Mike Krieger is a Brazilian entrepreneur and software engineer best known as the cofounder of Instagram. Born in São Paulo, Brazil, Mike moved to California in 2004 to attend Stanford University where he studied Symbolic Systems with a focus in Human-Computer Interaction. During his undergrad, he interned at Microsoft's PowerPoint team as a PM and at Foxmarks (now Xmarks) as a software developer. He wrote his Master's thesis on how user interfaces can better support collaboration on a large scale. After graduating, he worked at Meebo for a year and a half as a user experience designer and as a front-end engineer before cofounding Instagram in 2010 with Kevin Systrom.

Daniel M. Russell is a research scientist at Google where he works in the area of search quality, with a focus on understanding what makes Google users happy in their use of web search. He studies how people do their searches, trying to understand the most common traps and pathways to successful Google use. Dan has been a researcher at IBM's Almaden Research Center, Apple's Advanced Technology Group and Xerox PARC. He received his BS in ICS from UCI. His PhD is from the time before the world-wide web at the University of Rochester. Dan remembers a time when email addresses didn't end in .com or .edu (let alone .org). He enjoys long distance running, making music and word play, becoming disgruntled when he can't do all three in one day.

David, founder and chairman of IDEO, is a California-based entrepreneur, educator, designer, and venture capitalist. He is recognized as one of America’s leading design innovators, in part thanks to his membership in the National Academy of Engineering and his receiving of numerous awards. David serves as the Donald W. Whittier professor in the Product Design program at Stanford University, where he also established the school’s Hasso Plattner Institute of Design, also known as the d.school. Preparing the design thinkers of tomorrow earned David the Sir Misha Black Medal for his “distinguished contribution to design education.” He has also won the Edison Achievement Award for Innovation, as well as the Chrysler Design Award and National Design Award in Product Design from the Smithsonian’s Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum.

Jeffrey Heer is an Assistant Professor of Computer Science at Stanford University, where he works on human-computer interaction, visualization and social computing. His research investigates the perceptual, cognitive and social factors involved in making sense of large data collections, resulting in new interactive systems for visual analysis and communication. The visualization tools developed by his lab (Prefuse, Flare, Protovis & D3) are used by researchers, corporations and thousands of data enthusiasts around the world. His group has received Best Paper and/or Honorable Mention awards at the premier venues in Human-Computer Interaction and Information Visualization (ACM CHI, ACM UIST, IEEE InfoVis). In 2009 Jeff was named to MIT Technology Review's TR35; in 2012 he was named a Sloan Foundation Research Fellow. He holds BS, MS and PhD degrees in Computer Science from the University of California, Berkeley.

Dan Siroker is the Co-Founder & CEO of Optimizely, a dramatically easier way to A/B test your website. The inspiration for Optimizely came from Dan's experience as the Director of Analytics for the Obama Presidential Campaign and Deputy New Media Director for the Presidential Transition. Before Optimizely, Dan co-founded an online math game for kids called CarrotSticks. He was formerly a Product Manager for Google Chrome and AdWords. Dan graduated with Honors from Stanford University with a B.S. in Computer Science.

The d.school (Hasso Platner Institute of Design) lives in Building 550, in the center of campus. If you are visiting from off-campus, you should park at Tressider Visitor Parking. Parking is free, starting at 4PM.

Directions to Tressider Visitor Parking

You can walk from Tressider Visitor Parking to the d.school in about five (5) minutes.

Walking Directions to the d.school

For dinner, we're hosting the Three Brothers' Taco Truck from East Palo Alto. Guests are free to grab food for the presentations -- don't miss their Salvadorean pupusas.