Bhavna’s vision is to train students to see themselves as relevant to the world and as responsible citizens actively contributing to the creation of a shared future for everyone. Her research looks at the emergence and creation of methods in cross-cultural, trans-disciplinary, field-based research projects with a focus on the role of ethics and aesthetics of the collaborators in this process.

PROJECTS AT KGC

• Global Engineers' Education (Ongoing)
• The Professional School for Shareable Prosperity (Ongoing)
• REALM (Ongoing)
• Sustainability of Future Self (Ongoing)
• Iris Scholarship Ecology (2007-2010)
• Co-DiViNE (2005-2009)
• ReVeL (1999-2007)

DISSERTATION AT KGC

Innovating Capability for Continuity of Inquiry in the face of Discontinuity within the Context of Engineering Education Research

Department of Mechanical Engineering, Stanford University, 2011
Advisors: Sheri Sheppard, Syed Shariq, Dave Beach

My vision is to live in a world where neither boys nor girls are the victims of interpersonal violence; where they can flourish and are empowered to see themselves as worthwhile, important human beings who are not constrained by the threat of violence or by our artificial societal expectations because of their gender; a world where men and women collaboratively create and maintain an environment for shared prosperity. Both boys and girls deserve such empowerment; however, my work begins with girls. I strongly believe in giving girls and women the tools to empower themselves in order to live their lives to their fullest potential. My current research examines life skills and physical empowerment interventions for women who have experienced interpersonal violence and abuse, as well as the prevention of such violence with adolescent girls. In addition, I am examining the relationship of early trauma to later biological outcomes.

PROJECTS AT KGC

• Ending Violence Against Women by Nurturing Environments for Empowerment and Self-Sustainability (Ongoing)
• The Professional School for Shareable Prosperity (Ongoing)
• Sustainability of Future Self (Ongoing)

Tea’s vision is to release the innovation potential of organizations and to employ innovation to help those in need around the world. Her research examines the ways in which ideas are generated and developed collaboratively. The focus of her work is on the practices of innovation, i.e. the common patterns of action among organization members. She uses qualitative inquiry, such as observations and interviews, to tap into the micro-level practices located inside the innovation process.

PROJECTS AT KGC

• Backstage Interactions for Innovation and Prosperity (Ongoing)
• Global Engineers' Education (Ongoing)
• The Professional School for Shareable Prosperity (Ongoing)
• Iris Scholarship Ecology (2007-2010)

DISSERTATION AT KGC

Entering the Backstage of Innovation: Tensions between the Collaborative Praxis of Idea Development and its Formal Staging in Organizations

Department of Mangement and International Business, Aalto University, 2011
Advisor: Raimo Lovio

Dr. Ram Nidumolu is the CEO of InnovaStrat, a high-end firm that provides advisory, consulting and research services on sustainability strategy and innovation to Global 500 corporations. His articles on business sustainability have appeared in the Harvard Business Review, the Stanford Social Innovation Review, and other publications. He is the lead author of a widely recognized framework on sustainability and innovation that was featured on the cover of the Sept 2009 issue of the Harvard Business Review and listed in its Spring 2010 OnPoint edition as one of the decade's top sustainability publications. His consulting clients have included global firms such as Alcoa, Clorox, FedEx, Harley-Davidson, Intuit, and others. He is a frequent speaker at leading sustainability conferences and is a senior business fellow at the Corporate Eco Forum, a consortium of 80+ Global 500 corporations. He was previously the founder and CEO of a high technology company in Silicon Valley and a faculty member at the business schools of the University of Arizona and Santa Clara University. He completed his PhD. in information systems at the Anderson Business School, UCLA and his MBA from the Indian Institute of Management, Calcutta.

PROJECTS AT KGC

• Being-Centered Leadership (Ongoing)
• The Professional School for Shareable Prosperity (Ongoing)

Colleen’s vision is to create healing environments that build trust, self-development and collaboration among and between “displaced” people and the natural world. Colleen’s research focus currently is on the experiences of displacement and subsequent isolation faced by refugee populations from Burundi now living in Dayton, Ohio. Through nature-based projects, including small-scale and sustainable agriculture, displaced populations may re-experience a source of livelihood and a sense of belonging and connection in their new homelands. Likewise, local Dayton populations displaced in their own way from community and nature may learn through the Burundians ways to live sustainably with connection to the land and each other. Colleen’s long term vision is to discover ways that trust and collaboration may happen through collective endeavors that engage the creative gifts of the natural world and people from all generations, cultures and socioeconomic backgrounds.

