Our Team

Bob Swartz is an inventor and businessman and began developing Impossible Objects’ technology in 2009. Concurrently, and for over ten years, Bob has been a consultant on intellectual property at the MIT Media Laboratory. He has founded and operated a number of companies, including: a software company that developed a complete version of Unix and C Compilers licensed by a number of major computer corporations including Intel and Digital Equipment Corporation; a multi-million dollar advertising display manufacturing company; a telephony company; and patent licensing companies through which he has licensed his own patents to major corporations such as AT&T, Comcast and Verizon. Mr. Swartz studied mathematics as an undergraduate and was a graduate student in mathematics at MIT and University of Chicago and in computer science at Northwestern University.

Steve joined as CEO in June 2022.

Steve has a long history in research, innovation and product development in areas ranging from digital printing and 3D printing to AI, transportation, healthcare, energy and cybersecurity. For over 20 years and until April of 2019 Hoover had a variety of technology leadership roles at Xerox which included CTO for the entire corporation and CEO of PARC, a Xerox company. Steve led the technology development and productization of multiple products and technologies that revolutionized commercial printing and publishing and which created Xerox’s multi-billion commercial digital printing business. These high speed, high reliability, digital printing presses disrupted traditional analog printing presses by bringing the value of true variable data, run length one digital printing to high speed/high productivity printers and publishers. In addition to that he also developed new technologies and products in new areas for Xerox ranging from document management and services to transportation analytics and IoT to digital packaging and 3D printing.

Serving as Xerox PARC CEO for six years, Steve transitioned PARC to be a leader in open innovation by creating multiple strategic innovation partnerships and collaborations and spinouts of PARC developed technologies as well as productizing multiple innovations for Xerox’s core and new businesses. Many of those are key elements of Xerox’s growth strategy today and several of which were successfully spun out into both startups such as Metawave and large multinational companies such as P&G; and Sandvik. Serving as Xerox PARC CEO for six years, Steve transitioned PARC to be a leader in open innovation by creating multiple strategic innovation partnerships and collaborations and spinouts of PARC developed technologies as well as productizing multiple innovations for Xerox’s core and new businesses.

After leaving Xerox as CTO in 2019 he served until March 2022 as the Katherine Johnson Endowed Executive Director of the Global Cybersecurity Institute where he served as the founding director at Rochester Institute of Technology from 2019-2022. During that time he also co-founded a startup focusing on using computer vision to improve fine art sales and art identification – Artify.ai – as well as advising other startups and small companies in areas ranging from cleantech to data enabled HR services.

Hoover currently serves on the Board of Directors of Consumer Reports and the Dean’s advisory council of the College of Engineering at Carnegie Mellon University. He has previously served on the Board of Trustees of RIT, the Board of Directors for the Rochester Museum and Science Center, including leading its K-12 STEM Education Task Force; and has been a regional Board Member of FIRST Robotics, an organization which inspires young science, technology, and engineering leaders through mentor-based programs.