Kris has been developing advanced technologies for over 13 years. His talent lies in identifying, integrating and advancing new technologies and systems that push the envelope of what is scientifically possible. As VP of Engineering at Soliloquy in New York, an Internet services company specializing in natural language systems, Kris directed the development of products for clients such as ShopAcer.com, CNET, and Buy.com. As Chief Scientist at Tools for Health he led the design and deployment of web services and speech recognition systems for the medical industry. Kris was also Chief Wizard at LEGO Digital, managing the development of a cutting-edge virtual world running on a supercomputer inhabited by simulated interactive creatures, such as Puff the Playful LEGO Dragon, who could chat with visitors.

Kris' work at the MIT Media Lab is widely recognized for its demonstration of embodied artificially intelligent (AI) agents that can plan and execute real-time multimodal dialogue behaviors on multipleparallel timescales. Kris is the founder of two companies, the first one in his native country of Iceland: HUMANOID did several projects at theintersection of technology and art, and worked with French movie director Jean-Jacques Beineix (Diva, Betty Blue), among others. The more recent Communicative Machines has the ambitious charter of advancing the state of the art in large-scale AI systems, and to make the romantic vision of humanoid machines come true.

Working on telerobotic systems at NASA, Kris evaluated Martin-Marietta proposals for the International Space Station and tested teleoperation workstation designs for the Space Shuttle. In 1999 he advised British Telecom on the restructuring of their 700-person advanced research division and helped set research priorities for the next 10 years, focusing on 4G telephony, the merging of wireless, Internet and telephony infrastructures, current and future revenue models for data and voice networks, and advanced customer services. Other companies that Kris has advised are OZ Inc. (Iceland/U.S.), EPICTOID (Netherlands), Interactive Institute (Sweden), WANG Computer (U.S.), and Kaupthing Investment Bank (Sweden).

Kris has held many invited lectures for leading industry and academic institutions including I.B.M., British Telecom, Aalborg University, University of Bielefeld, the Royal Institute of Technolgy in Stockholm, New York University, CWI.nl, and Interactive Institute. He is the author of a science fiction book and numerous publications in the areas of AI, human factors, and human-computer interaction. Kris holds a B.A. in Psychology from the University of Iceland, an M.S. in Engineering Psychology and Ergonomics from Florida Tech, and a Ph.D. in Media Arts & Sciences from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Kris' work has been featured on television programs and in news publications, inlcuding CNN, BBC, MIT Research Digest, The Daily Spectrum, New World, Boston Phoenix, and Scientific American Frontiers.