Mel Chua

Mel Chua is a hacker – of hardware, software, and FOSS communities, depending on the hour. She's a coach on how to navigate the chaos of open source communities and tap their energies for Great Awesome, and specializes in academics and new industry hires as a member of Red Hat's Community Leadership Team. In prior lives, Mel served on the board of Sugar Labs, worked as an engineer for the One Laptop Per Child Project and OpenPlans, and made robot puppies for weight loss at the MIT Media Lab. Mel also researches improvisation, largely through jazz piano/guitar, blues dancing, improv theatre, and rapid-fire language-learning - with the occasional workaround to adjust to the lack of an audio channel (she's deaf). She'll eventually get her PhD in Engineering Education from Purdue once she can find ways for all of the above to count for academic credit.