Staff
Berners-Lee, Tim
3Com Founders Professor of Engineering, MIT
Director, Decentralized Information Group (DIG), CSAIL, MIT
Professor, Electronics and Computer Science Department, University of Southampton, UK
A graduate of Oxford University, England, in 1989, Tim Berners-Lee invented the World Wide Web, an internet-based hypermedia initiative for global information sharing while at CERN, the European Particle Physics Laboratory. He wrote the first web client and server in 1990. His specifications of URIs, HTTP and HTML were refined as Web technology spread.
He is the Director of the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), a Web standards organization founded in 1994 which develops interoperable technologies (specifications, guidelines, software, and tools) to lead the Web to its full potential. He is a founding Director of the Web Science Trust (WST) launched in 2009 to promote research and educaton in Web Science, the multidisciplinary study of humanity connected by technology.
He is also a Director of the World Wide Web Foundation, launched in 2009 to fund and coordinate efforts to further the potential of the Web to benefit humanity.
In 2001 he became a Fellow of the Royal Society. He has been the recipient of several international awards including the Japan Prize, the Prince of Asturias Foundation Prize, the Millennium Technology Prize and Germany's Die Quadriga award. In 2004 he was knighted by H.M. Queen Elizabeth and in 2007 he was awarded the Order of Merit. In 2009 he was elected a foreign associate of the National Academy of Sciences. He is the author of "Weaving the Web".
In June 2009 Prime Minister Gordon Brown announced Sir Tim will work with the UK Government to help make data more open and accessible on the Web, building on the work of the Power of Information Task Force.
Kagal, Lalana
Deputy Director, Decentralized Information Group (DIG)
Lalana Kagal is a Research Scientist at the MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, the Deputy Director of the Decentralized Information Group, and a Fellow of the Web Science Research Institute (WSRI). She has over 12 years of research experience in policy languages and frameworks, knowledge representation, intelligent agents, and security and privacy in distributed information systems. She has authored over 55 refereed publications. She earned her PhD and MS degrees in Computer Science from the University of Maryland, Baltimore County.
Rae, Katie
Managing Director, Project 11
Katie Rae is a founder of Project 11, a firm that invests in and assists early-stage startups.
Katie specializes in rapid product development and customer growth strategies for Internet businesses that scale.
She has spent her career building significant Internet businesses in the community, self-publishing and search space. Most recently she was the head of Product for Microsoft Startup Labs, an early stage product development lab focused on collaboration, location-based services and social applications, where concepts were tested for consumer enthusiasm. Before that she was SVP of Product at Eons, a business focused on new products for 50+ community. Katie pioneered early freemium business models at Lycos for the Tripod and Angelfire communities. She learned the ropes of product and business development at Zip2 and Mirror Worlds.
She holds an MBA from Yale University and a BA in Biology from Oberlin College.
Sturtevant, Reed
Managing Director, Project 11
Reed has successfully sparked an array of entrepreneurial ventures. He is co-founder of Project 11, a firm that invests in and assists early-stage startups.
Reed was recently founding Director of Microsoft Startup Labs. Before that, he was Chief Technology Officer of EONS, Inc., Managing Director and Vice President of Technology for Idealab, where he helped found several companies including Picasa and Compete, and prior to Idealab Reed was co-founder of Radnet and RadioAMP.
He began his career as architect and designer of Freelance Graphics, the best selling presentation package acquired by Lotus Development in 1986. Reed was an innovative force at Lotus where he served as a key member of the senior technical staff and launched many products including InterNotes, Lotus' first web product.
Reed is a founding trustee of The Awesome Foundation.
Waterman, K. Krasnow
Visiting Fellow, DIG, CSAIL, MIT
CEO, LawTechIntersect, LLC
K. Krasnow Waterman has had dual careers in technology management and the practice of law. She worked as a Chief Information Officer, Chief Operations executive, and Attorney (in-house advisor and trial counsel). She now divides her time between research on web-scale, policy-aware, accountable systems as a Visiting Fellow at the MIT Computer Science & Artificial Intelligence Lab and work as a private consultant, primarily in enterprise architecture, privilege management, information retrieval, and technology policy. K was an MIT Sloan Fellow, earned her law degree at Cardozo School of Law, and her BA at the University of Pennsylvania.
Teaching Assistant
Jacobi, Ian
Ph.D. Candidate, DIG, CSAIL
Ian joined MIT in 2008, after earning his B.S. in Computer Science at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. His research interests include linked open data and reasoning on the web.
Guest Lecturers
Anderson, Howard
Porter (1967) Senior Lecturer of Entrepreneurship
Senior Lecturer, MIT Entrepreneurship Center
Howard Anderson is the founder of The Yankee Group and the Co-Founder of Battery Venture Capital. At MIT, he teaches 15.390 New Enterprises, 15.398 Companies at the Crossroads, 15.386 Managing in Adversity and 15.387 High Technology Sales and Sales Management.
