Ben Stumpf (Concord Academy, USA)

For the past 20 years Ben has taught Computer Science and creative technology courses (filmmaking, graphic and web design, postproduction, and digital music) at Concord Academy, in addition to coaching soccer and running their Model UN program. Prior to teaching he worked for Apple Computer, helped with statewide tech planning for the MA Dept of Education, and co-founded a nonprofit to teach high school students technology skills in service to their communities. He has a Masters in Documentary Film from Goddard College, and spends much of his free time trying to stop the climate crisis.

Beryl Hoffman (Elms College, MA, USA)

Dr. Beryl Hoffman is an Associate Professor of Computer Science at Elms College in Western Massachusetts. Her research interests are in computer science education and broadening participation in computer science for female and minority students. In her NSF and Google research grants, she develops curriculum and trains teachers for AP high school and college courses involving mobile apps and Java. Her NSF grant “Girls Immersed in Robotics Learning Simulations (GIRLS)” is a joint venture with UMass Amherst and Holyoke Codes to interest girls in robotics.

Cindy Rosenthal (MIT, USA)

Cindy has been the administrative assistant for the App Inventor Group for a little over a year. Prior to joining the group, she supported the Collections Directorate of the MIT Libraries. She has also worked in the tax practice of a tax and audit firm and in a small architectural office.

Daniel Lai (Hong Kong Jockey Club Charities Trust, Hong Kong)

Daniel is the Program Director of Coolthink@JC - a Computational Thinking and Coding Education Program for primary school students in Hong Kong. The program is being funded by Hong Kong Jockey Club Charities Trust (“JCCT”), and co-created by JCCT, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Education University of Hong Kong, and City University of Hong Kong. The aim of the program is to inspire digital creativity of students in this digital age. Since its launch in 2016, Coolthink@JC has trained 400 teachers and is being run in classes in 78 schools for 35,000 students. Daniel was Vice-President (Administration) and Professor of Practice (Computing) of Hong Kong Polytechnic University from 2015-2017, Government Chief Information Officer of Hong Kong SAR Government from January 2012 to January 2015; Head of Information Technology of MTR Corporation Ltd. from 1999 to 2011, and held senior IT managerial positions at The Hong Kong Jockey Club (HKJC) in Hong Kong and Australia between 1978 and 1999.
Daniel is a seasoned information technology professional with 50 years’ experience. He is a graduate of Hong Kong Polytechnic University and Griffith University, with a Master in Technology Management. He is a Distinguished Fellow and Past President of Hong Kong Computer Society, Founding Chairman of CIO Board, and a Fellow of Hong Kong Institute of Engineers.
Daniel contributed significantly in promoting the development and application of IT in Hong Kong and the region. In recognition of his contribution to the development and promotion of IT, he was awarded Bronze Bauhinia Star (BBS) by the Hong Kong Government in 2004. Daniel has received many CIO Awards including Computerworld Laureate, Top China CIO Award, ZDNet CIO of the Year, and IDC Asia CIO of the Year etc.

Daniel Paz de Araújo (INTELI - Institute of Technology and Leadership, Brazil)

Master Trainer in Educational Mobile Computing. Software project manager with over 10 years of experience in software development leadership, using hybrid models of traditional management (PMI / PMBOK) and agile (Lean / Scrum / Kanban). Tech lead in planning, design, modeling, development, integration, testing, and delivery of systems for the banking, defense, commerce, education, and entertainment sectors. He is a Bachelor of Science in Computer Science; an MBA in IT Management; a Master of Science in Intelligence Technologies and Digital Design; a Ph.D. in Visual Arts and Technology. Certified Scrum Master Agile and Scrum Product Owner. Agilist certified Team Kanban Practitioner, Scrum Master, Scrum Product Owner. Currently working as Scrum Master at BairesDev.com and Professor/Coordinator at Inteli.edu.br.

David Kim (MIT, USA)

David is a software developer on the App Inventor team. He joined the team in 2021 with ambitions in Artificial Intelligence (AI) in education. His research interests include computer-assisted learning and educational technology. David hopes to contribute to the Conversational AI projects as well as improve the system as a whole. Prior to joining the App Inventor team, he finished his master’s degree at the University of Colorado Boulder. During his degree, he worked as a research assistant focusing on applying state-of-the-art Natural Language Process (NLP) models with real educational data. David enjoys music, he plays the violin, harmonica, guitar, ukulele and plans to learn more.

Evan Patton (MIT, USA)

Evan is the Lead Developer on the App Inventor project. His aim is to help App Inventor users realize the full potential of their app ideas through the development of new components and features to aid in collaboration, rich data collection and visualization, and efficiency. During his time as a graduate student, Evan consulted on the PUNYA project to expand App Inventor capabilities for humanitarian causes, and he has consulted for a number of companies deploying Android and iOS applications. Evan completed his Ph.D. on optimizing reasoning software power consumption on smartphones at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI) in June 2016 prior to joining the App Inventor team. He also holds a M.S. in Cognitive Science and B.S. in Computer Science & Psychology from RPI.

