Dr. Dmitri Williams, Co-Founder

Dmitri Williams is an Associate Professor at the USC Annenberg School for Communication & Journalism, where he is a part of the Annenberg Program on Online Communities (APOC). He received his Ph.D. from the University of Michigan in 2004. His research focuses on the social and economic impacts of new media, with a focus on online games. Williams was the first researcher to use online games for experiments, and to undertake longitudinal research on video games. He continues to study the psychology of online populations, with projects involving community, identity, sexuality, economics and neuroscience.

Dr. Jaideep Srivastava, Co-Founder

Jaideep Srivastava is an experienced technology leader, with a mix of innovation, management and communication abilities. He has a proven track record of building and managing fast-paced cross-functional teams in a wide variety of environments, including a leading software development company (Persistent), Internet startups (Yodlee.com and Lancet Software), a leading ecommerce company (Amazon.com), and in the researchand development environment (University of Minnesota). He has strong leadership skills, including oral and written communication, people and process management, and budget management. He has deep knowledge in a wide variety of information technologies, and experience in software engineering processes and methodology best practices. Jaideep is currently a Professor of Computer Science & Engineering at the University of Minnesota, where he directs a laboratory conducting research in data management, data mining/machine learning, scalable computing, and internet/web technologies. He has authored over 250 publications, and given more than 100 invited talks in over 30 countries. His research has received continuous funding for over 20 years from various federal agencies and the private sector. He has been elected a Fellow of the IEEE.