Ahrash N. Bissell

President and Chief Academic Officer, NROC Project

Ahrash N. Bissell, Ph.D., is the President and Chief Academic Officer of The NROC Project, a national, non-profit organization that collaborates with educators and partner institutions to build technologies that improve student success. For much of the prior decade, Dr. Bissell co-designed and managed the development for EdReady, a platform for personalized learning that is helping to substantially improve student readiness for college and career aspirations nationwide. Dr. Bissell continues to coordinate research, advocacy, and innovation activities related to open educational practices, educational technologies, and sustainability, both internally and in collaboration with projects and colleagues across the field.

Dr. Bissell also serves on the boards of Peer to Peer University, QUBES, and the Center for Scholars and Storytellers, with special focus on science and math (STEM) disciplines, open educational resources (OER), and data-sharing. Previously, he served as the founding Executive Director of the education program at Creative Commons, where he helped to establish best practices in OER production and utilization as well as document some of the emerging opportunities and challenges (especially in legal doctrine) for the field. Dr. Bissell also served as the Assistant Director of the Academic Resource Center and a Research Associate in Biology at Duke University, and as an Instructor at several universities. He has a Ph.D. in Evolutionary Biology from the University of Oregon and a BS in Biology from the University of California, San Diego. He resides in Berkeley, CA.