PROJECTS AT KGC

• Experiencing Understanding and Collaboration through Garden Clinics (Ongoing)
• The Professional School for Shareable Prosperity (Ongoing)
• Iris Scholarship Ecology (2007-2010)

Shariq’s research inquiry is guided by three questions: (1) How to identify particular ideas that inspire individual scholars and practitioners that they are passionate about? (2) How to develop these ideas and associated practices through rigorous inquiry and discipline that capitalize on their particular competencies? (3) How to prototype and incubate these particular ideas and practices for individual scholars and practitioners as foundation for them to live sustainable lives? These questions have evolved into the need to study and understand the implications of narratives (stories) people tell themselves, about themselves, in the process of becoming sustainable.

Shariq’s research focuses on how scholars can create a sustainable world by contributing to the development of a shared context for bringing together what each knows across the divides that separates us. The idea is to understand collaborative practices for “context creation,” or how individuals, small groups and communities create a context for understanding something new (often by making something that is tacit explicit), and “context generation,” how an individual goes about codifying this context in order to share it with others within their group or community. Shariq’s work seeks to address this process more broadly by studying indigenous processes and collaborative practices in groups and communities in which ideas first take shape.

He enjoys working with interdisciplinary doctoral scholars and helping them create research environments in real-life settings for carrying forward their dissertation research. His current project is aimed at the prototyping of a bottom-up collaborative process for the creation of sustainability at global scale by enabling sustainability of future selves within small groups (human ecologies).

PROJECTS AT KGC

• Sustainability of Future Self (Ongoing)
• Global Engineers' Education (Ongoing)
• Knowledge, Beliefs, and Institutions (Ongoing)
• REALM (Ongoing)
• The Professional School for Shareable Prosperity (Ongoing)
• Iris Scholarship Ecology (2007-2010)
• Co-DiViNE (2005-2009)

• TrustNet (2004-2007)

• ReVeL (1999-2007)
• KNEXUS (1997-2000)

Neeraj is a PhD Candidate at the Center for Design Research at Stanford University. He is interested in understanding how possibilities emerge through moment-to-moment interpersonal interactions between people. He is currently finishing his dissertation on concept creation interactions in engineering design teams, and is coaching entrepreneurial design teams in India and Nigeria. Neeraj intends to conduct research at the intersection of human interaction, development of ideas, flow of capital and creation of new technology artifacts. An avid improviser, Neeraj loves being in the moment and capturing moments with his camera.

PROJECTS AT KGC

• Realizing Possibilities through Interpersonal Interaction (Ongoing)
• The Professional School for Shareable Prosperity (Ongoing)
• Iris Scholarship Ecology (2007-2010)
• ReVeL (1999-2007)

DISSERTATION AT KGC

A Visual Representation for Characterizing Moment-to-Moment Concept Generation through Interpersonal Interactions in Engineering Design Teams

Department of Mechanical Engineering, Stanford University, 2012
Advisors: Larry Leifer, Sheri Sheppard, Ade Mabogunje

PROJECTS AT KGC

• ReVeL (1999-2007)

PROJECTS AT KGC

• ReVeL (1999-2007)

PROJECTS AT KGC

• KNEXUS (1997-2000)

PROJECTS AT KGC

• Iris Scholarship Ecology (2007-2010)
• Culturally Appropriate Interfaces (TEACH: Technology with Everyone at the Center of Humanity) (2005-2008)

The late Dr. Barry Blumberg had been an advisor and mentor to KGC since its inception.

PROJECTS AT KGC

• KNEXUS (1997-2000)

Per Aage Brandt is the author of a dozen books and more than 150 published papers on cognitive and semiotic theory of language, grammar, aesthetics, art, and music.

