Joseph F. Coughlin, Ph. D., Director, MIT AgeLab, examines the preferences of older adults and forecasts the development of new product and service strategies to respond to the needs of this global and growing population. He teaches strategic management and public policy in MIT’s Engineering Systems Division. He is co-author of a forthcoming book on the transportation needs of older adults and is completing a book that envisions the development of technologies and services to facilitate independence and quality of life of older adults and their caregivers.
Meredith Davis, Professor of Graphic Design, North Carolina State University, teaches doctoral and masters courses in the areas of cognition and culture as they relate to design objects. Her research includes work in the relationship between design thinking and the goals of education reform. Author of Design as a Catalyst for Learning, a study of K-12 education, Davis is the recipient of more than 50 national and international design awards and is widely published.
Jack Driscoll, Editor-in-Residence at the MIT Media Laboratory, currently serves as the advisor for SilverStringers, a group of Melrose, Massachusetts seniors, with little or no experience in computing or journalism, that took a community-centric approach to news coverage and presentation through a localized Web-based publication. Before joining MIT as a visiting scholar, Driscoll spent 40 years at the Boston Globe – seven as Editor.
Kim Ducharme, interim Director of Interactive Design at WGBH Public Television, Boston Massachusetts. Ducharme is a graduate of Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, California. She joined WGBH Interactive in 1996 and has provided art direction and lead design on a variety of award winning Web sites such as WGBH Online, NOVA Online, Evolution and Commanding Heights, and has designed a fully accessible DVD for American Experience’s “Chicago” mini-series.
Mitchell Sommers, Ph.D., Associate Professor of Psychology, Washington University, researches behavioral and computational approaches to understanding hearing and speech perception in older adults and Alzheimer’s patients. He is particularly interested in relating specific anatomical deficits in these two populations to changes in communication abilities.
Zoe Strickler, M.Des., Center for Health/HIV Intervention and Prevention, CHIP Research Center at the University of Connecticut, is a visual communication designer with research interests in health behavior change. A recent collaboration involved formative research and design for an interactive, multi-media intervention for older adults to reduce harmful drug interactions among prescription drugs, over-the-counter medications, and alcohol. She has held academic appointments at the Minneapolis College of Art and Design and the University of Connecticut.
Karel van der Waarde, Ph.D., a designer in private practice in Belgium, received his doctorate in 1994 in Information Design. In 1995, he started a design and research consultancy, Van der Waarde Design – Research, in Belgium specializing in the testing of information design, developing patient information protocols, and information architecture for websites. Affiliated with the University of Delft, he frequently publishes and lectures about visual information. In addition, he is editor of Information Design Journal and moderator of the InfoDesign and InfoDesign Café discussion lists.
Roger Whitehouse, FSEGD. ARIBA, Whitehouse & Company, trained as an architect in England before coming to the US to teach design at Columbia University School of Architecture. He is a member of the Architectural Association and Associate of the Royal Institute of British Architects. Whitehouse & Company has completed environmental design projects for the High Museum in Atlanta; Lincoln Center, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Conde Nast and Reuters buildings, The Lighthouse, and the Flagship Subway entrance on 42nd Street, all in New York.