Elisabeth Sylvan has over 20 years of reseach and leadership experience in education and technology. Her lifelong interest is sociotechnical systems that support creativity, shared knowledge and collaboration and her portfolio include content sharing tools, online communities, and educational technologies.

Currently Elisabeth Sylvan is a Senior Research Scientist at Nexmap, adjunct faculty at Foothill College, and an independent consultant. At Nexmap Dr. Sylvan coleads the Open Data/Open Minds project, which supports learners to convey stories of their local concerns using crafted visualization, and data investigation. At the Krause Center for Innovation at Foothill College she teaches courses on makerspace practices and instructional design.

Previously as Maker in Residence at KCI, Dr. Sylvan started up a new makerspace for K14 educations and community college students. As a Fellow and Director of Learning and Community at Manylabs she developed programs for communities to use environmental and social sensors for civic action. And as the Vice President of Education at The Tech Museum, she launched and developed a new education department. Before that she was a Researcher Scientist and Project Director at TERC. As Project Director of TERC's Kids' Survey Network, a web-based community of practice focused on data literacy. As a Research Scientist in the Educational Gaming Group (EdGE) she studied the creative design processes of game design teams and the diffusion of ideas in communities of science inquiry within social games and virtual worlds.

Sylvan's M.S. and Ph.D. from the MIT Media Lab she worked on projects such as the Scratch programming environment and online community, The Computer Clubhouse. Sylvan received her B.S. from Carnegie Mellon University and has been published in various journals, conferences, books, and reports.