GRATITUDE

for the

FOUNDERS

  • ADE MABOGUNJE

    "At the turn of the century [George Kozmetsky] had this idea of creating shared global prosperity in zero time. How could it be done? What would it take to do it? [...] Through the challenge and generosity of George, and the Kozmetsky family, we have been able to develop some of these ideas, learn from others, share our knowledge more broadly, and train the next generation of scholars to understand and appreciate this idea and to always see the bigger picture."

  • CHRISTOPHER HAN

    "KGC has become a gathering place for scholars who are able to exchange ideas, help each other to think critically and creatively, and imagine the future they wish to create. [...] I believe KGC is a concrete step towards the vision of global co-prosperity - one that all of its members share."

  • IDRISS ABERKANE

    "The KGC's organization was reflecting what the American national, historical and cultural identity had at its very best: the exemplary teaming of very diverse giftedness into a structure from which leadership and ground-breaking novelty emerge without being directed from the beginning. [...] In the KGC I see a treasure for humanity."

  • BHAVNA HARIHARAN

    "It is not easy to undertake complex tasks such as the creation of shared global prosperity. It is even harder when the projects and inputs from the field challenge existing paradigms of research. Without the freedom afforded by [George Kozmetsky's] generosity, this journey may not have been possible."

  • RAM NIDUMOLU

    "The impact [of the scholars at KGC] is derived from leading by example, i.e. by the way in which they live, work, and convey a message of scholarship, collaboration and community, rather than by prescriptive pedagogies. [...] The world is sorely in need of the creative, kind and impactful work that the KGC is doing."

  • COLLEEN SAXEN

    "KGC is a space where each scholar collaborates within and with others 'to become who you are,' as Nietzsche says. In this sense, prosperity emerges within first and research is a joyful practice of everyday life. It became clear to me that I cannot create peace and prosperity in the world, without cultivating these experiences within. [...] The inner learing and transformation that took part in subsequent years is a gift that I truly cannot imagine my life without and a gift I am committed to passing on."

  • TEA LEMPIÄLÄ

    "KGC is an extraordinary community in many ways, but what has impressed me the most is its ability to create engagement, mindfulness and shared perspectives among people from very diverging perspectives. Also, the ability to create an environment where participants can discuss and improve the rigor of their scholarly efforts as well as develop themselves as human beings is truly exceptional."

  • SYED SHARIQ

    "The Kozmetsky family's gift offered me a rare opportunity for bringing together an exceptional group of scholars and students at Stanford to create a trans-disciplinary research community at KGC. It gave me complete intellectual freedom to carry forward fundamental research on the development of approaches for creating shared prosperity in our divided world."

  • V. BALAJI

    "The vision of shared prosperity that the KGC seeks to harness in support of human development is a source of inspiration for workers from all over the world. Its efforts to nurture talent and the spirit of enterprise in the service of human-centered and values-based development will create a lasting legacy."

  • KERSTIN FISCHER

    "I experience KGC as a very special place in which I, as a person and a researcher, become whole and at the same time, part of the global community. I am very grateful for the space that KGC provides for open, non-judgmental, holistic research into humanity."

  • NARASIMHA REDDY

    "Upon reflection and research about KGC's mission, it became clear to me their approach in addressing the current needs of the global society were exciting and sustainable. As we started collaborating, I could see the deeper philosophy, which is appropriate to bring the last person (as Mahatma Gandhi said) on par with the current realities of living. [...] I hope the Kozmetsky Global Collaboratory will continue to grow, and I have hopes of it making a difference to the vulnerable and marginalized communities across the world."

  • LOUISE NIELSEN

    "During my stay as a 'visiting researcher' at Stanford Center for Design Research, I was lucky to be invited to participate in the activities in the Kozmetsky Global Collaboratory. [...] It helped me to find my feet in the world of research as well as to incorporate my personal passion in the work I do. [...] I wish that all scholars could have that opportunity."

  • JEAN-YVES HEURTEBISE

    "The first encounter with this open, creative and challenging environment was one of the best, most stimulating experiences not only of my research career but also of my intellectual life. [...] KGC is for me an oasis in the desert."

