OpenStudy

Preetha Ram is a co-founder, Dean for Education and CEO for OpenStudy. In addition to these awesome responsibilities that she embraces with ease and enthusiasm, she is currently on leave from her position as Associate Dean for Pre-Health and Science Education at Emory College and Co-Director of the Emory-Tibet Science Initiative. She received her BS from the Women’s Christian College in Chennai, India, her MS from the Indian Institute of Technology, New Delhi, India, and her PhD in Biophysical Chemistry from Yale University and also holds an Executive MBA from Emory’s Goizueta School of Business. She loves a good book, traveling, and is positive that she was an Italian in her previous life.

Chris Sprague is a co-founder and serves as CTO of OpenStudy. Chris comes from a family of educators, and is driven by his two passions of education and technology at OpenStudy. Prior to OpenStudy, he worked at Oracle and Compiere where he focused on emerging technologies for enterprises. Sprague received his BS from Stanford in Symbolic Systems and his MSCS at Georgia Tech where he published research on learning technology under his now co-founders, Drs. Ashwin and Preetha Ram. He prides himself on interrupting workflow with well-timed Internet soundboards.

Ashwin Ram is a co-founder of OpenStudy and an Innovation Fellow at PARC where he manages the Augmented Social Cognition area. He is on leave as a Georgia Tech professor in Artificial Intelligence and Cognitive Computing. Dr. Ram has a PhD from Yale University, a MS from University of Illinois, and a BTech from IIT Delhi. Prior to OpenStudy, he co-founded two university spinoffs, Enkia (acquired by Sentiment360) and Ardext. He is a closet anthropologist and loves travel, people, and culture.

Austin Walne is the Director of Marketing for OpenStudy. Previously he served as Innovation Advocate at Goba, where he led partnership development and product initiatives. Austin also served as Digital Co-Director for a top-tier presidential campaign. He holds a BA in Communications from the University of Tennessee. In his spare time he plays harmonica (poorly), attends live concerts, and works to perfect the art of perfect grits.

Colm Shalvey is the Social Media and Online Community Manager for OpenStudy. He previously worked as the Marketing Coordinator at Fragomen, Del Rey, Bernsen & Loewy, LLP, specializing in social media. He graduated from Cal Poly San Luis Obispo with a degree in Business Management and a minor in Economics. He was also a scholarship soccer player during his time there. In his free time he enjoys reading, trying to relive past soccer glories, and visiting Ireland - where he is teased mercilessly for losing his accent.

Antonio Salazar Cardozo is the Director of Engineering at OpenStudy. Half Colombian, half Greek, and all Geek, he's been coding since before he knew he was doing it, building websites and web pages since before he realized Word wasn't a web development tool, and playing with everything technological since before he can remember. When he's not programming away, he's swimming, learning to mix drinks, kicking it with his equally insane brothers and friends and much less insane parents, and trying to cut down on the pizza habit he developed in college while not accidentally generating a post-college burger habit. He speaks four human languages, quite a few more programming languages, and is our official grammar and code-review czar.

Matt Farmer is a Software Engineer at OpenStudy. He graduated from the University of Georgia in 2011 with his Bachelor's degree in Computer Science. Throughout college, and for several months thereafter, Matt worked for various web consulting firms to solve a variety of problems for clients. In November 2011, he made the jump out of the consulting business to join the OpenStudy team. He can typically be found sipping a caffeinated beverage of some kind, rocking out to an obscure band.

Matt Feury is a Software Engineer at OpenStudy. He primarily splits his free time between the loves of music, the universe, and the Green Bay Packers. After briefly attending Belmont University to study Audio Engineering, Matt graduated with a B.S. in Computer Science at Georgia Tech. He has been known to spit rhymes in n*log(n) time.

Min-hee Sayer has been a QA intern at OpenStudy since summer 2010. He enjoys watching and playing sports in his free time. He graduated from Georgia Tech in 2010 with degrees in Nuclear & Radiological Engineering and Mechanical Engineering.

Daniel Flannery has joined the development team. After graduating with a degree (BA) in Economics from Brown University in 2008, he returned to his native land of Georgia to study Computer Science (BS) at the Georgia Institute of Technology. Away from the glow of the monitor, he may be watching the latest live feed of UEFA Champions League matches, (mildly) impairing his hearing at a concert, busting out some parallel words in Scrabble, or dirtying your kitchen in preparation for a shared, friendly meal.

Siddharth Gupta was the User Experience Design Lead at OpenStudy until mid-2012. He previously worked as a designer for Infosys Technologies Ltd, Bangalore. He graduated from Georgia Tech in December 2009 with a Masters in Human Computer Interaction, and received his Bachelors in Design from the Indian Institute of Technology, Guwahati, in 2006. When he isn't working as an unmasked vigilante ensuring pixel-peace, Siddharth tries teaching himself how to read music, and teaching his team-mates the comic value of a badly-placed, horrible pun.

Most of what you see on OpenStudy is Siddharth's design, evolved over several years to be awesome.

Jon Birdsong was the Marketing Manager and customer developer at OpenStudy until late 2011. He enjoys learning, educating, athletics (basketball and golf), politics, and making the world one big study group. Jon graduated from the University of Georgia in 2008.

A good chunk of the older power users on the site are here because of Jon's awesome work.