Our instructors

Spark! professors are industry leaders from various sectors, backgrounds, and walks of life. It is our hope that their expertise sets students up for success through practical experiences and industry advice.

Geri Barrison

DS280: Spark! UX/UI Design Workshop 

Geri (she/her) is an adjunct lecturer for BU Spark!. Additionally, she has served as a Spark! mentor for six years, where she combines her passions for working with undergraduates and inspiring women in technology. Geri has diverse human resources technology industry experience. She has served as Product Manager for companies of all sizes, from startups to the Fortune 50. Currently, Geri is the Director of Product for Yello. A University alum, she earned her Bachelor’s and Master’s from the College of Arts and Sciences and College of Communications, respectively.

Morgan Curran

DS488/DS688: Spark! UX Design X-Lab Practicum 

Morgan is an accomplished digital experience design leader with a proven ability to apply design thinking to solve complex business problems. He is experienced in building and growing global user experience design teams around a unified business vision, while also installing agile processes that improve design quality. Morgan is currently the Director of User Experience at Primacy, with a wide array of previous clients including General Motors, Bank of America, and Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. 

Joan Dimicco, Ph.D.

DS719: Data Science Product Management

Joan is an adjunct instructor for BU Spark!, teaching Product Management for Data Science. She brings over two decades of business leadership experience, most recently as Executive Director of Product at WBUR, Boston’s NPR News Station. Joan has held leadership positions at Forrester Research and IBM leading innovation and product development efforts. She holds a Ph.D. and MS from the MIT Media Lab, where her research contributed to advancements in human-computer interaction, software agents, social computing, and data visualization.

Thomas Gardos

DS549: Spark! Machine Learning X-Lab Practicum 

Thomas comes to Boston University after a 30-year career at Intel, where he worked in both research and engineering roles. Most recently, he led a computer vision and computational photography research and development team, developing deep learning applications and algorithm specifications for ultra-low-power computer vision chips. Previously, Thomas led Intel’s video compression technology algorithm team and represented Intel at the ISO Motion Pictures Experts Group (MPEG) and ITU-T video experts group. Thomas sponsored academic research grants at Intel and was Intel’s Researcher-in-Residence at the MIT Media Lab. Thomas has been an adjunct lecturer at Oregon and Portland State Universities and most recently in Boston University’s Spark! Program. In his free time, Thomas enjoys wing foiling, distance swimming, and Nordic skiing. 

Dawit Gebregziabher

DS719: Data Science Product Management

Dawit is a Senior Product Manager at GitHub and a lecturer for DS719: Product Management for Data Scientists. He brings over 8 years of experience building and scaling B2B products, from greenfield initiatives to transforming mature product lines. He has led product strategy across various industries including Adtech, two-way marketplaces, and more recently, DevOps. He holds a bachelor’s degree in computer science from Harvard University and a master’s in data science from Tufts University.

James Grady, M.F.A.

XC475: Spark! Technology Innovation Course 

James is BU Spark!’s creative director, and Boston-based designer and educator with nearly two decades of broad-based experience. Combining theory and execution, James’ empirically-based methodology, developed as part of his master’s thesis at the Rhode Island School of Design, encourages deeper levels of creative exploration and unparalleled understanding of brand and visual communication. This intersection of education and practice informs his studio’s, Design Axel, creative approach. James is an assistant professor of graphic design at the Boston University School of Visual Arts.

Asad Malik

XC475: Spark! Technology Innovation Course 

Asad is BU Spark!’s innovation engineer, a Boston University alum, and free spirit. Primarily working with the BU Software Applications and Innovation Lab (SAIL), he has been involved with Spark! since 2022. After graduating with his master’s, he was a Spark! mentor and co-led the Technology Innovation Fellowship while working at Philips. He holds a Bachelor of Arts in Economics from New York University and a Master of Science in Computer Science from Boston University.

Uwe Meding

CS391 S1: Spark! Software Engineering Immersion

Uwe is an expert in building secure, scalable, and privacy-focused IoT infrastructure (GDPR, CCPA, HIPAA). Experience spans consumer/industrial applications, including AI/ML-driven energy optimization and fault prediction for large retail chains. He’s led development of highly-available data centers and mission-critical web applications. 20+ years of experience, including CTO and VP Engineering roles, multiple patents in e-commerce and content management. In his free time, you can find Uwe in his workshop building or renovating furniture.

