Dr. Piya Sorcar
Piya Sorcar is the founder and chief executive officer of TeachAIDS. She began the research and development for TeachAIDS in 2005, as part of her graduate work at Stanford University. Today she leads a team of interdisciplinary experts to develop prevention materials that are culturally sensitive to countries around the world. Previously, she was a program advisor for Stanford's Learning, Design & Technology master's program. She has been an invited speaker at numerous universities, including Caltech, Columbia, Yale, Tsinghua, and Utrecht. She holds a Ph.D. in Learning Sciences & Technology Design and International Comparative Education from Stanford University. Full Bio
Dr. Clifford Nass
Clifford Nass is the Thomas M. Storke Professor at Stanford University, with appointments in communication, computer science, education, and sociology. He is also director of the Communication between Humans and Interactive Media Lab, co-director of the Kozmetsky Global Collaboratory. He is author of three books – The Media Equation, Wired for Speech, and The Man Who Lied to His Laptop (forthcoming in 2010) – and over 125 papers on social-psychological aspects of human-technology interaction and non-parametric statistics. He is the creator of the Computers Are Social Actors paradigm. He holds a Ph.D. in Sociology from Princeton University.
Shuman Ghosemajumder
Shuman Ghosemajumder is a founding board member of TeachAIDS and joined as Executive Advisor in 2010. He previously led product management for Trust & Safety at Google, protecting their $20+ billion annual revenue advertising businesses. He joined Google in 2003 as one of the early product managers for AdSense and helped grow that business to over $2 billion in annual revenue. He also led the launch and growth of a new advertising product to a $100 million annual run rate in nine months, and helped launch Gmail. Prior to Google, he worked at IBM and McKinsey & Co., and co-founded a software startup. He holds an M.B.A. from the MIT Sloan School of Management.
Casey W. Halladay
Casey W. Halladay is an international business attorney with McMillan LLP in Toronto, Canada, whose practice focuses on cross-border transactions, foreign investment, competition law and antitrust. He has represented clients in proceedings before courts and regulatory agencies in the European Union, United Kingdom, United States and Canada. He is admitted to practice in New York State, England and Wales, and Ontario, Canada, and is a graduate of the University of Western Ontario, the University of Ottawa Law School and Harvard Law School.
Ashwini Doshi
Ashwini Doshi is a senior consultant with the Enterprise Risk Services practice at Deloitte in New York City, where she manages several clients in the financial services sector. Working in information systems, business controls, and risk management in the financial services and commercial industries, she helps build control frameworks and reviews business processes to evaluate risks of financial statements and information systems for her clients. She was previously a content editor at the Stanford Technology Ventures Program and co-founded and taught a graduate course on social venture development at Stanford. She holds an M.S. in Management Science & Engineering from Stanford University.
Anne Firth Murray
Anne Firth Murray is the founder of the Global Fund for Women, a grant-making foundation that has distributed over $61 million for advancing the rights of women and girls in 167 countries. She is the author of two books: From Outrage to Courage: Women Taking Action for Health and Justice and Paradigm Found: Leading and Managing for Positive Change. She has served on the boards of numerous organizations, including the African Women's Development Fund, and as the chair of the Global Justice Center. In 2005, she was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize as a member of a group of women dedicated to social justice and peace.
Mahesh Bhatt
Winner of the National Film Award, the most prestigious film award in India, Mahesh Bhatt is a prominent film director, producer, and screenwriter. Bhatt is known for his unconventional style of filmmaking and his unique depiction of subjects, which reflect many of his experiences in life. In the 1970's, he became a follower of Osho Rajneesh, and later found spiritual companionship and guidance with philosopher, U.G. Krishnamurti, whose biography Bhatt wrote in 1992 as U.G. Krishnamurti: A Life. His latest book, A Taste of Life: The Last Days of U.G. Krishnamurti, was published in June 2009.
Akkineni Nagarjuna
Having starred in over 75 films, Akkineni Nagarjuna is one of the most prominent actors, directors, and producers in the Telugu film industry, with an audience of 75 million people. Through the National Film Awards, Nandi Awards, and Filmfare Awards, Nagarjuna has been honored for his artistic excellence by the Indian government, film critics, and the general public. Always propagating quality cinema with fresh entertainment, Nagarjuna has set precedents that have won him a permanent place in the hearts of millions.
Dr. Douglas K. Owens
Douglas K. Owens is director of the Stanford-UCSF Evidence-based Practice Center, a Professor of Medicine (General Internal Medicine) at the Stanford University School of Medicine, and a core faculty member at the Stanford Center for Health Policy and Center for Primary Care and Outcomes Research. He chairs the Clinical Efficacy Assessment Subcommittee (CEAS) for the American College of Physicians. His research focuses on preventive and therapeutic interventions for various illnesses, including HIV/AIDS.
