SRI Consulting

Nicholas Smith brings to Aplia 15 years of experience in education and instructional technology. Nicholas joined Aplia in 2001, and has since helped to build or lead a number of key teams, including content production, customer support, and sales. Before joining Aplia, Nicholas developed and produced online courses for Pensare, Inc., a web-based professional training and development company. Prior experiences include establishing and managing employee computer training programs throughout Europe and the United States for SRI Consulting; providing consulting services for the Alliance for Lifelong Learning, an online educational partnership of Oxford, Stanford, and Yale; and helping to found and grow the middle school program at Keys School in Palo Alto, CA.

Robert Jacobson is a senior consultant with SRI Consulting in Menlo Park, CA, and is the founder, president and CEO of Worldesign, Inc. He is also co-founder and former associate director of the Human Interface Technology Laboratory at the Washington Technology Center in Seattle, and the former principal ponsultant and staff director for the Utilities and Commerce Committee of the California State Assembly. Prior to that, he served as a senior consultant with the Assembly Office of Research. An expert in virtual reality, Bob has researched and published numerous articles and books, and has done extensive public speaking and lecturing on the subject. He also served as Q&A Columnist for VR World. Bob earned his Ph.D. in planning from the University of California at Los Angeles, and was a Fulbright Research Scholar in Media Studies at Roskilde Universitetscenter in Denmark. He earned dual Master's degrees from the Annenberg School of Communications at the University of Southern California, and the Department of Motion Pictures/Television at UCLA, where he also completed his undergraduate studies.