As a scholar trained in Romance Philology (French and Spanish), he has worked his way through structural linguistics and structural semantics, and elaborated a series of models - in particular related to the technical and formal representations of textual phenomena such as enunciation, diegesis, and modal schematisms - for describing patterns of meaning in the framework of a discourse-oriented (Greimas) and later a formalized phenomenological (Thom, Petitot) and cognitively (Talmy) oriented semiotics.

In 2002, he was awarded the Grand Prix de Philosophie by l'Académie française and was made Officier de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres by the French Ministry of Culture.

PROJECTS AT KGC

• ReVeL (1999-2007)

Scott Brave is a founder and CTO of Baynote, Inc. Prior to Baynote, he was a postdoctoral scholar at Stanford University and served as lab manager for the CHIMe (Communication between Humans and Interactive Media) Lab. Scott is an inventor of six patents and co-author of over 25 publications in the areas of humancomputer interaction and artificial intelligence. Scott is also an Editor of the "International Journal of Human-Computer Studies" (Amsterdam: Elsevier) and co-author of "Wired for speech: How voice activates and advances the human-computer relationship" (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press). Scott received his Ph.D. in Human-Computer Interaction, and B.S. in Computer Systems Engineering from Stanford University, and his Master's from the MIT Media Lab.

PROJECTS AT KGC

• OnTrust (2004-2007)

Dr. Merlin Donald has been an advisor and mentor to KGC since its inception.

PROJECTS AT KGC

• Synthesizing Theories of Cognitive and Institutional Evolution (2004-2008)
• ReVeL (1999-2007)
• KNEXUS (1997-2000)

PROJECTS AT KGC

• ReVeL (1999-2007)

DISSERTATION AT KGC

From Chaos to Harmony: Public Participation and Environmental Policy

LBJ School of Public Affairs, University of Texas at Austin, 2012
Advisors: David Eaton

Janine Giese-Davis was a Senior Research Scholar in Psychiatry and Behavioral Science working at Stanford from 1994-2008 before moving to Alberta, Canada. She is currently an Associate Professor in the Department of Oncology, Division of Psychosocial Oncology, Faculty of Medicine and Adjunct Associate Professorship in the Department of Psychology, both at the University of Calgary. She leads the research effort on Cancer Survivorship on behalf of the provincial CancerBRIDGES team. The goal of this research program is to provide evidence-based clinical programs for cancer survivors throughout Alberta. Her research has focused on mind/body interactions that affect psychological, physiological, and survival outcomes for people with cancer. In her past research, She has specifically focused on women with breast cancer and particularly on emotion regulation and expression in group therapy and peer counseling interventions. She has also emphasized the importance of community/research collaborations throughout her career, working with The Wellness Community--National; The Cancer Support Community, San Francisco, CA; WomenCARE, Santa Cruz, CA; and the Kozmetsky Global Collaboratory-Stanford. In her role with the Kozmetsky Global Collaboratory, she was an emotional resonance expert in the ReVeL intervention for entrepreneurs, actively involved in collaborations in India, and mentoring students. Though in Calgary, she remains connected to KGC through her students and quarterly trips to the Bay Area.

PROJECTS AT KGC

• Co-DiViNE (2005-2009)
• ReVeL (1999-2007)

PROJECTS AT KGC

• ReVeL (1999-2007)

B. Christopher Han received his PhD from the Department of Management Science & Engineering at Stanford University. He developed a novel way to help design high quality interactions between people. His multi-disciplinary investigation draws from the fields of decision analysis, emotion coding, and design research. For his dissertation, Christopher studied sales interactions in the context of car dealerships and he has empirically shown that interaction quality influences subsequent behavior, such as the prospective customer's purchase decision. The framework he has developed enables the quantitative assessment of the influence interactions have on outcomes and provides the basis for evaluating intervention alternatives. Christopher would like to extend his research to other domains and help create organizations that consistently produce high quality interactions between its members and also with the people the organization is striving to serve.

