UBTech

Gene Wade is making it his goal to provide quality education at a low cost. As cofounder and CEO of UniversityNow, which combines an online learning platform with on-campus partners, Wade offers an easily accessible college education that most people can afford without loans or financial aid.
“I became an education entrepreneur because the current system fails far too many people,” he says.

UBTech 2012 and 2013 presenter Daniel Rasmus is a strategist who helps clients put their future in context. Rasmus uses scenarios to analyze trends in society, technology, economics, the environment, and politics to discover implications used to develop and refine products, services and experiences. Previously, Rasmus was the director of business insights at Microsoft, where he helped the company envision how people will work in the future. He managed the Center for Information Work, an immersive experience that helped Microsoft’s customers experience the future of work first-hand.

Richard Baraniuk, a professor of electrical and computer science at Rice University in Houston, is founder of the nonprofit education project Connexions. Connexions is a pioneer in open education resources, acting as a repository for more than 17,000 learning objects and over 1,000 collections (textbooks and journal articles) that are used by over 2 million people each month. The materials are freely accessible and can be remixed and repurposed for individual needs.

Sree Sreenivasan is a journalist and technology expert at Columbia School of Journalism. As anyone who has sat in his class or watched one of his YouTube videos will attest, Sreenivasan’s particular strength is in explaining technology to students, faculty, and consumers. He is the former technology reporter for two New York television stations, a social media blogger for CNET, and producer of his own weekly web-based call-in show. But this year, Sreenivasan added another notch to his belt as Columbia University’s first Chief Digital Officer.