David Rose

David Rose is a successful inventor and business leader, who has built and sold four game-changing companies. While embedded computing is a vibrant field of research at universities and inside corporate research labs, David is one of just a handful of entrepreneurs who have successfully commercialized it in the consumer market.

He is currently the founder and CEO of Vitality, the high-tech health firm that introduced the first “smart” pill bottles, Glowcaps. After raising initial funding, piloting the technology with Harvard medical school, and structuring distribution through several large pharmacy chains, David sold Vitality to multi-billionaire surgeon and biotech entrepreneur Patrick Soon-Shiong.

David is a strategic advisor to companies pursuing ubiquitous computing products, and coaches other entrepreneurs via in the Founder Mentors program.

Before Vitality, David founded and built Ambient Devices, makers of the award-winning Ambient Orb and more than a dozen other products. Ambient’s patented wireless technology and groundbreaking glanceable interface design helped pioneer a new category of consumer electronics by giving everyday objects the power to receive and visually represent a stream of live data. For example, an umbrella that glows when rain was forecast, a night light that shows energy consumption levels, or an illuminated Orb that tracks the Dow or the Dodgers.

Previously Rose founded Viant’s Innovation Center, an advanced technology group for Fortune 500s including Sony, GM, Schwab, Sprint and Kinkos. He helped build Viant to over 900 people, $140M and a successful IPO. Before that David founded and was President of Interactive Factory which created interactive museum exhibits and smart toys, including the award-winning LEGO Mindstorms Robotic Invention System.

In 1997 David patented online photo sharing and founded Opholio (acquired by FlashPoint Technology). He has been granted numerous patents by the US Patent Office, which have been licensed by some of the largest technology companies in the world and helped generate hundreds of millions in revenue.

Rose has taught information visualization at Harvard’s Graduate School of Design, and currently co-teaches a popular course in tangible interfaces at the MIT Media Lab. He is a frequent speaker at corporations and thought-leadership conferences.

David lives in Brookline, MA with his wife and two children.