Sep Kamvar was the LG Career Development Professor of Media Arts and Sciences, and director of the Social Computing group at the MIT Media Lab. His research focuses on how social software can shape our cities, and his lab consists of computer scientists, electrical engineers, mechanical engineers, designers, architects, urban planners, educators, and permaculture farmers—all working together to shape educational, agricultural, and transportation systems in our cities.
From 2003 to 2007, Kamvar was the head of personalization at Google. Prior to Google, he was founder and CEO of Kaltix, a personalized search company that was acquired by Google in 2003. He has been a consulting professor at the Institute for Computational and Mathematical Engineering at Stanford University.
Kamvar is the author of three books and more than 40 technical publications and patents. He is on the technical advisory boards of several companies, and his artwork has been exhibited in museums worldwide, including The Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, and the National Museum of Contemporary Art in Athens.
Kamvar received his PhD in scientific computing and computational mathematics from Stanford University, and an AB in chemistry from Princeton University.