ABOUT DR. DAVID S. RICKETTS

Innovation Fellow

Scholar & Professor

Award Winning Scientist

Cutting Edge Innovator

CXO Partner

Innovation Keynote Speaker

INNOVATION FELLOW

In 2004, David had the honor of becoming an Innovation Fellow in the Technology and Entrepreneurship Center at Harvard. He now co-teaches the popular Innovation in Science and Engineering Class in the Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS).

SCHOLAR AND PROFESSOR

As a scholar, Dr. Ricketts’s is an award winning innovator. His scientific research has won numerous awards from top government research agencies and his innovations have been featured extensively in the press. Together with colleagues at Harvard, he co-created the Innovation in Science and Engineering course at Harvard’s School of Engineering and Applied Sciences.

Dr. Ricketts has held appointments at Carnegie Mellon University, Harvard University, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and North Carolina State University.

CXO Partner

In an effort to help organizations drive success through innovation, Dr. Ricketts travels the globe as a professional speaker and educator to deliver key insights into how individuals and organizations can spark the innovator inside and utilize those skills for future success. He has worked with some of the world’s leading innovative companies, including Mastercard, Dell, General Motors, Disney Research, and the U.S. Military.

Dr. Ricketts’ desire to improve innovation in the corporate space led him to be a driving force and partner in creating Become 2020, the inaugural edition of an innovation-focused research initiative by Mastercard and Harvard Business Review Analytic Service.

CUTTING-EDGE INNOVATOR

David is a cutting-edge innovator who has worked on ground-breaking inventions including a football tracking system that could one day replace the old “stick-and-chain” measurement system for calling a first down. Created in collaboration with Disney Research and engineer colleagues at Carnegie Mellon, the device, called the Magneto-Track system, uses low-frequency magnetic fields to follow a tracker embedded in the game ball.

David was also instrumental in the creation of Claytronics Technology, the bold objective of himself, Dr. Seth Goldstein, and researchers at Intel Research, Army Research Labs and Carnegie Mellon University, which combines nano-robotics and large-scale computing to create synthetic reality, a revolutionary, 3-dimensional display of information. The vision behind this research is to provide users with tangible forms of electronic information that express the appearance and actions of original sources.

AWARD WINNING SCIENTIST

As an innovator and scientist, Dr. Ricketts has been awarded the National Science Foundation CAREER Award and the U.S. Defense Advanced Projects Agency (DARPA) Young Investigator Award. His innovations have been featured by Popular Science, NBC News, CBS News, and Fox News, just to name a few.