony Design Center USA, responsible for strategic product development. He holds four patents. He has taught at Rhode Island School of Design, Jan van Eyck Academy in Maastricht, Samsung’s Innovative Design Laboratory in Seoul, and Domus Academy, Milan. Clients include CVS Pharmacy, CondeNast Italia, Finmeccanica, Ferrero, Kodak, Nokia, Swisscom, and Samsung.

Jennie Winhall (UK): Jennie Winhall is a design strategist and service designer. Until recently Jennie was Senior Design Strategist for RED at the UK Design Council. An interdisciplinary team of designers, policy analysts, social scientists and economists, RED was set up in 2004 to address social and economic issues through design innovation. RED projects have tackled issues such as chronic healthcare, declining citizenship and domestic energy consumption. Designing with end users and front-line workers has led to new policies and the creation of new public services. Jennie currently works for live|work, who pioneered the field of service design in the UK and who create user-centred, sustainable services for clients such as Sony Ericsson, Norwich Union and the NHS.She is now setting up Participle, a social enterprise focused on designing a new generation of public services, with the former RED team: Hilary Cottam (Designer of the year 2005), Colin Burns (former head of IDEO Europe) and Charles Leadbeater (leading policy advisor and author of We Think: the power of mass creativity). Jennie studied Product Design at the Glasgow School of Art and ENSCI Paris, and Psychology at the Open University. Her work has won awards from the D&AD, the RSA, Germany’s Red Dot and the Australian Design Association. Jennie has worked for design groups in the UK, India, Australia and France. She joined the Design Council in 2002 to develop a methodology for design in the public sector.

Jonas Löwgren (Sweden): Jonas Löwgren is professor of interaction design and co-founder at the School of Arts and Communication (K3), Malmö University, Sweden. He specialises in cross-media products, interactive visualisation and the design theory of the digital materials. Jonas has taught interaction design in master-level university courses and in companies since the early 1990’s and initiated the influential two-year master’s program in interaction design at Malmö University in 1998. He has published some 50 scientific papers and three books, including Thoughtful Interaction Design (with Erik Stolterman, published by MIT Press), and a vast range of general-interest and pedagogical material. His design portfolio comprises some 40 projects from explorative research and professional contexts.

Karen Ward (Canada)
Karen began her career in marketing at Leo Burnett where she worked on the Kellogg’s account and the international award-winning “Look Good on Your Own Terms” Special K campaign. She then moved onto The Body Shop Canada where she developed the company’s Local Shop Marketing program after which she assumed the role of Brand Marketing Manager and worked on the development and execution of the Canadian Brand Strategy. In 2000, Karen joined D-Code, a firm specializing in the Information Age Generations where she led research and strategy projects with Nike, Coca-Cola, Nortel, Procter & Gamble, Labatt Breweries, Haworth and the Government of Canada. She was a highly sought after speaker and spoke across Canada on the attitudes, values and influence of Generation X and Y. Eventually, the entrepreneur within emerged and Karen launched her freelance career. As an independent strategist and researcher Karen has worked with a wide range of clients in the private and public sectors - Human Resources Development Canada, Campbell’s, Health Canada, Weston, United Nations Association of Canada, Vincor, The Innoversity Creative Summit, Wyeth Consumer Healthcare, Travesty Productions, and BuzzTaxi. One of Karen’s primary clients was Cossette Communication-Marketing where she supported the Coca-Cola and General Mills accounts as a Senior Strategist and also led research and innovation projects on Dare Food, Shopper’s Drug Mart and the CNIB. In 2005, Karen recently brought her independent pursuits together more formally and launched Curiosity Inc, a research and innovation company that helps organizations cultivate curiosity and discover and leverage insights and opportunities that lead to product, service and experience innovation. Under Karen’s leadership, Curiosity Inc. has explored a wide range of questions working with client partners in the consumer package goods, financial services, automotive and entertainment industries and in the education and not-for-profit sectors. Karen holds a degree in Sociology and Film Studies from Queen’s University and brings her passion for film and storytelling to her inquiry and insight seeking; she is the producer of several consumer documentaries. She is also deeply committed to supplementing her professional pursuits with extended sabbaticals in foreign lands - she’s lived and volunteered with a women’s co-op in central Turkey and spent several months living in Paris where she studied French and conducted an ethnographic study of Parisian dating rituals. She is currently studying at the 180 Academy in Denmark where she is pursuing a Masters in Innovation and Concept-making.

Lavrans Løvlie (Norway): Lavrans has worked as a design consultant since 1994. Before setting up live|work in London with Chris Downs and Ben Reason he worked as an Interaction Designer in Norway and Denmark. As a partner in live|work, Lavrans is has been lead designer on service innovation projects for Sony Ericsson, Sony, Aviva/Norwich Union, the BBC, airport operator BAA, the Norwegian Knowledge Centre for Health Services, the UK Design Council, Orange, Vodafone, Mustad, Fast, the Interactive Institute in Sweden as well as UK regional development agency ONE North East. Lavrans has also served on the committee responsible for the new British Standard for Service Design. During the last years, Lavrans has lectured and run seminars at the Interaction Design Institute Ivrea (Italy), Köln International School of Design (Germany), Oslo School of Architecture (Norway), University of Art and Design Helsinki(Finland), the Estonian Academy of Arts and Cranfield School of Management (UK).

