Carol Strohecker is Director of the newly formed UNC Center for Design Innovation. She is also the Founder of Strohecker Associates, generators of tools, programs, and environments for learning. She holds four US patents for her work in interactive media tools and methods.

Previously Carol was an Executive Team member and Principal Investigator at Media Lab Europe, the European research partner of the MIT Media Lab. Prior to joining MLE, Carol worked in the United States at Mitsubishi Electric Research Laboratories, Sun Microsystems, the Walters Art Museum, and the National Geographic Society. She earned a PhD of Media Arts and Sciences from MIT in 1991 and a Master of Science in Visual Studies in 1986.

Carol has advised aspects of the European Commission and Japan's Advanced Technology Research consortium. She has served as a juror for the US National Science Foundation, Harvard University Graduate School of Design, MIT Department of Architecture, Rhode Island School of Design, and the ACM Interaction Design Awards.

Carol was a Fellow of Harvard GSD, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Artists Foundation of the Massachusetts Council for the Arts and Humanities. Her continuing and executive education includes the course in Strategic Negotiations at Harvard Business School.

Kevin Brooks is a Principle Staff Researcher for Motorola Labs and a
professional oral storyteller. At Motorola Kevin researches new user
interface technologies and expresses these technologies as connected
user-centered experiences. As an experience designer, written language,
audio, video, graphics and computer programming are all elements used in his
technology stories for both the research and product divisions of Motorola.
As a writer and performing oral storyteller, Kevin tells personal tales from
his urban childhood of the 60´s through to his present day parenthood. His
stories for adults and family audiences resonate with humor and poignancy,
and he has been featured performer at many storytelling festivals,
conferences and other venues.

Kevin received his Ph.D. in Media Arts and Sciences from the Massachusetts
Institute of Technology Media Lab, where his area of research was
computational narrative and interactive cinema. Kevin has also studied
engineering, computer science, creative writing and film production as an
undergraduate, receiving a BS in Communications from Drexel University and
an MA in Documentary Film Production from Stanford University. Kevin has
several published papers and has given numerous workshops on storytelling
and interactive story design. In 2006 he released his first CD of stories
entitled Kiss of Summer.

Adam Burke is an animator for Pixar Animation Studios. Since Adam joined Pixar in 2003 he has worked on three feature films, “The Incredibles”, “Cars”, and Disney•Pixar’s upcoming release “Ratatouille”. In addition Adam teaches animation at the Academy of Arts in San Francisco. Adam has worked in the animation industry for 15 years. He performed his first professional freelance animation work for Don Bluth Studios in 1991 on "A Troll in Central Park".  Adam’s first studio gig was with Ralph Bakshi working on the live-action/animated "Cool World".  Adam then went on to work for a number of studios throughout the industry including Rich Animation, Warner Brothers, and DreamWorks.

Adam is a native of Massachusetts. He attended the character animation program at the California Institute for the Arts in Valencia, California.

Animation Film Credits:
"The Swan Princess", "Space Jam", "Quest for Camelot", "The Iron Giant", "The Road to El Dorado", "Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron", "Sinbad: Legend of the Seven Seas", "The Incredibles", "Cars", "Mater and the Ghost Light" (animated short produced for Cars DVD release), "Ratatouille" (currently in production)