Building Bridges Between Science and Education
SETA-ED was founded on the belief that breakthrough educational innovations deserve the same rigorous infrastructure that powers advances in science, medicine, and technology.
We're a team of scientists, engineers, researchers, and education experts who understand both the promise of innovation and the complexity of implementation.
Rigorous Methodology
Scientific rigor meets educational context
Full-Stack Expertise
End-to-end infrastructure support
Impact-Driven
Real outcomes for real learners
Our Vision
Every child is brilliant, and neuroscience reveals that they are learning every second of every day. Thus, we do not actually need to teach kids how to learn, but instead we envision bringing together researchers, engineers, educators, students and communities to co-create learning environments that support the optimal growth and development for every child.
Our Leadership Team
Experienced leaders dedicated to transforming education R&D
Dr. Melina Uncapher
Dr. Melina Uncapher is the founder and CEO of SETA-ED, and a former university professor of educational neuroscience, most recently with labs at Stanford and UC San Francisco. She was a co-founder and Chief of R&D of AERDF, one of the premier education R&D nonprofits in the US. Uncapher has over two decades of experience in scientific research, technology development and engineering, data science, and data privacy and security. She brings together educators, researchers, and developers to co-create transformative solutions to problems of practice using rigorous science-of-learning insights and the wisdom of educators. Her academic publications have been cited over 4000 times, and are highlighted in outlets including the New York Times, PBS, and Frontline; her science outreach work includes a Script Supervisor role on PBS's ‘The Brain’, and an award-winning short film about the brain. She founded a multi-university network funded by the National Science Foundation to study how executive function skills develop in real-world classrooms and co-founded a science-for-good nonprofit that equips educators and students with practical tools based on learning science. She was also funded by the National Institutes for Health to study how technology use is associated with developmental changes in student cognition. She earned her PhD in Neurobiology from the University of California, Irvine and completed postdoctoral fellowships at Stanford University.
Connect on LinkedIn
Ivy Sandberg
Ivy Sandberg is SETA-ED’s Chief Operating Officer and Engineering Program Manager. Ivy is a data scientist by training, with dual degrees in Statistics and Economics. She has contributed to AI/ML program evaluations for the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). Through her support of R&D programs in both the DoD and the education space, she has experienced first-hand the need for data governance, ethical frameworks, and strategies for implementing privacy and security by design, specific to R&D. While still an active contributor to data science projects, Ivy has pivoted her focus towards building ethical R&D infrastructures supportive of data science work, particularly for research domain areas that are often working with sensitive data (e.g., education, medical or defense programs). Ivy’s technical and engineering skillset maps the legal, privacy and ethical frameworks into technical and automated solutions to advance R&D for education.
Connect on LinkedIn