  • JIM PELKEY

    "To simply reflect on the great learning and growth that has touched everyone who has participated [in KGC] is awe-inspiring. My objective during my association with KGC was to learn how to share the business plan incubation process with entrepreneurs around the world thus strengthening the growth and change in global outreach. This can be best seen especially within the great emerging economy and culture of India. It is in India, where the use of digital technology in the hands of students to capture narratives and stories, and hence myths and meaning, provides guidance to the urban world. The sharing of narrative has a positive influence whose benefit will unfold for generations to come."

  • PRIYA NATARAJAN

    "During the time I was involved with the [KGC], I saw the possibility of change at the grassroots level. [...] The perspective I gained during this time focused on the importance of building relationships and 'being the change I wish to see.'"

  • D. GANESH

    "My participation in the Kozmetsky Global Collaboratory Co-DiViNE project is like a tattoo mark in my heart. The magical phrase of 'visual literacy' opened a path for me. [...] This work lead me to question why a particular community has difficulties. What prevailed is all individuals have their own talents within them yet, with the unavailability of an external symbolic system, these talents are not seen."

  • BEN SHAW

    "I shall never forget the great honor and pleasure of having lunch with Dr. Kozmetsky in Santa Monica in 2002. [...] Dr. Kozmetsky challenged me (as he had done to each of us) to think about my project at once more deeply and more grandly than I had thought to do before. It was at that table, waiting for my turn to tell George about my work, that the notion of my mission as being one of helping groups of people 'become more than the sum of their parts' took shape."

  • PAUL RANKIN

    "I was privileged to be present at the founding of the KGC Family Center. [...] Representing Philips Electronics in 2002, I quoted H. de Bruin, VP Philips International, 'Philips is enthusiastic about the proposed KGC Family Center. We think it could provide a unique incubator, tapping into the full range of knowledge in Stanford University coupled with the development agencies and contacts in Silicon Valley. KGC promises an environment where the new venturing models we need can be brought rapidly to fruition.' [...] This expectation truly has been surpassed."

  • SUDHAKAR REDDY

    "I was brought into the family of Kozmetsky Global Collaboratory through a project named Co-DiViNE (Community Digital Visual and Voice Narrative Enactment) which aimed at creation and acceleration of prosperity through introduction of visual narrative literacy by converging technologies for the perpetual self-sustainability of the chronically poor. Deliberations, interactions, and sharing of ideas during the course of the project not only immensely enriched my knowledge but also challenged me to look for alternative methodologies."

  • RAJESWARI RAO PINGALI

    "To be able to share with people, who understand that perspective is a gift and camaraderie results in peace for the person who is involved shows me how fortunate I am for this gift of KGC. [...] There is power of collective knowledge and wisdom, and that is what social development is all about."

  • MALTE JUNG

    "It was at KGC where I met people who are committed to do what they are passionate about. [...] The support of the KGC community encouraged me to not only follow my research but expand it in unexpected, yet exciting ways. [...] They have pushed me to think about impacting the world at a scale I had not thought about before."

  • SUNDER RAMKUMAR

    "KGC offered an incredible opportunity to study sustainable ventures and actually chip away at a goal of creating shared global prosperity in a tangible and practical fashion."

  • JON JOHANSEN

    "The way people talk about things influences how they act. That was my main research topic when I came to KGC as a visiting research in 2005. People can learn to understand how they are influenced by even subtle changes in the way they perceive the world, and this can be used to create prosperity and quality of life. That was my main research topic when I left KGC in 2006."

  • VERONA FONTE

    "By using both objective and subjective research methodologies, the Kozmetsky Global Collaboratory has enabled its work to impact multiple disciplines in innovative and experimental ways that has certainly added to the body of knowledge of how the world can work in ways that benefit others."

  • JOHN CHACHERE

    "I am deeply grateful for the Kozmetsky Research Fellowship I received at Stanford. The Fellowship enabled my research on Integrated Concurrent Engineering to produce significant research contributions and to jumpstart an influential trend in the Architecture, Engineering, and Construction industry."

