Dr. Piya Sorcar

Founder and Chief Executive Officer

Piya Sorcar leads a team of interdisciplinary experts to develop pedagogically-grounded and culturally-appropriate HIV/AIDS prevention materials to promote awareness despite social barriers. Piya began the research and development for TeachAIDS in 2005 as part of her graduate work at Stanford University, where her doctoral dissertation was entitled Teaching Taboo Topics Without Talking About Them: An Epistemic Study of a New Approach to HIV/AIDS Prevention Education in India (PDF, HTML). TeachAIDS interactive animated materials are now used in South Africa, India, China, Botswana, and Canada, among other countries.

Piya was previously a program advisor for Stanford's Learning, Design & Technology master's program and a research analyst with Analysis Group. She has also been a screenplay consultant for many international award-winning children's educational programs, and was nominated for a Regional Emmy Award.

Piya holds a Ph.D. in Learning Sciences & Technology Design and International Comparative Education and an M.A. in Education from Stanford. She graduated summa cum laude from the University of Colorado at Boulder with a B.A. in Economics, B.S. in Journalism, and B.S. in Information Systems. She has been an invited speaker at numerous universities including Caltech, Columbia, Tsinghua, Utrecht, and Yale.