Fujio Yamamoto (Kanagawa Institute of Technology, Japan)

He was a professor of computer science at Kanagawa Institute of Technology in Japan for many years after conducting research and development on parallel processing of numerical calculations at the Central Research Laboratory of Hitachi, Ltd. He is now retired and is an emeritus professor. He loves Java and Python for general programming and App Inventor for mobile application development. At the App Inventor Summit 2014 held at MIT, he gave a talk on acquiring vertical positional information in a building using the barometer and accelerometer built into the smartphone. He has also been awarded the MIT App Inventor of the Month four times so far. His current research interests include reinforcement learning, natural language processing, and quantum computing.

Hal Abelson (MIT, USA)

Professor Abelson is well known for his work in undergraduate computing education and is a co-author of the classic text Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs (MIT Press, 1985, 1996). He is a leader in the global movement for Open Educational Resources and a founding board member of the Free Software Foundation and Creative Commons.

Jeff Freilich (MIT, USA)

Jeff trained as a mechanical engineer and has worked in the high-tech industry for over 25 years in roles ranging from R&D and engineering product management to partnerships and business development. He’s been at MIT for over ten years managing portfolios of corporate relationships at MIT, but now focuses primarily on developing educational technology for the workforce, especially through online courses. He loves jazz, dogs, New England style India pale ales, though not necessarily in that order.

Jeff Schiller (MIT, USA)

Jeff is a Software Developer, Security Architect and Network Manager. He has spent more than 40 years building systems that have to work 24/7 with minimal human intervention. As Area Director for Security with the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), he spent 9 years shepherding the development of critical Internet security technology including IP layer encryption, E-mail encryption and Transport Layer Security (https). His recent work involves providing development and operations for MIT App Inventor.

Karen Lang (Technovation, USA)

Karen spent several years as a software engineer and then decided education was her true calling. She spent most of her career teaching Computer Science, in several international schools and around New England, also serving as a CSTA board member for 5 years. Karen led the Education team at MIT App Inventor for 5 years. She currently develops curriculum for Technovation, a global tech education nonprofit that empowers girls to become leaders, creators, and problem solvers.

Marisol Diaz (MIT, USA)

Marisol Diaz has been the Project Manager for MIT App Inventor since 2013 and has been at MIT for over 20 years. Marisol has a background in management, sales, communications, customer service, event planning and marketing. She worked for the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) for her first 10 years at MIT.

Mark Friedman (App Inventor Foundation, USA)

Mark Friedman is an Officer of the App Inventor Foundation. He is a co-founder of the App Inventor project and led its development while at Google. He continues to be dedicated to its ongoing mission of empowering passive consumers of technology to become active creators. Mark has been a technology leader at companies large (e.g., Google, Microsoft, Oracle) and small (e.g., Thunkable, Piper). He has long-standing interests in making programming easier, in the democratization of technology and in the uses of technology in education.

Natalie Lao (App Inventor Foundation, USA)

Natalie Lao is the Executive Director of the App Inventor Foundation (appinventorfoundation.org), where she leads educational initiatives to support teachers and students who use App Inventor. Her goal is to empower anyone to be able to create apps that improve their lives and uplift their communities. Natalie was a student of the MIT App Inventor Lab through her Bachelors, Masters, and Ph.D. at MIT, where she created CloudDB, Personal Image Classifier (PIC), and Personal Audio Classifier (PAC). She has also worked as a Product Manager at Google, worked as an Engineer Program Manager at Apple, developed and taught the 6.S198: Deep Learning Practicum course at MIT, and co-founded a database startup.

Peter Mathijssen (MIT App Inventor Power User, The Netherlands)

Peter is an App Inventor user since the classic version and an App Inventor Power User. Besides playing with App Inventor and moderating the community, he works on tutorials and promotional materials. Peter is one of the team members representing App Inventor at FOSDEM in Belgium. Peter has a personal website where he offers tutorials, materials, tips & tricks related to App Inventor. The website is in Dutch and can be found at https://petermathijssen.nl.

Queena Ling (Preface Coding, Hong Kong)

Queena has extensive experience in both teaching and curriculum design. Since 2014, Queena has taught young and mature students from Hong Kong, Tokyo, and London on web programming and mobile app development. She is also a corporate trainer who provides programming training for schools and business clients. Apart from her teaching experience, she is also active in youth programming summits and Hackathon events. Queena is a mentor and an official speaker for global hackathon events like Technovation Girls, Girls in AI, App Inventor Hackathon, encouraging students to explore the power of technologies, like machine learning and computational abilities, to solve real-world problems. She is proficient and experienced in most of the popular coding languages, like HTML, CSS, Python, Ruby on Rails, etc.

Robert Parks (MIT, USA)

Robert is a curriculum developer, writer, and designer for the App Inventor team. His 2005 publication, Makers, was the first book about the maker movement. He has served as an editor at Wired magazine, as a contributing writer for Wired, Popular Science, and Make magazines, and has designed STEM resources for middle and high school students at the WGBH Educational Foundation. A maker himself, Robert is currently building a tennis-ball launcher from old treadmill parts.

Selim Tezel (MIT, USA)

Selim joined the App Inventor team in 2018 as a curriculum developer. He is a former K-12 mathematics teacher who has taught overseas and in the US for 22 years, exploring intersections of technology and playful constructionist pedagogies in the classroom. Recently he worked on the Beauty and Joy of Computing project as a curriculum designer at EDC (Education Development Center) which in collaboration with UC Berkeley and NYC Public Schools aims to make computer science accessible and enjoyable for a diverse population of students. When not working Selim enjoys playwriting and creating visual arts.