  • SUSAN MADDOX

    "The mission of Friends of the Future is to create trust and harmony among the diverse cultures of Hawai'i through a process where all people can openly contribute their deepest values, create shared visions and continuously improve their communities. Spending time with [scholars at KGC] has forever altered my perspective, both of my life's purpose and of Friends of the Future's work."

  • ERICA ROBLES

    "As a scholar of media spaces and the architectural forms for collective experience and contemporary social life, I cannot thank KGC enough. I first began puzzling through the connections between spaces, processes, and that sense of being part of a shared experience in the context of the Real Time Venture Design Laboratory and this early work was formative in my scholarship and practice."

  • AKSHAY RAJWADE

    "I had the opportunity to participate in in-depth qualitative research for the first time at KGC. I believe that the frameworks and principles that I learned significantly assisted my thinking today and have provided me a valuable holistic perspective to problem solving. [...] Being a part of the KGC community has been a very rewarding and nurturing experience for me."

  • KANAKA DURGA

    "The KGC's vision of social inclusion cutting across the Occident and the Orient cultures towards global prosperity is worthy of praise as it did not leave even the poorest of the poor from reaping the fruits of prosperity."

  • SCOTT BRAVE

    "KGC has provided me with some amazing and life-changing experiences, including the opportunity of presenting my research on trust to delegates from Israel and Palestine at a conference devoted to water rights."

  • C.N. PARAMASIVAN

    "The interactions I have had with my colleagues in KGC enabled me to discover my own potential from the inner core of my personality and utilize the same in motivating and energizing the members of SMILE [Selfless Movement Improving Life Everywhere] in translating their intentions into concrete action plans for the beneficiaries."

  • N. LALITHA

    "The experience with KGC serves as a guiding spirit for my current and future research with pre-literate communities and to work for their transformation and empowerment."

  • NEERAJ SONALKAR

    "The Real-Time Ventures Lab and the Center for Everything, two projects within KGC, emphasized alignment between the personal values of an entrepreneur or a scholar, and the venture that is undertaken in a community. KGC encouraged me to follow my passion in improvisation and design to create a unique doctoral program in engineering that combined performing arts, improvisation and engineering design research. KGC's objective to create shared global prosperity validated my desire to work towards the alleviation of poverty that I had seen around me in Mumbai. For the first time, doing my research was no longer dissociated from the broader vision of creating a tangibly prosperous world."

  • MARK NELSON

    "These interactions [between scholars at KGC] have led to greater rigor, as we have had to explain and prove the value of our work to those beyond our fields, methods, perspectives, and tools of inquiry from other disciplines, a profoundly fruitful multidisciplinary approach to inquiry and exploration, time and space for deep, collaborative reflection and a place and various ways to reunite our deepest personal motivations with our work. I have experienced all of this at levels that [...] none of us have ever encountered in any other working environment."

  • CLIFFORD NASS

    "In the highest compliment I can give an academic (and George was an academic among his many other aspects of his life): he changed the way that I look at the world."

  • MANI KANDAN

    "My association with KGC and the Co-DiViNE Project has given me an important insight, which is the realization of the undercurrent of narratives that is at play within human life."

  • BIANCA MORALES

    "The KGC provides an open space for the exchange of knowledge and ideas, and its collaborative practice has brought many students across disciplines together to engage one another in a shared vision of a more equitable and prosperous future."

  • TENDAYI VIKI

    "At KGC, I have learned how to connect my research work to my daily practices and ethics. This process has uplifted my spirit and given me a new passion for research. My interest in finding ways to achieve successful, multicultural collaboration emerged via the affordances provided by the KGC."

