Erick Stephen Miller

Erick has over a decade of professional experience altering reality using 3D computer graphics and photo-realistic visual effects at companies such as Disney, Digital Domain and Sony.  He’s written many complex 3D software systems as a Technical Director, authored a number of books on 3D graphics and taught numerous Master Classes on Hyper-Reality. Miller is also a frequent speaker, is published by the ACM, and has managed multimillion dollar software projects.

Miller has a MBA from UCLA, while also studying abroad at the National University of Singapore for an additional Masters degree, and an undergrad in computer graphics (3D Animation).  He has served on several review boards, including Autodesk’s CTO council and the ACM’s unified jury where he’s been a Siggraph Session Chair.  He has led 3d technical direction on Clio nominated digital effects and was recently shortlisted by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences for a Sci-Tech Academy Award.  Erick was also recently honored by representing Vergence Labs at the very prestigious, first ever TEDxStanford 2012 event.

Erick Miller, Founder & Ceo,
http://linkedin.com/in/erickmiller

Jon Rodriguez

Jon Rodriguez is the Chief Scientist, an engineer with an honor’s thesis from Stanford University entitled “Volumetric World Display”. Jon is an active mechatronics hacker and a self proclaimed trans-humanist. Jon also has invaluable web and mobile engineering experience at hot web companies like Qik and Facebook. From a very early age Jon began teaching himself advanced logic, mathematics and software algorithms including learning advanced AI programming in grade school.

Jon’s background in robotics includes programming a six-legged robot that can adapt to hardware injuries by evolving its own motor control code as well as creating a long-range infrared sensor for search and rescue robots, resulting in prestigious recognition from Intel and presenting to Craig Barrett, Intel’s Chairman and CEO. Jon’s work in this area was entitled Modular Infrared Tracking sensor for use with the Foster-Miller TALON man portable reconnaissance robot. Jon has also contributed in the area of bio-science, creating a DNA spell checker for genetic engineers.

Jon’s Stanford thesis on “Volumetric World” display technology centers in the area of optics enhanced volumetric 3D-stereo-immersion displays; displays that not only display independent left and right eye images, but also display the needed layers of depth existing with-in the real world for each independent left and right eye. Jon’s research which was inspired and mentored by the research of Dr. Kurt Akeley, will have a major impact in the areas of 3D displays, Virtual Reality, Augmented Reality and is a key part of the Vergence Labs’ vision to display smart, rich, and interactive 3-dimensional information to people while wearing a highly miniaturized computer as eyewear or visors.

Jon Rodriguez, Founder, Chief Science Officer
http://www.linkedin.com/in/jonr1

Peter Brook

Peter is an incredibly skilled and dedicated engineer.  His most recent experience is as a Software Engineer at Facebook, working on several areas of the Facebook platform, primarily, spam fighting algorithms: Peter wrote large parts of the machine learning infrastructure that Facebook uses to fight spam, fake accounts, and other attacks on the social graph.

Peter also has experience working with Microsoft, improving Visual Studio as well as work with the Microsoft Kinect to build tools for mapping and perception.  Peter also worked with Intel on projects using VirtualBox, VMWare & Python code to improve user experience.  He’s worked on cutting edge research at Willow Garage, the company that created one of the leading computer vision software libraries, OpenCV.  Peter’s prior academic experience includes work with the University of Washington’s Sensor Systems Lab and Neurobotics Lab.  Peter’s past research has focus on robotics with an emphasis on robotic grasping and manipulation. During his research he explored object grasping when dealing with position and recognition uncertainty.

Peter has a passion in both areas of cutting edge hardware, robotics, and software — in robotics, AI, machine learning, robotic perception, machine vision and computer vision.  Peter got his start writing web code many many years ago, working with the CEO of his local town’s Chamber of Commerce in Washington building websites that improve and streamline user experience in order to increase tourism for a popular event called Salmon Days in his local economy.  Peter is intelligent, eager to tackle the hard problems, and he has the skills and passion to do so.

David Meisenholder

Stephen Zito

Stephen Z. is an incredibly talented User Experience and User Interface designer with over 10 years of UX, UI and visual design experience. His work ranges from lean start-up hit social-game companies, to enterprise level mission critical interface design. One of Stephen’s flagship works includes interface design work for the renowned “2013 Motor Trend – Car of the Year” Tesla Model S in-dash touch screen control panel. He also has invaluable experience with social game design, gamification and real-world experience building the UX for several highly successful Facebook games reaching millions of viewers; including complete interface re-design for the iPad version of Fashion Designer. Most recently Stephen built UI and UX for two very successful mobile advertising and Facebook advertising platforms. His experience ranges from Tesla Motors, 50 Cubes, Tapjoy, and Optimal.