Nimmagadda Prasad
Nimmagadda Prasad is the Founder of Matrix Laboratories, a Hyderabad, India-based pharmaceutical company. With rich professional experience, Prasad acquired a pharmaceutical company that was on the verge of bankruptcy in 2000 and rechristened it as Matrix Laboratories. With his dynamic entrepreneurial initiatives, Prasad transformed Matrix into one of India's major pharmaceutical companies in just six years. Matrix is now a part of Mylan, the world's third-largest generic pharmaceutical company. Matrix launched "Project Hope" in 2003 to develop cost-effective medicines for HIV/AIDS treatment. On the back of its R&D breakthroughs, Matrix signed two historic agreements with the Clinton Foundation through their Clinton HIV/AIDS Initiative (CHAI). Matrix currently provides medication to about 35% of HIV/AIDS patients in the developing world. Prasad created and funded the Nimmagadda Foundation to support institutions that work in facilitating healthcare, education and empowerment. He serves on the Executive Board of the Indian School of Business (ISB) and is associated with several other academic and research organizations.
Dr. Eran Bendavid, Medical Advisor
Eran Bendavid is an Instructor in the Department of Medicine and an affiliate at the Center for Health Policy at Stanford University. He is an infectious diseases physician with wide-ranging interests related to HIV and global health. In his day to day work, Eran explores the economic, political, and medical conditions that can lead to improved health in developing countries. A graduate of Dartmouth College and Harvard Medical School, Eran recently completed his residency and fellowship at Stanford Medical School, where he now cares for patients with HIV and related conditions. Eran has ongoing projects in South Africa, Rwanda, and Uganda.
Dr. Terrance Blaschke, Medical Advisor
Terrance Blaschke is Professor Emeritus of Clinical Pharmacology at Stanford University School of Medicine. His research examines the clinical pharmacology of drugs used with HIV-infected patients. His research focuses on the quality of antiretroviral drugs in less developed countries and the ability of patients' to access drugs. In addition, Dr. Blaschke works in Eldoret, Kenya with AMPATH, a comprehensive initiative to build the public sector's HIV prevention and treatment capacity in urban and rural settings. He also serves on the Board of Directors at the Durect Corporation and consults for the Guthy-Jackson Charitable Foundation and Repoint Bio.
He holds an M.D. from Columbia University.
Dr. Martin Carnoy, Education Advisor
Martin Carnoy is the Vida Jacks Professor of Education and Economics at Stanford University. He writes on the economic value of education, on the underlying political economy of educational policy, and on the financing and resource allocation aspects of educational production. Much of his work is comparative and international and investigates the impact of global economic and social change on the way educational systems are organized. He is the author of numerous books including, Sustaining the New Economy: Work, Family and Community in the Information Age (Harvard, 2000), The Charter School Dust-Up (co-author, 2005); Cuba's Academic Advantage (2007), and Vouchers and Public School Performance (2007). He holds a Ph.D. in economics from the University of Chicago.
Dr. Rafiq Dossani, South Asia Expert
Rafiq Dossani is a Senior Research Scholar at the Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center and the Director of the Center for South Asia at Stanford. His research interests include South Asian security as well as financial, technology, and energy-sector reform in India and is undertaking projects on regional integration, innovation in outsourcing, engineering education, access to capital, and entrepreneurship in information technology in the South Asian subcontinent. His three most recent books include India Arriving, Prospects for Peace in South Asia, and Telecommunications Reform in India. He holds a B.A. in economics from St. Stephen's College, New Delhi, India; an M.B.A. from the Indian Institute of Management, Calcutta, India; and a Ph.D. in finance from Northwestern University.
Dr. Shelley Goldman, Learning Sciences and Technology Advisor
Shelley Goldman is a Professor of Learning Sciences & Technology Design at the School of Education at Stanford University. Her interest in educational anthropology drives her research on real-world contexts of learning. She was the co-director of the multi-year Dunia Moja project, which studied the efficacy of state-of-the-art mobile phone technology in Uganda, South Africa, and Tanzania to teach environmental science course materials via mobile technologies. She is currently a principal investigator for the Stanford Education for Global HIV/AIDS, Infectious Disease, and Epidemics project. She holds an Ed.D. from Columbia University.
Wylie Greig, Nonprofit Advisor
Wylie Greig is President of One World Children's Fund where he focuses on its internal organization and operations. His interest in grassroots economic and social development began as a volunteer for the Peace Corps in India during 1966-68. He also worked for CARE, Inc. stationed in India, Afghanistan and Jordan. He retired from Deutsche Bank in 2006 as a Managing Director of Real Estate Infrastructure and Private Equity, its global real estate management arm. He currently advises international and domestic real estate investment management businesses. He holds a Masters degree in City Planning from the University of Pennsylvania and an M.B.A. from the Wharton School.
