Kristen DiCerbo of Khan Academy

Biography:

Dr. Kristen DiCerbo is the Chief Learning Officer at Khan Academy, a nonprofit dedicated to providing a free world class education to anyone, anywhere. In this role, she is responsible for developing and implementing a research-based teaching and learning strategy for Khan Academy’s offerings in order to improve student and teacher engagement and outcomes. She leads the content and product management teams. Dr. DiCerbo’s work has consistently been focused on embedding what we know from education research about how people learn into digital learning experiences. Prior to her role at Khan Academy, she was Vice-President of Learning Research and Design at Pearson, served as a research scientist supporting teaching and learning in the Cisco Networking Academies, and worked as a school psychologist in an Arizona school district. She publishes and speaks to a variety of audiences about educational technology, learning, and learning science research. Kristen received her Bachelor’s Degree from Hamilton College and Master’s Degree and Ph.D. in Educational Psychology at Arizona State University.

Alain Kornhauser of Princeton University

Biography:

Dr. Alain Kornhauser is Professor, Operations Research & Financial Engineering, and Chair, Princeton Autonomous Vehicle Engineering, at Princeton University. He has been studying the possibilities of rapid transit in the urban environment since the 1970s. As the progenitor of the Princeton Transportation Network Model, he was one of the early proponents of leveraging Geographic Information Systems in the study of transportation systems, and his work has had a significant effect on the North American freight railroad system. He founded ALK Technologies, Inc., which brought to market the roadway and railway systems digital map database credited as being used by the majority of North American railroad and trucking companies. More recently, he has turned his focus to autonomous taxi and urban transit to enable more widespread mobility.

On a personal view, Kornhauser describes himself as born prematurely six days after D-Day in Vichy France near Lyon to a French mother and a Ukrainian-born French prisoner of war father who had been captured at the Maginot Line in June 1940. He emigrated to the U.S. in 1951 through Ellis Island and was raised in Pittsburgh, PA. He was educated at Penn State and Princeton in Aerospace Engineering. His career as a teacher and researcher started in January 1971, and he is now in his fifty-second year as a faculty member at Princeton. The hallmark of his career has been “the application of automation to improve mobility and quality of life in cities.”

Kornhauser’s book, “The Real Case for Driverless Mobility: Putting Driverless Vehicles to Use for Those Who Really Need a Ride,” will be published by Elsevier in January 2024.