He sits on several high technology boards in the communications, computing, and advanced materials industries. He recently was voted on of the top 25 people in the communications industry by Network World. His commentary can often be read in such publications as The Wall Street Journal, Forbes Magazine and Technology Investor.
Corlosquet, Stéphane
Drupal for RDF (Tools Demonstration)
Software Engineer, MassGeneral Institute for Neurodegenerative Disease, MGH.
Stéphane Corlosquet has been the main driving force in incorporating Semantic Web capabilities into the Drupal CMS. His RDF CCK and evoc modules for Drupal 6 have naturally evolved to be accepted as standard within the core of the upcoming Drupal 7. He co-authored the ISWC 2009 "Best Semantic Web In Use Paper" titled Produce and Consume Linked Data with Drupal!.
Since joining the Drupal community in 2005, Stéphane has contributed many patches to Drupal core and he is a member of the Drupal security team.
Stéphane recently finished an M.Sc. in Semantic Web at the Digital Enterprise Research Institute (DERI), Ireland and joined MassGeneral Institute for Neurodegenerative Disease (MIND), MGH as Software Engineer to work on the Science Collaboration Framework, a Drupal-based distribution to build online communities of researchers in biomedecine.
Feigenbaum, Lee
VP Technology and Client Services, Cambridge Semantics
Lee has been using Semantic Web technologies to architect and develop enterprise middleware and applications since 2003 and is currently responsible for applying Cambridge Semantics' Anzo product suite to rapidly solve customers' data collection, data reporting, and data collaboration challenges.
Lee is an active member of the W3C Semantic Web standards community, and currently serves as the Co-Chair of the W3C's SPARQL Working Group. Lee co-authored "The Semantic Web in Action," a December 2007 article in Scientific American. Lee writes about Semantic Web technologies at his blog, TechnicaLee Speaking.
Greaves, Mark
Director, Knowledge Systems at Vulcan, Inc.
Dr. Mark Greaves is sponsoring advanced research in large knowledge bases and advanced web technologies, including Project Halo at Vulcan, which is the private investment vehicle for Paul Allen (co-founder of Microsoft, www.vulcan.com).
Formerly, Mark was Program Manager in DARPA's Information Exploitation Office (IXO) for the DAML, UltraLog, and Advanced Logistics Projects. At DARPA, he has sponsored research on logistics and supply chain control technologies, formal ontology specification, semantic web technology, and the application of software agent technology to problems of distributed control of complex systems-of-systems.
Hendler, Jim
Tetherless World Constellation Professor, Department of Computer Science and Cognitive Science Department, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute
Jim Hendler is the Tetherless World Professor of Computer and Cognitive Science, and the Assistant Dean for Information Technology, at Rensselaer. He is also an faculty affiliate of the Experimenal Multimedia Performing Arts Center (EMPAC) and he also serves as a Director of the international Web Science Research Initiative and is a visiting Professor at the Institute of Creative Technology at DeMontfort University in Leicester, UK. Hendler has authored about 200 technical papers in the areas of artificial intelligence, Semantic Web, agent-based computing and high performance processing. One of the inventors of Semantic Hendler was the recipient of a 1995 Fulbright Foundation Fellowship, is a member of the US Air Force Science Advisory Board, and is a Fellow of the American Association for Artificial Intelligence and the British Computer Society. He is also the former Chief Scientist of the Information Systems Office at the US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) and was awarded a US Air Force Exceptional Civilian Service Medal in 2002. He is the Editor-in-Chief emeritus of IEEE Intelligent Systems and is the first computer scientist to serve on the Board of Reviewing Editors for Science.
Myers, Jay
Lead Web Development Engineer, bestbuy.com
Jay has over 12 years of experience implementing, managing and maintaining web applications and web infrastructure. Jay has a passion for merging Semantic and Linked Data technologies together with retail business and commerce to produce results that benefit both consumers and the enterprise.
Jay co-authored the current product Microformat draft specification, which has been utilized by various structured data initiatives, including Google Rich Snippets. He has been an active supporter of the GoodRelations vocabulary for e-commerce, utilizing it in real world business scenarios to model consumer products, stores and services in RDF/XML, RDFa, and Microdata.
Jay holds a BA in Communication Studies from the University of Minnesota.