Bhavna Hariharan

BHAVNA HARIHARAN

Research Program Manager, KGC,
Social Science Research Associate, School of Humanities and Sciences, Stanford University
Lecturer, Mechanical Engineering, Stanford University

bhavnah [at] stanford [dot] edu

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


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

Jennifer Keller

JENNIFER KELLER

Senior Research Scholar, Department of Psychiatry, Stanford University

jkeller [at] stanford [dot] edu

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

Tea Lempiala

TEA LEMPIÄLÄ

Project Manager, Innovation Management Institute, Aalto University, Aalto, Finland

tea [dot] lempiala [at] gmail [dot] com

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


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

Ram Nidumolu

RAM NIDUMOLU

Founder and CEO, InnovaStrat, Inc.

rnidumolu [at] gmail [dot] com

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

Colleen Saxen

COLLEEN SAXEN

Public Health, Wright State University

cqsaxen [at] stanford [dot] edu

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

Syed Shariq

SYED SHARIQ

Kozmetsky Senior Research Scholar, Stanford University,
Founding Co-Chair, KGC (2003-present),
Director of the Research Program on Knowledge, Beliefs and Institutions

sshariq [at] stanford [dot] edu

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

Neeraj Sonalkar

NEERAJ SONALKAR

Research Associate, Department of Mechanical Engineering - Design, Stanford University

sonalkar [at] stanford [dot] edu

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


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

Cheri Anderson

CHERI ANDERSON

Research Director, Values and Lifestyles Program, Strategic Business Insights, Menlo Park, CA

PROJECTS AT KGC

Resmi Arjunpillai

RESMI ARJUNAPILLAI

VP of Marketing at Founder Labs
Sr. Product Marketing Manager at Box.net

PROJECTS AT KGC

Mie Augier

MIE AUGIER

Social Science Research Associate at Stanford University and Research Associate Professor at the Naval Postgraduate School

PROJECTS AT KGC

Barry Blumberg

BARRY BLUMBERG

Founding Director, NASA Astrobiology Institute, Ames Research Center, Mountain View, CA
Nobel Laureate in Physiology or Medicine

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


PROJECTS AT KGC

Per Aage Brandt

PER AAGE BRANDT

Emile B. de Sauzé Professor of Modern Languages & Literatures and Cognitive Science at Case Western Reserve University

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

Scott Brave

SCOTT BRAVE

CTO & Co-Founder at Baynote Inc.

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

Merlin Donald

MERLIN DONALD

Professor (Emeritus), Department of Psychology, Queens University, Canada

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


PROJECTS AT KGC

Marcel Dulay

MARCEL DULAY

PhD Candidate, Natural Resource Policy Studies, LBJ School of Public Affairs, University of Texas at Austin

PROJECTS AT KGC


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

JANINE GIESE-DAVIS

Associate Professor in the Department of Oncology, Division of Psychosocial Oncology, Faculty of Medicine, University of Calgary, Alberta, Canada

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

Satinder Gill

SATINDER GILL

Researcher Affiliate, Centre for Music and Science, University of Cambridge, UK

PROJECTS AT KGC

Christopher Han

CHRISTOPHER HAN

Designer in Residence at AppHaus (SAP Labs)

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


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 Johansen

JON JOHANSEN

Industrial PhD researcher at University of Aarhus and H. Lundbeck A/S

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

Mark Johnson

MARK JOHNSON

Knight Professor of Liberal Arts and Sciences, University of Oregon

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

Malte Jung

MALTE JUNG

Postdoctoral Scholar in Engineering Management Science at Stanford University

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


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

Marie Kobler

MARIE KOBLER

Associate, McDermott Will & Emery LLP

PROJECTS AT KGC

Koh Ming Wei

KOH MING WEI

Sustainability Curriculum Facilitator, Hawaii Preparatory Academy, Waimea, HI

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

George Kozmetsky

GEORGE KOZMETSKY

Murray S. Johnson Chair in Economics (Emeritus), and Former Dean of the College of Business Administration and Graduate School of Business, University of Texas, Austin

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

Ade Mabogunje

ADE MABOGUNJE

Senior Research Scientist in Mechanical Engineering at Stanford University

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

Chrysosotmos Mantzavinos

CHRYSOSTOMOS MANTZAVINOS

Professor of Philosophy of the Social Sciences, University of Athens

Jim March

JIM MARCH

Faculty Co-Chair, KGC,
Jack Steele Parker Professor of International Management (Emeritus), Stanford University

