Howard Stearns is currently the lead developer and player/coach of HP's most complex mobile application team: the widely praised webOS email app.

For six years prior to that, he created collaboration systems and applications using the 3-D virtual world technology he helped develop for the Croquet Project as lead developer at the University of Wisconsin and Teleplace, Inc. This ambitious project was convened by computing pioneer Alan Kay to leverage advances in 3D graphics and real-time, persistent collaboration.

Mr. Stearns has 25 years experience in systems engineering, applications consulting, and management of advanced software technologies. The CAD integration products he created for expert system pioneer ICAD set the market standard through IPO and acquisition by Oracle. The embedded systems he wrote helped transform the industrial diamond market. In the early 2000s, Mr. Stearns was named Technology Strategist for Curl, the only startup founded by WWW pioneer Tim Berners-Lee.

An expert on programming languages and operating systems, he created the Eclipse commercial Common Lisp programming implementation. He has presented at technical conferences, been published by Dr. Dobbs Journal, and was on the board of the international Association of Lisp Users for five years. He has written extensive developer documentation as well as creating the XML systems to produce it.

Mr. Stearns has two degrees from M.I.T., and has directed family businesses in early childhood education and publishing.