😎 A little-known fact: the Pi Network founder is tied to two top Stanford professors 🥸

While digging into Nicolas Kokkalis’s research records in DBLP (Digital Bibliography & Library Project), we found that he co-authored numerous scientific papers with two very well-known professors at Stanford University:

👨‍🏫 Scott R. Klemmer
👨‍🏫 Michael S. Bernstein

They are extremely influential figures in the fields of human-computer interaction (HCI), crowdsourcing, social computing, and human-centered artificial intelligence.

Additional discovery: When I reviewed Bernstein’s own resume, I found that it lists Kokkalis as one of his PhD students, which he supervised from 2013 to 2018, and notes that he is “co-founder of Pi Network.” So this is not just a co-author relationship—Bernstein is actually Kokkalis’s PhD supervisor.

💥 Scott R. KLEMMER

Scott R. Klemmer is one of the world’s top experts in human-computer interaction (HCI) and design thinking.

He was previously a professor of computer science at Stanford University, and is currently a professor at the University of Washington.

Notable achievements

🏆 He pioneered the introduction of peer assessment into massive open online courses (MOOCs), opening up a brand-new way of learning for hundreds of thousands of people around the world.

🏆 His interaction design course on Coursera attracted more than 300,000 students, making it one of the most well-known interaction design courses globally.

🏆 He co-founded Design Lab with Don Norman and Jim Hollan, one of the leading research centers in interaction design and design thinking.

🏆 His research group developed multiple open-source tools, such as PeerStudio and Talkabout, which are used by many universities and organizations worldwide.

🏆 He has received multiple prestigious awards, including:

NSF CAREER Award

Sloan Research Fellowship

Microsoft Research New Faculty Fellowship

Katayanagi Emerging Leadership Award

🏆 He has published more than 40 research papers, and 11 of them won Best Paper or Distinguished Paper awards at top global HCI conferences such as CHI and UIST.

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💥 MICHAEL S. BERNSTEIN

Michael S. Bernstein is currently a professor of computer science at Stanford University, and is also a senior researcher at Stanford’s Institute for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence (HAI).

He is regarded as one of the top experts globally in the following areas:

Crowdsourcing

Collective intelligence

Social computing

Human-computer collaboration

Notable achievements

🎓 He graduated from Stanford University, and then earned his master’s and PhD degrees in computer science from MIT.

🏆 His research focuses on:

Large-scale collaborative systems

Crowdsourcing

AI that assists humans

Social computing

Generative agents

Large-scale online community platforms

🏆 He has received multiple prestigious awards, including:

NSF CAREER Award

Alfred P. Sloan Fellowship

UIST Persistent Impact Award

Patrick J. McGovern Award for Technology and the Humanities

George M. Sproull Award (MIT)

🏆 Hundreds of research papers with extremely high citation counts, many of which received Best Paper awards at prestigious conferences such as CHI, CSCW, and UIST.

🏆 He authored the book Flash Teams (MIT Press), exploring how to organize and coordinate large-scale online work teams.

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Contact and connections

Before Pi Network was created, Nicolas Kokkalis co-authored many research papers with these two professors. The research topics mainly revolve around artificial intelligence, human-computer interaction, crowdsourcing, social computing, and collective intelligence—areas that have had a strong impact on the development of modern technology.

In addition, Bernstein’s resume directly confirms that from 2013 to 2018, he served as Kokkalis’s PhD supervisor at Stanford—this is exactly the year when Pi Network’s founder completed his PhD.

💭 Learning that Pi’s founder comes from the Stanford HCI research world—does this change your view of the project’s technical roots? Share your thoughts below.