In 1996, Ferren created the Disney Fellows Program which attracted some of the brightest minds in Computer Science, including Alan Kay, Marvin Minsky, and Seymour Papert, as well as astronaut Story Musgrave. The first Disney fellow was parallel-computing pioneer Hillis with whom Ferren went on to found technology innovation and design firm Applied Minds in 2000. Applied Minds is now headquartered in Burbank, California, a few miles from Imagineering headquarters. In 1997 Ferren and the Disney fellows were profiled in a major article in "The New Yorker", by David Remnick, and in many other publications and news service including Bloomberg, and Newsweek.