PROJECTS AT KGC

• Iris Scholarship Ecology (2007-2010)

DISSERTATION AT KGC

Decision Analytic Approach to Customer Experience Design

Department of Management Science and Engineering, Stanford University, 2011
Advisors: Ronald Howard, Janine Giese-Davis, Larry Leifer

Jon Ole Janus Johansen is an Industrial PhD researcher at Department of Marketing and Statistics, MAPP - Center for research on customer relations in the food sector and H. Lundbeck A/S where his general research area is perception and use of medicine. The way people use medicine has great impact on treatment outcome. It does not matter, for instance, how effective a pill is if it does not end up in the stomach of the right patient at the right time. Unfortunately, medicine is often used far from optimally. In the scientific jargon this is referred to as non-compliance or nonadherence. The research areas include consumer cognition, compliance and adherence and behavioral change. Jon received his Masters in Cognitive Semiotics from Aarhus University and Bachelors in Economy and Philosophy from Copenhagen Business School. He gained practical experience as a researcher and project responsible at the School of Education, Aarhus University and as a visiting Researcher at Stanford University.

PROJECTS AT KGC

• ReVeL (1999-2007)

Dr. Mark Johnson has been an advisor and mentor to KGC since its inception.

Malte Jung always liked design – building cool stuff. As a Ph.D. student at the Center for Design Research, Malte is exploring the role of emotions in design team interaction. Having suffered through a few bad team experiences he has started to wonder why in some teams designers get along so well with each other and even seem to do much better design. Malte's work is heavily inspired by John Gottman's research on marital interactions. In a famous study, Gottman was able to predict divorce based on the analysis of the emotions expressed during a 15-minute sample of an interaction between husband and wife. The prediction was accurate in over 90% of the cases. The question that drives Malte's research is: what if we could do the same with design teams and predict their performance based on a small sample of interaction?

PROJECTS AT KGC

• ReVeL (1999-2007)

DISSERTATION AT KGC

Engineering Team Performance and Emotion: Affective Interaction Dynamics as Indicators of Design Team Performance

Department of Mechanical Engineering, Stanford University, 2011
Advisors: Pamela Hinds, Larry Leifer, James Gross, Ralf Steinert

PROJECTS AT KGC

• ReVeL (1999-2007)

I research because I am curious. I am curious because I am dissatisfied. I am dissatisfied at the current condition of our planet. I cannot accept that human beings who have put people on the moon, created the Internet, built skyscrapers, and produced beautiful works of art permit other human beings to go to sleep hungry or live in a landscape void of anything natural. So I look for the paths, means, and methods towards thrivability. A thriving planet where no one goes hungry, and where that which feeds us, the land, the ocean, the rivers, are nourished reciprocally. My research area is in education. I work and think about how to facilitate educational relationships and connections so that children, parents, and community can collaborate to create gardens as an outward manifestation of the internal bonds that must be nurtured to thrive.

PROJECTS AT KGC

• Sustainability of Future Self (Ongoing)
• Iris Scholarship Ecology (2007-2010)

The late Dr. George Kozmetsky served as an advisor and mentor to KGC since its inception, in addition to providing the founding gift to build the KGC as an institute at Stanford. Please see the Founders section for more details.

PROJECTS AT KGC

• ReVeL (1999-2007)
• Drivers of the 21st Century (2001-2002)
• KNEXUS (1997-2000)

Ade Mabogunje is a senior research scientist in the Stanford School of Engineering and an engineer and scientist by training. He builds things such as mechatronics systems and human design teams, and studies how they are conceived and built. He is interested in the different ways and the similar conditions in which ants, spiders, and human designers are motivated to build artifacts and adapt to their environment. His current focus is on the development and research of innovation eco-systems in regions such as India, Africa, and South America where the rate of economic growth is either unsustainable or misaligned with the needs of the population. This initiative is a development of KGC’s real time venture design lab (ReVeL). Its premise is on the creation of a professional school which brings together product designers, venture designers, investment designers, and agreement designers in order to co-design and co-research entrepreneurial ventures. The common mission of these ventures is to create dynamic and progressive changes in the aforementioned types of regions based on the best available scientific knowledge and a close monitoring of their impact on the well being of the local population.