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


PROJECTS AT KGC

Dylan Marks

DYLAN MARKS

PROJECTS AT KGC

Bertin Martens

BERTIN MARTENS

Senior Economist, Institute for Prospective Technological Studies (IPTS), European Commission

PROJECTS AT KGC

Bill Miller

BILL MILLER

Herbert Hoover Professor of Public and Private Management (Emeritus); Professor of Computer Science (Emeritus), and former Provost, Stanford

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


PROJECTS AT KGC

Sheba Najmi

SHEBA NAJMI

Fellow at Code for America


PROJECTS AT KGC

Clifford Nass

CLIFFORD NASS

Thomas M. Storke Professor at Stanford University
Founding Co-Chair of KGC (2003-2010)

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

Mark Nicolson

MARK NICOLSON

Leadership Consultant, Executive Coach, Leadership DNA

PROJECTS AT KGC

Louise Nielsen

LOUISE NIELSEN

Assistent Professor & Researcher, Aalborg University & Copenhagen Living Lab, Denmark

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


DISSERTATION AT KGC

Personal and Shared Experiential Concepts


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

Douglass North

DOUGLASS NORTH

Professor, Department of Economics, Washington University
Nobel Laureate in Economics

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


PROJECTS AT KGC

Woody Powell

WALTER POWELL

Professor of Education, Stanford University

Akshay Rajwade

AKSHAY RAJWADE

Operations Strategy, Google, Inc.

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

Sunder Ramkumar

SUNDER RAMKUMAR

PROJECTS AT KGC

Nathan Rosenberg

NATHAN ROSENBERG

Fairleigh S. Dickinson, Jr. Professor of Public Policy (Emeritus), Economics Department, Stanford University

Ben Shaw

BEN SHAW

Research Staff Member at IBM Research - Almaden

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


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

Michael Sims

MICHAEL SIMS

Research Scientist, Intelligent Systems Division, NASA Ames Research Center

Piya Sorcar

PIYA SORCAR

Founder and CEO, TeachAIDS

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


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

Sri Sridharan

SRI SRIDHARAN

Former Chief Architect for Knowledge Management, Intel Corporation

PROJECTS AT KGC

Abhay Sukumaram

ABHAY SUKUMARAM

Research Assistant at CHIMe Lab, Stanford University
Collaborative Media Designer, Institute for the Future

Mark Turner

MARK TURNER

Institute Professor and Professor of Cognitive Science, Case Western Reserve University

Paul Unruh

PAUL UNRUH

Retired Vice Chairman, Bechtel Group, Inc.

PROJECTS AT KGC

Morten Vendelo

MORTEN THANNING VENDELØ

Associate Professor, Department of Organization, Copenhagen Business School

PROJECTS AT KGC

Michael Wakelin

MICHAEL WAKELIN

Bechtel Fellow (Emeritus),
Co-Chair, KNEXUS Global Fellows Network (Emeritus)

PROJECTS AT KGC

Gavin Wright

GAVIN WRIGHT

William Robertson Coe Professor of American Economic History, Economics Department, Stanford University

Raymond Yeh

RAYMOND YEH

Senior Research Fellow at IC2 Institute at the University of Texas at Austin

Maya Yutsis

MAYA YUTSIS

Department of Psychiatry and Psychology, Mayo Clinic, Rochester, MN

PROJECTS AT KGC

Stacy Fredericksen

STACY FREDERICKSEN

Administrator, KGC,
Administrative Associate, Stewardship, Stanford University

sffred [at] stanford [dot] edu

Stanford Profile

David Beach

DAVID BEACH

Professor of Mechanical Engineering, Stanford University

Larry Leifer

LARRY LEIFER

Director, Center for Design Research, Stanford University

Sheri Sheppard

SHERI SHEPPARD

Co-Director, Center for Design Research, Professor of Mechanical Engineering, Stanford University

