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Join us for our online seminar series event hosted by MIT Media Lab's Advancing Humans with AI (AHA) research program. This event features Maureen Heymans, VP of Engineering in the Learning & Sustainability organization at Google, and Media Lab alum Hayes Raffle, Principal Designer in the Google LearnX team.
Could every student have a personal tutor and every teacher a personal teaching assistant? Google VP of Engineering Maureen Heymans and Principal Designer Hayes Raffle offer a behind-the-scenes look at how Google is turning this vision into reality by moving from simply providing answers to fostering active learning and personalized educational journeys. To do this responsibly and truly drive learning outcomes, they will show how Google has developed pedagogical principles in deep partnership with educators and learning experts. These principles – managing cognitive load, stimulating curiosity, deepening metacognition and preparing students for the future – have been infused deep in Gemini models and across Google’s entire product ecosystem in Gemini, NotebookLM, Search, Classroom, YouTube and beyond. Ultimately, the session explores how evolving this technology can help close the career readiness gap and support the critical 21st-century skills needed to unlock humanity's full potential.
Maureen is a VP of Engineering in the Learning & Sustainability organization at Google. She leads initiatives to revolutionize learning and education within Google products (Search, YouTube, Classroom, and more). Her work centers on harnessing AI to create personalized learning tools and experiences that support students, teachers, and lifelong learners globally. Her team’s mission is to empower everyone to learn anything, anywhere, thanks to scalable, personalized tutoring experiences within Google’s ecosystem, helping learners discover their passions and acquire new skills.
She also previously managed the Core Sustainability team, responsible for coordinating cross-org initiatives, and harnessing information and AI innovation to identify solutions for combating climate change and helping build a sustainable future for everyone.
Before joining the Learning & Sustainability org, she led the Google App & Discover Engineering Teams, delivering personalized content feeds to over a billion users and pioneering AI-driven personalization strategies. She also worked on improving Google's ranking for many years. She began her career at Google in 2003, following her master's degree in Computer Science from the University of California, Santa Barbara. Maureen is originally from Belgium and moved to the United States in 2001. She completed her Master's degree in engineering with a specialization in applied mathematics (and a minor in computer science) at Université Catholique de Louvain.
Hayes is a Principal Designer on Google's LearnX team, where he specializes in early-stage product development, taking concepts from initial ideation through v1 launch. He is currently developing applied consumer AI experiences for learning across Search, YouTube, and Gemini, focusing on hands-on product development during these formative years of AI.
His approach spans the full technology stack—from hardware and systems design to user interfaces, brand, and go-to-market. He has launched focused consumer products, including Google Glass and Daydream VR, where he invented input methods and UI frameworks that became industry standard. He has driven innovation at scale through 5 years, leading learning products across Google's core platforms.
This work has resulted in over 75 US patents including foundational IP for eye tracking interfaces, gesture recognition, and multimodal input systems for AR/VR. His research foundation includes a Ph.D. and M.S. in Media Arts and Sciences from the MIT Media Lab, and over 40 peer-reviewed publications in tangible media, educational technology, and human-computer interaction.
At Nokia Research, he pioneered family communication technologies that enable young children to maintain meaningful connections with distant loved ones. Beyond corporate innovation, he has created enduring educational products including the award-winning Topobo and ZOOB® construction systems, which have served as foundational learning tools for over 25 years.
Hayes gravitates toward products that combine technical innovation with positive social impact—technologies that meaningfully improve how people learn, create, and connect.