His refined graphic design methods result in engineered interfaces that implement the most user-friendly human understandable experience. He puts strong emphasis on simplicity of design, clean aesthetic, and clarity of click-through that is custom tailored and designed to target customer’s desires and expectations. Stephen’s well-trained eye is honed for gestalt design principles, which helps propel his designs forward holistically, yielding interface design honed by unified sophistication of simplicity. Integrating even the most complex underlying engineering into intuitive usability that even a child can understand and effectively utilize is something Stephen enjoys.

His design sensibility is complemented by the fact that he can hack and code his own UI prototypes, and enjoys working within a tight-knit startup team. He is passionate about building a gamified experience for software that wearers of Epiphany Eyewear as well as app developers for Epiphany Eyewear, will interface and interact with every single day. Stephen graduated with Magna Cum Laude Honors from SFSU with a degree in the Industrial Art of User Interface Design.

Brinton Eng.

Brinton Eng. specializes in electrical engineering and software design, having engineering experience at SpaceX for the Falcon 9 and the Dragon programs; launching vessels successfully from earth, into space.

Professional experience includes XCOR Aerospace, Space Exploration Technologies (SpaceX) and antenna design consulting for a number of engineering firms. With teams of experts in the field  a multi-platform CAD kernel and parallel field solving code was developed. Emphasis is on design for manufacturing and robustness.  Some of the most important contributions are those in the field of space exploration and life extension.

Vanessa Schott

Vanessa is responsible for Public Relations, focused on establishing, creating and maintaining relationships for Vergence Labs, including with interested investors, PR professionals, potential developers or corporate partners, and other strategic business relationships.  She is a natural born networker with a passion for building a better, brighter world for a better tomorrow.

Vanessa is currently on two Advisory Boards for the Lifeboat foundation: The Futurists Board, where she advises on the achievable benefits for our future, and the Media & Arts Board, discussing effective ways to interact with the media.  Vanessa has worked with companies including Intel, Abzoo and Simple Organic skin care on promotional materials used in corporate web sites and performing product presentations at major industry conferences & trade shows.  She also has valuable hands-on experience working directly with start-up CEOs and within executive teams, including as an executive assistant to the CEO of the successful online retailer, Abzoo, a role which later evolved into responsibilities for the company’s Social Media Marketing channel.

Vanessa studied Communications and Media in Santa Cruz.  She is an avid photographer who enjoys occasionally video blogging about Silicon Valley technology.    She is also passionate about creating social good to benefit people across the world.  She truly enjoys helping those in need, and has plans to create future social-good programs that get more people involved, because she believes that doing good in the world for a better future is a message that’s truly worth spreading. Whenever possible, she promotes her personal message: “Encouraging Positive Social Change with the Power of Imagination and Technology”.

Eric Smalls

Eric Smalls is an intern at Vergence Labs working on app development for robotic communication and control methods. Eric is an Engineering student and the President of the Robotics Club at Stanford University. Eric was recently featured in President Barack Obama’s Campaign after writing a letter about his background and the importance of STEM education. In high school, Eric completed a number of robotics projects and was a contributor for the ROBOT-C Multi-Robot project. This summer, he interned at UPenn’s GRASP Laboratory where he developed computer vision software for quadrotors. As the Founder & President of the Stanford Robotics Club he far exceeded fundraising goals in just the 3 months since he founded the organization. Currently, he is the project leader for IGVC an autonomous mobile robot competition and lead software engineer for NASA’s Lunabotics Mining Competition. Eric is a young, passionate intelligent engineer with major aspirations to change the world for the better using technology. In his spare time, Eric enjoys hanging out with friends, making memes, watching a good movie, reading a good book, or playing soccer and ultimate frisbee!

Melisa Im

Melisa Im is our awesome, enthusiastic and hard-working sourcing and logistics intern.

She is adept at writing/drawing technical datasheets, drawing simple electrical schematics, soldering up sample circuits, communicating specifications to suppliers, ordering various samples, working between design and engineering, discussing and matching compatible components with product technical requirements, and negotiation (often via instant messaging with lots of smiley face emoticons).

Melisa is currently a Political Economy student at UC Berkeley, and has entrepreneurial ambitions of developing a line of haptic clothing that can integrate with Epiphany Eyewear.