PROJECTS AT KGC

• Co-DiViNE (2005-2009)
• ReVeL (1999-2007)

PROJECTS AT KGC

• Knowledge, Beliefs, and Institutions (Ongoing)
• KNEXUS (1997-2000)

Dr. James March has been an advisor and mentor to KGC since its inception.

PROJECTS AT KGC

• Center for Everything (Proposed)

• KNEXUS - Steering Committee (1997-2000)

PROJECTS AT KGC

• ReVeL (1999-2007)

PROJECTS AT KGC

• KNEXUS (1997-2000)

Dr. Bill Miller has been a frequent advisor and mentor to KGC since its inception.

PROJECTS AT KGC

• KNEXUS (1997-2000)

PROJECTS AT KGC

• ReVeL (1999-2007)

Clifford Nass is currently the Thomas M. Storke Professor at Stanford University. His primary appointment is in Communication, but he also has appointments by courtesy in Computer Science; Education; Science, Technology, and Society; Sociology; and Symbolic Systems. He earned a B.A. cum laude in mathematics and a Ph.D. in sociology, both from Princeton University. Nass focuses on experimental studies of social-psychological aspects of human-computer interaction. He directs the Communication between Humans and Interactive Media (CHIMe) Lab at Stanford University. He is also co-Director of the Kozmetsky Global Collaboratory, which focuses on developing countries. Nass is co-author of two books: The Media Equation: How People Treat Computers, Television, and New Media Like Real People and Places (Cambridge University Press) and Wired for Speech: How Voice Activates and Advances the Human-Computer Relationship (MIT Press). He is author of over 100 papers on the psychology of technology and statistical methodology. His research has been applied to over 250 media products and services.

PROJECTS AT KGC

• ReVeL (1999-2007)
• Culturally Appropriate Interfaces (TEACH: Technology with Everyone at the Center of Humanity) (2005-2008)

PROJECTS AT KGC

• ReVeL (1999-2007)

Louise Nielsen is a part-time researcher and concept developer at Copenhagen Living Lab and assistant professor at the Department of Architecture and Design at Aalborg University, Denmark. She received her bachelors and masters degrees as a Civil Engineer in Architecture and Design at Aalborg University as well, and spent a year at the Unitec School of Design, Unitec University of Technology in Auckland, New Zealand. Over a two year timeframe she held two internships; Jacob Jensen Design in Hejlskov, Denmark, and Cook, Hitchcock & Sargisson in Auckland, New Zealand.

PROJECTS AT KGC

• Iris Scholarship Ecology (2007-2010)

DISSERTATION AT KGC

Personal and Shared Experiential Concepts

Department of Architecture and Design, Aalborg University, 2009
Advisors: Nicola Morelli, Poul Kyvsgaard, Christian Tollestrup

Dr. Douglass North has been a frequent advisor and mentor to KGC since its inception.

PROJECTS AT KGC

• Knowledge, Beliefs, and Institutions (Ongoing)
• Synthesizing Theories of Cognitive and Institutional Evolution (2004-2008)
• KNEXUS (1997-2000)

PROJECTS AT KGC

• ReVeL (1999-2007)
• Drivers of the 21st Century (2001-2002)

PROJECTS AT KGC

• KNEXUS - Co-Principle Investigator (1997-2000)

Akshay Rajwade is currently employed at Google Inc., as a member of Operations Strategy and Decision Support team. He graduated from Stanford with a Masters degree in Management Science and Engineering. As a researcher at the Kozmetsky Global Collaboratory, his work focused on exploring the source of sustainability in the creation of socially beneficial ventures and creating an embodiment of this source in the form of narrative structures. His idea of shared global prosperity involves themes of equity, quality, and inclusiveness. He is interested in understanding the theoretical and the practical factors that aid creation and successful functioning of self-sustaining social ventures. He is particularly interested in ventures that leverage the advances in science and technology and focus on providing education, enablement and opportunities in addition to any material rewards to their beneficiaries.