Massimo Banzi (Italy): Massimo Banzi is the co-founder of the Arduino project and has worked on many interaction design project for clients such as: Prada, Artemide, Persol, Whirlpool, V&A Museum and Adidas. Massimo is CTO of Tinker.it. He spent 4 years at the Interaction Design Institue Ivrea (IDII) as Associate Professor. Massimo has taught workshops and presented at many institutions including: Architectural Association - London, Hochschule für Gestaltung und Kunst Basel, Hochschule für Gestaltung Schwäbisch Gmünd, FH Potsdam, Domus Academy, Medialab Madrid, Escola Superior de Disseny Barcelona, ARS Electronica Linz, Mediamatic Amsterdam, Doors of Perception Amsterdam. Before joining IDII he was CTO for the Seat Ventures incubator. He spent many years working as a software architect, both in Milan and London, on projects for clients like Italia Online, Sapient, Labour Party, BT, MCI WorldCom, SmithKlineBeecham, Storagetek, BSkyB and boo.com.

Michele Chang (US): Michele is a researcher and ethnographer with over 5 years experience bringing people centered design to business innovation. She began her professional career with the renowned People and Practices Research Group at Intel, where she had the privilege to work and train with some of the world’s best social scientists operating within industry today. Hailing originally from an interaction design background, Michele’s interests lie at the intersection of culture and technology. Her work includes investigations into public and private space, explored through both critical design and ethnographic practice. She has written on the topics of public space, urban games, ubiquitous computing, HCI, and design research. She holds a Masters in Interactive Telecommunications from New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts. Michele is a Partner at ReD Associates, Copenhagen, Denmark.

Nathan Shedroff (USA): Nathan Shedroff is the chair of the ground-breaking MBA in Design Strategy at California College of the Arts (CCA) in San Francisco, CA. This program melds the unique principles that design offers business strategy with a vision of the future of business as sustainable, meaningful, and truly innovative—as well as profitable. He is one of the pioneers in Experience Design, an approach to design that encompasses multiple senses and requirements and explores common characteristics in all media that make experiences successful, as well as related fields, Interaction Design and Information Design. He speaks and teaches internationally and has written extensively on design and business issues, including, Experience Design. He’s a serial entrepreneur, works in several media, and consults strategically for companies to build better, more meaningful experiences for their customers. He lives in San Francisco where the climate, culture, and industry make it easy to have an esoteric and amorphous title like Experience Strategist and actually make a living. His latest book, Making Meaning, co-written with two members of Cheskin, a Silicon Valley-based strategy consultancy, explores how companies can specifically create products and services to evoke meaning in their audiences and customers. www.makingmeaning.org. In 2006, Nathan earned a Masters in Business Administration at Presidio School of Management in San Francisco, CA, the only accredited MBA program in the USA specializing in Sustainable Business. Nathan earned a BS in Industrial Design, with an emphasis on Automobile Design from the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena. However, fear of Detroit, coupled with a passion for information design led Nathan into this arena, where he worked with Richard Saul Wurman at The Understanding Business. Later, he co-founded vivid studios, a decade-old pioneering company in interactive media and one of the first Web services firms on the planet. vivid’s hallmark was helping to establish and validate the field of information architecture, by training an entire generation of designers in the newly emerging Web industry. Nathan was nominated for a Chrysler Innovation in Design Award in 1994 and 1999 and a National Design Award in 2001. He is a founding member of the International Academy or Digital Arts and Sciences (IADAS) and serves as an advisor to the academy as well as a regular judge for the Webby Awards.

Patrick KOCHLIK (Germany): Patrick is a Gestalter currently living in Berlin - he likes telling stories with technology. In recent years he has been especially interested in the aesthetic and narrative aspects of generative systems. He studied ‘Kommunikationsdesign’ at the ‘Merz Akademie Stuttgart’ and graduated in 2003. He was working with Art+Com from 2003 to 2008 and teaches at the Interface Design programme of the University of Applied Sciences Potsdam. His latest project is a procedural design practice called The Product. His work has been exhibited internationally and received several awards.

Philip Tabor (UK): Philip Tabor writes and lectures about the relationship between space and the new technologies. He was the Professor of Architectural Theory and Criticism at University College London, the Director of its Bartlett School of Architecture, and Visiting Professor at Interaction Design Institute Ivrea. With Gillian Crampton Smith, he started the Interaction Design programme at IUAV University of Venice. He is now the Vice-Director of IUAV’s Visual and Multimedia Communication graduate degree, in charge of interaction design teaching. He is also Visiting Professor and PhD supervisor at University College London.

Shelley Evenson (USA): Shelley is an Associate Professor at the School of Design, Carnegie Mellon University. Shelley teaches graduate and undergraduate courses in interaction design, and is a voting faculty member in the Human-Computer Interaction Institute (HCII). She is the director of graduate studies in Design and for the joint program in HCII between Carnegie Mellon and University of Madeira. Shelley has more than twenty years of experience in multidisciplinary consulting practices. She is a frequent speaker at design conferences and conducts design strategy workshops with large and small corporations. She has been working on a variety of research projects with General Motors for the last 4 years and has established a relationship with University of Pittsburgh Medical Center (UPMC) through her work on service design. Shelley also works with graduate students from the school of design to host the international conference in service design called emergence. Her current interests include design languages and strategy, organisational interfaces, what lies beyond human-centered design, and design for service.