Dr. Seble Kassaye, Medical Advisor
Seble Kassaye is trained in Internal Medicine, Pediatrics, Infectious Diseases, and Epidemiology. Her research interests include issues related to mother-to-child transmission, HIV prevention, drug resistance, and the monitoring of HIV treatment. She has worked as an instructor of Infectious Diseases and Geographic Medicine at Stanford University and has practiced medicine as an Infectious Diseases physician at Stanford Hospital and the San Mateo County Medical Center. She is now working as a Senior Research Officer at the Elizabeth Glaser Pediatric AIDS Foundation. She received her M.S. in Epidemiology from Stanford University and her M.D. from the University of Chicago.
Dr. David Katzenstein, Medical Advisor
David Katzenstein is a Professor of Infectious Diseases at the Stanford School of Medicine. He co-founded and is currently the Principal Investigator of the Zimbabwe AIDS Prevention Project, a community-based research organization. He conducts HIV-related research throughout the United States, Africa, and Asia. His recent laboratory and clinical efforts span the AIDS Clinical Trials Group and HIV Prevention Trials Network. He is focused on prevention of viral evolution, mother-to-child-transmission, and drug resistance in the context of scaling-up antiretroviral drug treatment for AIDS in Africa and Asia.
He holds an M.D. from the University of California San Diego School of Medicine.
Dr. Paul Kim, Education Advisor
Paul Kim is Assistant Dean of the Stanford University School of Education. He has been leading various academic technology initiatives and teaching graduate level courses related to learning technology and digital innovations at Stanford since 2001. His courses focus on contextualized innovations in education, mobile empowerment design, and enterprising higher education systems. He is currently one of leading researchers for Programmable Open Mobile Internet, an National Science Foundation project to develop and evaluate wireless mobile computing and interactive systems for K-20 learning and assessment scenarios. He received his Ph.D. in Educational Technology from the University of Southern California.
Dr. Cheryl Koopman, Psychological and Behavioral Studies Advisor
Cheryl Koopman is Associate Research Professor in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at Stanford University. She has numerous publications focused on psychological consequences of highly stressful events and on evaluating the effects of educational and mental health interventions. Her research emphasizes HIV-related attitudes, risk behavior, and quality of life among gay and runaway adolescents, HIV-positive men and women, and others in numerous countries, including India, China, Haiti, Botswana, Kenya, South Africa, and Malawi.
She holds a Ph.D. in educational psychology from the University of Virginia.
Marie Kagaju Laugharn, Africa Expert
Marie Kagaju Kagaju Laugharn is a member of the Seeds of Empowerment at Stanford University's School of Education. The project is dedicated to adapting technological advances for international development. While at Stanford, Laugharn also lectures on governance and HIV/AIDS in Africa. Previously, she worked as a Political Affairs Officer at the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons at The Haguge, Netherlands. At the United Nations Development Programme in Mali, Laugharn managed projects on governance, elections, and peace-building. She received her M.A. in English from the Université Nationale du Rwanda and her Bachelor of Arts in Economics from Lycée Notre Dame de Citeaux in Kigali, Rwanda.
Dr. Roy Pea, Learning Sciences and Technology Advisor
Roy Pea is David Jacks Professor of Education and the Learning Sciences at Stanford University, Co-PI of the LIFE Center and Co-Director of the Human Sciences and Technologies Advanced Research (H-STAR) Institute. He has published widely on K-12 learning and education, especially in science, math and technology, fostered by advanced technologies including scientific visualization, on-line communities, digital video collaboratories and mobile computers. He is co-author of the 2010 National Education Technology Plan for the US Department of Education. In 2004-2005, he was President of the International Society for the Learning Sciences. He also served from 1999-2009 as a Director for Teachscape, a company he co-founded with CEO Mark Atkinson that provides comprehensive K-12 teacher professional development services incorporating web-based video case studies of standards-based teaching and communities of learners. He received his doctorate in developmental psychology from Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar.
Dr. Joel Samoff, Africa Expert
Joel Samoff is an experienced educator, researcher, and evaluator, with a background in history, political science, and education. He researches and teaches about education and development at Stanford University. Concerned with public policy as well as research, and especially with the links between them, Samoff works regularly with international agencies involved in African education. He has served as the principal adviser for the Joint Evaluation of External Support to Basic Education. He is the North America Editor of the International Journal of Educational Development and serves on the Advisory Boards of the Comparative Education Review and Development and Change.
