Christoph Meinel is head of the Department of Internet Technologies and Systems at the Hasso Plattner Institute for Digital Engineering gGmbH (HPI), Potsdam, Germany, where he previously served as Director and CEO. A former Dean and Vice Dean of the Digital Engineering Faculty of the University of Potsdam, he currently teaches at the HPI School of Design Thinking and at HPI Internet Technologies and Systems. Meinel is an honorary professor at the Department of Computer Sciences at Beijing University of Technology, guest professor at Shanghai University and concurrent professor at Nanjing University. He is a member of acatech, the German “National Academy of Science and Engineering,” and numerous scientific committees and supervisory boards. Together with Larry Leifer, he was program director of the HPI-Stanford Design Thinking Research Program from 2008 to 2022.
Larry Leifer is a former professor of Mechanical Engineering at Stanford University, CA, USA. Dr. Leifer’s engineering design thinking research is focused on helping design teams to understand, support, and improve design practice and theory. Specific issues include: design-team research methodologies, global team dynamics, innovation leadership, interaction design, design-for-wellbeing, and adaptive mechatronic systems. Leifer has launched various design initiatives at Stanford including the Smart-Product Design Program, Stanford-VA Rehabilitation Engineering Center, Stanford Learning Laboratory, and most recently the Center for Design Research (CDR). Together with Christoph Meinel, he was program director of the HPI-Stanford Design Thinking Research Program from 2008 to 2022.