James Gross

JAMES GROSS

Professor of Psychology, Stanford University

Pamela Hinds

PAMELA HINDS

Associate Professor, Department of Management Science and Engineering, Stanford University

Ron Howard

RONALD HOWARD

Professor of Management Science and Engineering, Stanford University

Susan Nourse

SUSAN NOURSE

Communications Manager and Research Assistant, KGC

susan [dot] nourse [at] gmail [dot] com

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

Anner Firth Murray

ANNE FIRTH MURRAY

Founding President, The Global Fund for Women
Consulting Professor in Human Biology, Stanford University

SCHOLARS

  • Bhavna Hariharan
  • Jennifer Keller
  • Tea Lempiala
  • Ram Nidumolu
  • Shoots
  • Susan Nourse
  • Colleen Saxen
  • Syed Shariq
  • Neeraj Sonalkar
  • Malte Jung
  • Malte Jung
  • Malte Jung
  • Cheri Anderson/>
  • Resmi Arjunapillai
  • Mie Augier
  • Dr. Balaji
  • Barry Blumberg
  • Per Aage Brandt
  • Scott Brave
  • Roots
  • Merlin Donald
  • Marcel Dulay
  • Janine Giese-Davis
  • Satinder Gill
  • Christopher Han
  • Jon Johansen
  • Mark Johnson
  • Marie Kobler
  • Koh Ming-Wei
  • George Kozmetsky
  • Ade Mabogunje
  • Chris Mantzavino
  • Jim March
  • Dylan Marks
  • Bertin Martens
  • Bill Miller
  • Sheba Najmi
  • Clifford Nass
  • Mark Nicolson
  • Louise Nielsen
  • Douglass North
  • Knut Oxnevad
  • Woody Powell
  • Akshay Rajwade
  • Sunder Ramkumar
  • Nathan Rosenberg
  • Ben Shaw
  • Michael Sims
  • Piya Sorcar
  • Sri Sridharan
  • Abhay Sukumaram
  • Mark Turner
  • Paul Unruh
  • Morten Vendelo
  • Michael Wakelin
  • Gavin Wright
  • Raymond Yeh
  • Maya Yutsis

AFFILIATED SCHOLARS

  • Idriss Aberkane, École Centrale Paris

  • Maxime Bassenne, Stanford University

  • John Chachere, NASA

  • Brinda Dalal, Research Director, Technology Horizons at Institute for the Future