Dr. Tina Seelig, Nonprofit Advisor
Tina Seelig is the Executive Director for the Stanford Technology Ventures Program. She teaches courses on creativity, innovation, and entrepreneurship in the Management Science and Engineering department, and within the Hasso Plattner Institute of Design at Stanford. Tina has won several awards, including the 2009 Gordon Prize from the National Academy of Engineering, recognizing her as a national leader in engineering educational. Her latest book is titled What I Wish I Knew When I Was 20: A Crash Course on Making Your Place in the World. Tina has a Ph.D. from Stanford University Medical School where she studied Neuroscience.
Dr. Robert Siegel, Curriculum Advisor
Robert Siegel is an Associate Professor (Teaching) of Microbiology & Immunology and Co-director of International Health Scholarly Concentration. His research explores medical education and curriculum development, particularly areas pertaining to infectious disease, virology, HIV, and molecular biology. His projects include the production of electronic applications to science education, three dimensional model building, service learning, and the development of undergraduate research projects. He has received many awards and honors for his dedication to research and teaching. He has a Ph.D. in Molecular Biology from the University of Colorado at Boulder and an M.D. from Stanford University.
Dr. Randall Stafford, Medical Advisor
Randall Stafford is an Associate Professor of Medicine and the Director of the Program on Prevention Outcomes and Practices at Stanford University. He is trained in both Internal Medicine and Epidemiology. Before coming to Stanford in 2001, he was on the faculty of Harvard University and Massachusetts General Hospital. His research focuses on: 1) evaluating the quality and cost-effectiveness of how chronic disease medications are used, 2) conducting randomized clinical trials testing the efficacy of online prevention tools and nurse case-management, and 3) performing comparative effectiveness research, including the formulation of related health care policy.
Dr. Timothy K. Stanton, Africa Expert
Timothy K. Stanton, Ph.D., serves as Director of the Public Service Medical Scholars Program (PriSMS) and Stanford University's Bing Overseas Studies Program in Cape Town. Furthermore, as Lecturer in Health Research Policy in the School of Medicine at Stanford, he focuses on public decision-making in local areas and the process and practice of community service. He also consults extensively in service-learning program development and assessment for organizations such as the National Commission on Resources for Youth, U.S. Department of Education, and Campus Compact. Stanton's current research interests focus on student and faculty development related to service-learning.
Dr. Young Sung Lee, Asia Expert
Young Sung Lee, M.D., Ph.D., has been leading the Korean Medical Research Information Center, a Ministry of Education, Science and Technology funded organization, focusing on R&D in medical informatics, Virtual Reality-based medical training, and health communication and promotion policies and programs. Dr. Lee is Professor of College of Medicine at Chungbuk National University and was a visiting scholar at Stanford University Medical Media and Information Technology. He has led many global health literacy initiatives covering diseases such as AIDS, Avian Influenza, cancer, and other diseases. He is a member of the Committee on Cutting-edge Converging and Interdisciplinary Technologies, National Science and Technology Council, the Nation's highest decision-making body on science and technology policies under the President of Republic of Korea.
Dr. Lucy Thairu, Africa Expert
Lucy Thairu is a postdoctoral fellow in the Division of Infectious Disease at Stanford University School of Medicine. Based on field studies in various countries in Africa, her research has emphasized the relevance of the social and economic context for the prevention of mother-to-child transmission of HIV/AIDS. Dr. Thairu has partnered with the WHO, UNICEF, and PATH to address global health needs. She was previously an Interim Associate Director at the Center for African Studies at Stanford University. After high school in Kenya, she studied Biochemistry in Nantes, France and received her Ph.D. in International Nutrition from Cornell University.
Kieu Thi Tran, Creative Director
Kieu Thi Tran is a researcher with Stanford's Programmable Open Mobile Internet Initiative, funded by the National Science Foundation's Expeditions in Computing Program. A former Rosberg/Geist Fellow, with an extensive background in global HIV/AIDS policies, she has conducted field research in Sierra Leone on issues of child soldiers. She has also assisted nonprofits and political organizations with large-scale fundraising and outreach efforts at Mal Warwick Associates. She holds a B.A. with honors in Peace and Conflict Studies from the University of California, Berkeley and an M.A. in International Comparative Education from Stanford University.
Dr. Decker Walker, Education Advisor
Decker Walker is a Professor Emeritus at Stanford University School of Education. His work focuses on technology-based education programs and practices. In particular, he examines the ways in which technology can improve material and program design to foster authentic, adventurous teaching. He has co-author several books, been a contributing author in various texts, and written numerous articles. His book Fundamentals of Curriculum is a rigorous examination of curriculum theory, research, and practice in American schools and classrooms. He received his B.S. in Physics and M.A. in Natural Science from Carnegie Mellon University and completed his Ph.D. in Education at Stanford University.
