Tom Lauwers

In my role as founder and Chief Technology Officer at BirdBrain Technologies, I lead groups of educators, engineers, and researchers to create new educational hardware through a thoughtful, listening-based design process. BirdBrain's products, the Finch Robot, Hummingbird Robotics Kit, and Owlet Math Tools, were invented in Pittsburgh at Carnegie Mellon. Much of the early adoption, pilot testing, and educator feedback-driven product improvements happened in collaboration with members of Remake Learning. Since 2010, Finch and Hummingbird have collectively been used by at least 1 million students in all 50 states and 40+ countries to learn coding, engineering design, and STEAM. BirdBrain's mission, to spark deep and joyful hands-on learning for all students, is at the heart of the products I help develop and scale.