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Our core team, advisors and partners include experts with extensive knowledge in journalism, big data, AI, computer science, media, architecture, history, and cultural anthropology. They range from development professionals to technologists, entrepreneurs, academics, engineers, artists and human rights lawyers.

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Davar Ardalan
Founder and Storyteller in Chief
Davar Ardalan is the founder of IVOW, with extensive expertise in social engagement and new technologies. Most recently Ardalan was the Director of Storytelling and Engagement at SecondMuse where she lead immersive storytelling projects in the Indo-Pacific. As an award-winning journalist for over two decades at NPR News in Washington D.C., her real-time storytelling campaigns 

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cultivated thought leaders across social media. Ardalan is a contributor to HuffPost, co-chairs the Stories and Audiences Committee of the VR/AR Association, and has been recognized with a 2017 NASA Team Leadership award for Space Apps, a Gracie Award from the American Women in Radio and Television and a shout-out in the popular comic strip Zippy. In May 2014, she was the recipient of an United States Ellis Island Medal of Honor, for individual achievement and for promoting cultural unity.

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cultivated thought leaders across social media. Ardalan is a contributor to HuffPost, co-chairs the Stories and Audiences Committee of the VR/AR Association, and has been recognized with a 2017 NASA Team Leadership award for Space Apps, a Gracie Award from the American Women in Radio and Television and a shout-out in the popular comic strip Zippy. In May 2014, she was the recipient of an United States Ellis Island Medal of Honor, for individual achievement and for promoting cultural unity.

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Ben Kreimer
IVOW Director of Innovation
Ben is journalism technologist specializing in storytelling with drones, virtual reality, 360º video, 3D reconstructions, and open source hardware sensor platforms. He helps storytellers and mission-driven organizations, leverage these emerging communications tools for amplifying their work, encouraging positive change, sharing knowledge, and telling immersive stories that create empathy and understanding. Ben introduced 360º° video to BuzzFeed as the first fellow in their San Francisco based Open Lab, a media R&D space. He is also an adviser for the Drone Journalism Lab and African skyCAM, and has worked with academic institutions and organizations including Columbia’s Tow Center for Digital Journalism, Times of India, CCTV Africa, the African Wildlife Foundation, M.S. University of Baroda, and Antiochia ad Cragum Archaeological Research Project in Turkey.

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Kee Malesky
Director of AI Research
Kee Malesky directs research at IVOW. Her 30-year career as a news librarian for National Public Radio prepared her for quick research and ​fact-checking on deadline, which she continues to find fascinating and fulfilling work. ​Kee’s copy-editing abilities come from her experience  

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as the author of two books (All Facts Considered and Learn Something New Every Day), as well as from working on book projects with former NPR colleagues Scott Simon, Davar Ardalan, Jacki Lyden, and others. Before her retirement in 2013, Kee was the recipient of several awards from international library organizations.

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Robert Malesky
AI Content Design
Robert Malesky leads content creation at IVOW. Robert is a 30-year veteran at National Public Radio as Senior Producer of NPR’s Weekend Edition Sunday. Over the course of his career, he worked in both ​ 

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arts and news coverage, winning a number of broadcasting awards. Since leaving NPR he has published a photographic history of the Catholic University of America, his alma mater, and writes a well-received blog on local history called Bygone Brookland.

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Simin Kargar 
Human & AI Rights Attorney 
Simin Kargar is a human rights lawyer focusing on the interrelations oftechnology and human rights. She is also affiliated with Harvard's
Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society where she studies

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 the implication of AI in addressing harmful speech online, gender-based
violence and technology and the interplays of power and social media.
Simin brings extensive experience of working with intergovernmental
agencies and civil society on digital rights, access to information and
secure communication mediums in the global south. Simin previously
served the mandate of Freedom of Expression at the Office of United
Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights.

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Dr. Mahmudur Rahman
Assistant Professor, Computer Science Dept., Morgan State University
Dr. Rahman received his PhD (2008) in Computer Science from Concordia University, Montreal, Canada with an emphasis on Medical Informatics and Image Retrieval. He has expertise in the fields of Machine Learning, Computer Vision, Image Processing, Information Retrieval, and Data Mining and their application to retrieval of biomedical images from large collections. The search for relevant and actionable information is key to achieving clinical and research goals in biomedicine.

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Juanisa "Nisa" McCoy
Leads Product Design at IVOW
She has over ten years of design in consumer and enterprise experiences. Her expertise is user experience, interaction design, user interface development, branding campaigns, and animation. Nisa’s diverse background involves agencies and PaaS/SaaS companies like Oracle, ViaSat and Cox Communications where she has had the opportunity to build end-to-end rewarding experiences that people use everyday at home, in the office or on a plane. She believes that design can bridge the gap between cultures. With that passion, her focus is VR/AR/MR, extended reality, AI, digital and sensory experiences, nontraditional communication and machine learning for better humanistic engagement. Nisa is currently on the VR/AR Association’s Stories & Audiences Committee to help drive best experiences and practices in this space.

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Vishal Raj
Lead Data Scientist
Vishal brings extensive experience in Machine Learning, Big Data, Master Data Management, Data Integration and Data Warehousing/BI. In his IT carrier spanning over 18 years, he has consulted small, medium and large size clients invarious business domains like Life Science, Banking, Insurance, Telecom and Courier industries. He has been involved in creating riskscoring models, applying NLP on Realtime text streams, customer segmentation, event onset predictive modeling and establishing correlation between customer habits and their medical records. He has strong programing and development skills in Python, Java and Unix Shell scripting. He is certified IBM SPSS Data Modeler and
graduated in Bachelor of Technology from National Institute of Technology Calicut, India.

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Kelly Ramundo
Kelly is an award-winning freelance director, producer and writer living in Baltimore, Maryland. 

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Brett Garling
Brett is an award-winning video producer-director and veteran digital communications strategist based out of San Francisco. He and his company,
Cut Canvas Creative, have delivered paradigm-pushing projects for a range of organizations from Fortune 500’s and multinational corporations to startups and nonprofits. His work has brought him to the snows of Kilimanjaro, Silicon Valley C-suites,Brooklyn couture studios, Pacific reefs teaming with hammerheads and more. Brett is a professional jazz piano player, adores cooking ambitious meals from scratch and is a loving foster parent for dog,
cat and squirrel rescues.

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Joy Elias
​Machine Learning Intern
Joy is a sophomore computer science major at Morgan StateUniversity. She is also an undergraduate computer science teaching assistant and member of the Morgan State University Society for the Advancement of Computer Science, Webmaster.

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Cindy Guijosa
​Communications and Machines Learning Partner
Cindy is an undergraduate student at the University of Maryland, working on two Bachelors of Science degrees in computer science and criminology. During her time in College she has been involved in many student organizations such as the Association for Women in Computing and the Computer Science Latino Club.

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