Danny Hillis is co-founder of Applied Minds, a research and development company that invents, designs, creates, and prototypes high-technology products and services. He is also the Judge Widney Professor of Engineering and Medicine at University of Southern California. He co-founded Thinking Machines Corporation and was vice president and Disney fellow of research and development at Walt Disney Imagineering. Hillis holds over 200 US patents and designed a 10,000-year mechanical clock. His board service includes The Long Now Foundation and Hertz Foundation. He is a fellow of the Association of Computing Machinery and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.