Pato, Joe
Visiting Fellow, DIG, CSAIL
Distinguished Technologist, HP Labs
Joe previously served as Chief Technology Officer for Hewlett-Packard's Internet Security Solutions Division. Pato's research in the Systems Security Lab focuses on creating a trustworthy information system environment in the face of challenges such as the growth of organized cyber-crime and the rapid adoption of social networking tools and cloud-based services. Joe is also a founder and former board member of the IT-ISAC (IT Sector Information Sharing and Analysis Center). He has participated on several IEEE, ANSI, NIST, Department of Commerce, W3C, FSTC, and COSE standards or advisory committees and previously co-chaired the OASIS Technical Committee, which developed SAML.. In recent years, he has been a co-instructors in MIT’s 6.805, Ethics and Law on the Electronic Frontier. He also serves as chair of the National Research Council Computer Science and Telecommunications Board Committee Whither Biometrics studying the challenges facing widespread use of biometrics in security applications. He previously served as a key member of CSTB’s Committee that produced the Who Goes There? Authentication Through the Lens of Privacy report. Pato’s graduate work was in Computer Science at Brown University.
Presbrey, Joe
CTO, Qwobl
Presbrey graduated MIT in 2009 after completing his undergraduate thesis project with Tim Berners-Lee. Prior to founding Qwobl, a Semantic Search company, he founded Sconex, a social networking website for high-school students acquired by Alloy Inc. At MIT, Presbrey introduced several linked data projects including SPARUL in Tabulator and Apache, FOAF+SSL authentication and authorization modules for Apache, and rdf.mit.edu, an RDF bridge to MIT's global principal and ACL database. He also created and led the technical design and deployment of scripts.mit.edu and sql.mit.edu, a web and database infrastructure supporting over 2500 MIT research groups, faculty and students, and quickprint.mit.edu, an HTTP/IPP interface to MIT's Athena clusters.
Prud'hommeaux, Eric
Technology & Society, W3C
Eric is currently team contact for the Semantic Web Health Care and Life Sciences Interest Group (HCLS).
He has worked at all three W3C hosts: MIT's Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) in the USA, the European Research Consortium for Informatics and Mathematics (ERCIM) headquartered in France and Keio University in Japan. His major work responsibilities have included libwww and the client applications, a PEP model library, perl modules for RDF databases, SQL databases, RDF visualizers, annotations support, apache, mozilla,web services and lots of systems stuff.
Eric has a Bachelor of Science in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst.
Spivack, Nova
Serial Entrepreneur, Founder of Twine.com (recently acquired by Evri)
Nova Spivack is a technology futurist, serial entrepreneur, and one of the leading voices on the next-generation of search, social media, and the Web.
Nova has founded numerous ventures including Twine.com, EarthWeb (now calledDice.com), and Live Matrix (in stealth). He consults, angel invests (most recently in Klout.com), and develops his own new ventures through his intellectual property company, Lucid Ventures. A serial entrepreneur, Nova worked with technology ventures like Kurzweil, Individual Inc., and Thinking Machines in the late 1980’s and early 1990’s. In 1994, he co-founded one of the first Internet companies, EarthWeb (IPO: 1998), which generated DICE.com (IPO: 2007).
Nova earned his BA in Philosophy from Oberlin College (with a focus on cognitive science and artificial intelligence) and has participated in research at MIT on parallel computation and cellular automata. Nova also possesses a professional degree from the International Space University, a NASA-funded graduate-level business school for the space industry.
Tague, Thomas
VP Platform Strategy, ClearForest
Thomas Tague leads the Thomson Reuters ClearForest OpenCalais initiative, is responsible for Platform Strategy for Thomson Reuters ClearForest and leads Reuters Media’s next generation solutions development team.
Tom brings more than 25 years of solutions experience and domain expertise to Thomson Reuters. Previous roles include EVP, Client Solutions for Darwin Partners – a new division that he grew from startup to $40 million in revenue in four years. Prior to Darwin, Tom was co-founder and COO of Tessera Enterprise Systems, a quantitative analysis and data warehousing company he helped grow to $30 million in five years with a subsequent sale in early 2001. He has also served in senior roles at database marketing pioneer, Epsilon and systems management company, Electronic Data Systems (EDS).
Zittrain, Jonathan
Professor, Harvard Law School, Kennedy School, School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, and Berkman Center for Internet & Society
Jonathan Zittrain is Professor of Law at Harvard Law School and the Harvard Kennedy School of Government, co-founder of the Berkman Center for Internet & Society, and Professor of Computer Science in the Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences. He is a member of the Board of Trustees of the Internet Society and is on the board of advisors for Scientific American. Previously he was Professor of Internet Governance and Regulation at Oxford University.
His research interests include battles for control of digital property and content, cryptography, electronic privacy, the roles of intermediaries within Internet architecture, and the useful and unobtrusive deployment of technology in education.
He performed the first large-scale tests of Internet filtering in China and Saudi Arabia in 2002, and now as part of the OpenNet Initiative he has co-edited a study of Internet filtering by national governments, "Access Denied: The Practice and Policy of Global Internet Filtering," and its sequel, "Access Controlled: The Shaping of Power, Rights, and Rule in Cyberspace. "
His book "The Future of the Internet -- And How to Stop It" is available from Yale University Press and Penguin UK -- and under a Creative Commons license. Papers may be found at http://www.jz.org.