  • Kanaka Durga, Centre for Folk Culture Studies, University of Hyderabad

  • Kerstin Fischer, University of Southern Denmark

  • Helin Gao, Stanford University

  • Thomas George, Vipani

  • Armelle Goreux, Stanford University

  • Jean-Yves Heurtebise, National Dong Hwa University

  • Prachee Jain, Proctor and Gamble, Singapore

  • Parthu Kalva, UCSD

  • Pranav Kawatra, Monta Vista High School, Cupertino, CA

  • N. Lalitha, Gandhigram Rural University

  • Bettina Maisch, Siemens

  • Bianca Morales, Stanford University

  • Hnin Ookhin, Stanford University

  • Brenda Mutuma, Stanford University

  • Sudhakar Reddy, Centre for Folk Culture Studies, University of Hyderabad

  • Erica Robles, New York University

  • Sareen Sandhu, UC San Diego

  • Linsey Shariq, UC Davis

  • Pavita Singh, Yale University

  • Melissa Soto, University of Michigan

  • Agatha Bacelar de Oliveira Stephens, Stanford University

  • Chiara Storari, University of Lausanne

  • Aimeé Uwilingiyimana, Stanford University

  • Tendayi Viki, University of Kent

  • Gabriel Wilson, Stanford University

PARTICIPANTS IN RESEARCH

  • Madhusudan Agarwal, Manav Sadhna

  • Punit Bhavasar, Manav Sadhna

  • Kristal Blacksmith, Hawaii Preparatory Academy

  • Mason Byles, Retired General Manager, Hewlett Packard

  • Harsha Darji, Manav Sadhna

  • Taniea Engel, Hawaii Preparatory Academy

  • Verona Fonte, Iris Arts and Education Group

  • D. Ganesh, Gandhigram Rural University

  • Vineeta Gulati, Global Solutions for Infectious Diseases

  • Jacqueline Housel, Miami University, OH

  • Deepa Iyer, Manav Sadhna

  • Nimisha Jadav, Manav Sadhna

  • Neeta Jadav, Manav Sadhna

  • Malti Jaradi, Manav Sadhna

  • Mani Kandan, The Timbaktu Collective

  • Mehta Lahar, Manav Sadhna

  • Nadia Mufti, Ashoka

  • Priya Natarajan, Next Gen, Energy and Environment Company

  • Mark Nelson, Peace Innovation Lab, Stanford University

  • Swara Pandya, Manav Sadhna

  • C.N. Paramasivan, SMILE

  • Geeta Parmar, Manav Sadhna

  • Jyotsana Parmar, Manav Sadhna

  • Suresh Parmar, Manav Sadhna

  • Jim Pelkey, Independent Investor

  • Leeza Philson, Stanford University Ecology

  • Matt Piercy, Hawaii Preparatory Academy

  • Rajeswari Pingali, Vidal

  • Bhaskar Rao, Manav Sadhna

  • Paul Rankin, Living Cultural Storybases

  • Amanda Rieux, Hawaii Preparatory Academy

  • Mahendra Rathod, Manav Sadhna

  • Narasimha Reddy, Chetana Society

  • Kay Sandberg, Global Force for Healing

  • Stebon Tarnos, Hawaii Preparatory Academy Ecology

  • Nilam Thakkar, Manav Sadhna

  • Ajay Vaghela, Manav Sadhna

  • Richard Van Horn, The Mindset Map

  • Nilam Viradia, Manav Sadhna

  • Tom Wahlrab, City of Dayton, OH

KGC as a research community has grown organically as an interdisciplinary research environment since its inception in 1997. What has become apparent is that the interdisciplinary, interpersonal and institutional relationships have flourished invisibly. In an effort to describe the nature of this network, we draw a metaphor from the work of Professor Suzanne Simard, of the University of British Columbia, whose work has unearthed underground forest networks of fungi that, having developed over many years in a forest ecosystem, transport nutrients between individual trees. She describes her work in the following video:

Accordingly, KGC's current research continues to prosper due to the wealth of collaborative research and supporting relationships that has been growing naturally over the years. We recognize those scholars whose relationships have nurtured us as our "roots," and the current research scholars who are nourished by that community as our "shoots."

LEADERSHIP

Bhavna Hariharan

BHAVNA HARIHARAN

Program Manager and Research Associate

Susan Nourse

SUSAN NOURSE

Communications Manager and Research Assistant

Stacy Fredericksen

STACY FREDERICKSEN

Administrator


Syed Shariq

SYED SHARIQ

Founding Co-Chair


James G. March

JAMES G. MARCH

Faculty Co-Chair


GUIDES

  • Barry Blumberg
  • Merlin Donald
  • George Kozmetsky
  • Senior Faculty
  • Jim March
  • Bill Miller
  • Anne Firth Murray
  • Douglass North
  • Placeholder
  • David Beach
  • James Gross
  • Pamela Hinds
  • Ronald Howard
  • Faculty Dissertation Advisors
  • Larry Leifer
  • Sheri Sheppard
  • Clifford Nass

Over the years, KGC has been fortunate to receive guidance on its research endeavors from many. The Senior Faculty listed here are currently or have previously been formal and informal advisors to the KGC scholars and their projects.

We would like to acknowledge all the faculty members who have been part of the the doctoral dissertation committees of the students at KGC. This part of the website is still being populated.

FOUNDERS

GEORGE AND RONYA KOZMETSKY

“As attitudes, values, and laws change, leaders must be ahead of those changes...They will need the inner strength and flexibility to direct change for the benefit of a balanced, interdependent society. Leaders must be conscious role models for the society...They must be prepared to live according to the ethical and moral principles they profess.”