PROJECTS AT KGC

• ReVeL (1999-2007)

PROJECTS AT KGC

• ReVeL (1999-2007)

PROJECTS AT KGC

• KNEXUS - Co-Principle Investigator (1997-2000)

Ben Shaw is currently a post-doctoral researcher in Service Science and Service Design at the IBM Almaden Research Center. His research centers on analyzing and modeling collaborative interactions in various settings, paying particular attention to the roles played by shared visualizations and other forms of persistent, external representation. The ability to incorporate such representations into collective cognition is a hallmark of human intelligence. Understanding how to use these artifacts as a basis for engagement and creative problem solving become central concerns as global connectivity and human impact on the systems we rely upon to sustain ourselves steadily increases. At the Kozmetsky Global Collaboratory, Ben performed field studies of highly productive face-to-face collaboration in the "real-time design" practice developed over the last decade at Jet Propulsion Laboratory, and used the insights he gained to inform KGC’s Real-Time Venture Design Laboratory (ReVeL) effort. At IBM, Ben studies more mediated forms of collaboration associated with the value co-creation that underpins modern service economies.

PROJECTS AT KGC

• ReVeL (1999-2007)

DISSERTATION AT KGC

More than the Sum of the Parts: Shared Representation in Collaborative Design Interaction

Department of Industrial Design Engineering, Royal College of Art, London, 2007
Advisors: Prue Bramwell-Davis and Helga Wild

PROJECTS AT KGC

• Sustainability of Future Self (Ongoing)
• ReVeL (1999-2007)
• KNEXUS (1997-2000)

Named to MIT Technology Review’s TR35 list of the top 35 innovators in the world under 35 in 2011, Dr. Sorcar is the founder and CEO of TeachAIDS, a nonprofit social venture founded at Stanford, which creates breakthrough software used in over 50 countries. Funded by UNICEF, Barclay's, Google, Yahoo!, and other organizations, the TeachAIDS software addresses numerous persistent problems in HIV prevention, and provides the most effective HIV education tools to schools, governments, and NGOs worldwide – for free.

Dr. Sorcar began the research to develop TeachAIDS in 2005 as part of her graduate work. Today, she leads a team of world experts in medicine, public health, communications, and education, to develop versions of the software for new languages and cultures. She is the author of numerous articles and has been an invited speaker at many universities, including Caltech, Columbia, Tsinghua, Utrecht and Yale. She holds degrees in Economics, Business and Journalism from the University of Colorado at Boulder, and an M.A. in Education and Ph.D. in Learning Sciences & Technology Design from Stanford University.

PROJECTS AT KGC

• Culturally Appropriate Interfaces (TEACH: Technology with Everyone at the Center of Humanity) (2005-2008)

DISSERTATION AT KGC

Teaching Taboo Topics without Talking about Them : an Epistemic Study of a New Approach to HIV/AIDS Prevention Education in India

School of Education, Stanford University, 2009
Advisors: Shelly Goldman, Clifford Nass, Martic Carnoy, Cheryl Koopman

PROJECTS AT KGC

• OnTrust (2004-2007)

• TrustNet (2004-2007)

• KNEXUS (1997-2000)

PROJECTS AT KGC

• Culturally Appropriate Interfaces (TEACH: Technology with Everyone at the Center of Humanity) (2005-2008)

PROJECTS AT KGC

• ReVeL (1999-2007)
• KNEXUS (1997-2000)

PROJECTS AT KGC

• KNEXUS (1997-2000)

PROJECTS AT KGC

• KNEXUS (1997-2000)

PROJECTS AT KGC

• KNEXUS (1997-2000)

PROJECTS AT KGC

• KNEXUS - Steering Committee (1997-2000)

PROJECTS AT KGC

• Drivers of the 21st Century (2001-2002)

PROJECTS AT KGC

• ReVeL (1999-2007)

Susan is fascinated by taking complex narratives, like the story of KGC's growth through the years, and translating them to something approachable without losing the integrity of the original. Her most recent work with the KGC has been the creation of this website.

Susan is a recent graduate from Stanford University, with a Bachelor of Science in Product Design. She has been a part of KGC since 2009, when she participated as an undergraduate research scholar in co-designing improvements to the traditional handloom with weavers in Andhra Pradesh, India.

PROJECTS AT KGC

• Communicating with Integrity (Ongoing)
• REALM (Ongoing)
• Sustainability of Future Self (Ongoing)