Nagendra Mishr

DS519: Spark! Software Engineering X-Lab Practicum

Nagendra is a graduate of the computer science department at Boston University and currently works at Microsoft. He held many roles in the software industry for the last 30+ years. Nagendra started his career working at several startups as a software engineer and over the years, he built communication protocols, search engines, and a professional services practice. Nagendra has also spent a significant amount of time running an A/B testing program for Comcast. More recently at Microsoft, he works as a cloud solution architect where he helps customers understand how to build and modernize their solutions in Azure.  

Urvashi Mohnani

DS219: Spark! Software Engineering Career Prep Practicum 

Urvashi is a Principal Software Engineer on the OpenShift Containers Team at Red Hat. She interned in the Red Hat Containers team before joining as a full-time member of the team. Urvashi has spent the last few years developing Open Source container tools and cloud technologies including Podman, Buildah, CRI-O, Skopeo, Kubernetes, and OpenShift. She is passionate about sharing her work and has given talks at various conferences including KubeCon, DevConf, and SCaLE. She is also a co-organizer of DevConf.US, a free and open source conference that happens in Boston University every year. Urvashi graduated from Boston University in 2017 where she majored in Computer and Electrical Engineering

Agustina Morero

DS488/DS688: Spark! UX Design X-Lab Practicum 

Agustina is a Senior User Experience Designer at Hilton, where she applies user-centric problem-solving skills and attention to detail to create engaging and functional digital solutions for the hospitality industry. She has over 7 years of experience in UX design, working across various domains such as HigherED, education, and FinTech. Agustina has carried these skills over to teaching, where she leads an introductory course on UX/UI design in hopes of building up the next generation of innovators and leaders. Outside of work, she loves growing my plant collection, traveling, playing volleyball, and mentoring aspiring designers. 

Ali Nahvi, Ph.D.

DS549: Spark! Machine Learning X-Lab Practicum

Ali is a Senior Technical Product Manager specializing in AI and Analytics, with a strong background in data science and machine learning. Currently, he leads AI-driven initiatives at Salesforce, focusing on predictive modeling, agentic AI, and business intelligence to enhance sales performance and enablement. Prior to Salesforce, Ali worked as a Data Science Product Manager at Cengage Learning and an AI & Machine Learning Product Owner at Iron Mountain, driving innovative AI applications across industries. His career path blends deep technical expertise with strategic product leadership, making AI both accessible and impactful in enterprise settings.

Paul Lazarescu

DS719: Data Science Product Management 1 

Paul teaches BU Spark!’s inaugural product management class, DS719: Product Management for Data Science. Since 2022, Paul has been a product mentor with Spark! for XC475. For the past 9 years, Paul has worked at Google on strategy and product and is currently a Group Product Manager on Google Search, where he leads teams across California, New York, and Brazil. Before joining Google, he worked at McKinsey & Company. He holds a B.Sc. from MIT in Mechanical Engineering, with a concentration in Robotics.

Langdon White

XC410 B1: Data Science for Good 

Langdon (he/him) is BU Spark!’s technical director and a clinical assistant professor at the Boston University Faculty of Computing & Data Sciences. He is a 20+ year software industry veteran, working as a chief technology officer, chief architect, vice president, and software advocate and engineer for a variety of companies from startups to Fortune 50 companies.

Brooke Williams

XC410 A1: Spark! Justice Media co-Lab 

Brooke Williams is an investigative reporter who specializes in data journalism. Her work has contributed to a Pulitzer Prize for Investigative Reporting, a George Polk Award and a Gerald Loeb Award, among many others. Before joining Boston University, she was a residential journalism fellow at the Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics at Harvard University. Her internationally recognized data-driven investigations have appeared in print and online as well as on radio and TV in publications such as ABC World News, The San Diego Union-Tribune, inewsource and NPR. Williams currently is a contributor to The Intercept and working on a multi-year investigation into federal prosecutors that utilizes machine learning. 

Jiaxing “Matthew” Zhang

DS519: Spark! Software Engineering X-Lab Practicum

Matthew is a Software Engineer and Tech Lead at Google Cambridge, where his most recent focus has been on developing the core infrastructure of Google Search. In addition to his role at Google, he is involved with Spark! as an instructor for practicum courses. With over a decade of professional software development experience, he specializes in large-scale, complex software systems and planet-scale distributed systems. He holds a Ph.D. in Computer Engineering from Northeastern University.