Ronya and George Kozmetsky



By any measure, George Kozmetsky (1917-2003) was an accomplished entrepreneur and humanitarian. As co-founder of Teledyne, a founder of over 100 other high-tech companies, and former dean of the McCombs School of Business at University of Texas at Austin, he had a life-long commitment to entrepreneurial invention and sharing his knowledge and wealth with others.

Ronya Kozmetsky (1921-2011) was a distinguished community leader and philanthropist. A sociology graduate with a master’s degree in Social Work, she founded Women in Management and was named one of the century’s 100 Most Influential Women by the Texas Women’s Chamber of Commerce. She was always credited by her late husband as a full partner in every aspect of the family’s business dealings.

Through their family foundation, the Kozmetsky family has awarded more than 2000 grants in the areas of education, community development, and healthcare.

Toward the end of his life, George Kozmetsky focused his energy on the widening gap of misunderstanding between the world’s privileged and poor communities. Together, the Kozmetskys funded the KGC to encourage the innovative application of trans-disciplinary “think” and “do” research to accelerate the sharing of global prosperity.

FOUNDING VISION

by Syed Shariq, Founding Co-Chair of KGC


"In many ways, George reminds me of our founder, Leland Stanford, who helped build the transcontinental railroad. [...] [Stanford] was a pragmatist who saw education as a sustainer of economic well being. He argued for the “great advantages, especially to the laboring man, of cooperation, by which each individual has the benefit of the intellectual and physical forces of his associates. It is by the intelligent application of these principles that there will be found the greatest lever to elevate the mass of humanity…” In many ways, Leland Stanford was talking about the principles inherent in the Kozmetsky Global Collaboratory."


Stanford Provost John Etchemendy, at KGC Founding Ceremony
April 22, 2003



"There are some happenings in life for which one never expects to encounter nor finds oneself prepared for. Such was the case with my very first meeting with George, now well over twenty-five years ago. As our hour-long appointment which stretched out for four hours ended, George gave me a hug and said knowingly as only he could, "We will work together for the rest of our lives." I did not know how prescient this statement was! It began an amazing journey with a dear mentor that evolved into becoming a collaborator, friend and a member of my extended family. This journey continues today, well after George's departure in 2003, as I carry forward the vision for the Kozmetsky Global Collaboratory (KGC) that George and Ronya Kozmestsky had help established in 2003: A research endeavor for accelerating the achievement of sustainable shared prosperity for the people across the world and for the generations to come. This had particular importance to George because after 9/11, he came to realize that, without ameliorating the global inequalities in our society, perhaps one day we may face the prospect of a nuclear world war and the end of humanity.

It has been a privilege and honor to be given this joyous opportunity to contribute to KGC by providing continuity to George's vision as Chair of KGC's Organizing Committees (S2C2 and C2S2) along with the inspiring next generation of rising young scholars who are co-founders with me in the next phase of the KGC's evolution, the founding of the Center for Everything as an initiative dedicated to fostering a collaborative community for advancing interdisciplinary field based research inquiries in the real-life settings.

I remain grateful to Stanford University for welcoming and giving KGC a cherished home at Kozmetsky Family Center, and to Professor James G. March [Director (Emeritus) of the Scandinavian Consortium for Organizational Research (SCANCOR) at Stanford University; Jack Steele Parker Professor of International Management (Emeritus); Professor of Political Science (Emeritus); Professor of Sociology (Emeritus); and Professor of Education (Emeritus)] for welcoming me to Stanford University in 1997 and for continuing to be my inspiration and guide in KGC's evolution, to Coit D. Blacker [Director & Senior Fellow at Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies at Stanford University; Olivier Nomellini Professor in International Studies, School of Humanities and Sciences; Olivier Nomellini Family University Fellow in Undergraduate Education] for giving home to the incubation of KGC as the KNEXUS project from 1997-2001, and to Clifford Nass [Thomas M. Storke Professor at Stanford University and Director of the Communication between Humans and Interactive Media (CHIMe) Lab] for serving with me as founding Co-Chair of KGC from 2003-2010."