STARTMIT 2018 - Key Persons
Job Titles:
- Member of the StartMIT Planning Committee
- Dean of the MIT School of Engineering
- Vannevar Bush Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science / Dean, School of Engineering
Anantha P. Chandrakasan is the dean of the MIT School of Engineering and the Vannevar Bush Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science. He is devoted to sustaining and enhancing the school's position of leadership in the world with policies and practices that accelerate scientific discovery and the application of knowledge for the betterment of humankind.
Born in Chennai, India, Chandrakasan moved to the United States while in high school. His mother was a biochemist and Fulbright scholar. Spending time in her labs inspired his love of research and open-ended problem solving. He earned his bachelor's (1989), master's (1990), and doctoral (1994) degrees in electrical engineering and computer science from the University of California at Berkeley. After joining the MIT faculty, he was the director of the Microsystems Technology Laboratories (MTL) from 2006 until he became the head the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science in 2011, a position that concluded with his appointment as dean in July 2017.
Chandrakasan is passionate about facilitating exciting opportunities. During his six-year tenure as head of MIT's largest academic department, he spearheaded a number of initiatives that enabled students, postdocs, and faculty to conduct research, explore entrepreneurial projects, and engage with EECS. For students, one of these included the Advanced Undergraduate Research Opportunities Program, known as "SuperUROP," a year-long independent research program that provides tools for students to do publication-quality research. It was launched in EECS in 2012 and expanded to the whole School of Engineering in 2015.
In addition, Chandrakasan is committed to advancing diversity and the enhancement of the student experience. While at the helm of EECS, he created the Rising Stars program, an annual event that convenes graduate and postdoc women for the purpose of sharing advice about the early stages of an academic career. He initiated Postdoc6, which aims to foster a sense of community for postdocs and help them develop skills that will serve their careers. And he created Start6, which expanded to StartMIT, an independent activities period (IAP) class, provides students and postdocs the opportunity to learn from and interact with industrial innovation leaders.
To advance the frontiers of STEM education, Chandrakasan is exploring how to best use different kinds of novel teaching methods. In 2014, EECS developed one of the first certificate-granting courses for MITx, the Institute's massive open online course (MOOC) effort, in support of XSeries, which provides integrated offerings that help reimagine the building blocks that structure learning in the digital environment. Last fall, EECS and the Office of Digital Learning piloted a full-credit online course for a small cohort of students on campus, who gave the experience strong marks for providing flexibility and reducing stress.
Like MIT as a whole, Chandrakasan is committed to supporting the conversion of discoveries and inventions into practical technologies, products, and services in the world. As such, he has a long-standing interest in creating opportunities for innovation outside the lab. He is a board member and chair of the MIT advisory committee dealing with MIT policies for The Engine, a new accelerator launched by MIT last fall to support startup companies working on scientific and technological innovation with the potential for transformative societal impact.
Apart from his administrative roles, Chandrakasan has produced a significant body of research since joining the MIT faculty in 1994. It has focused largely on making electronic circuits more energy efficient. His early work on low-power chips for portable computers helped make possible the development of today's smartphones and other mobile devices. More recently, his research has addressed the challenge of powering even more energy-constrained technologies, such as the "internet of things" that would allow many everyday devices to send and receive data via networked servers while being powered from a tiny energy source.
Since 2010, he served as Conference Chair of the IEEE International Solid-State Circuits Conference (ISSCC), the foremost global forum for presentation of advances in solid-state circuits and systems-on-a-chip. He is a recipient of awards including the 2009 Semiconductor Industry Association (SIA) University Researcher Award, the 2013 IEEE Donald O. Pederson Award in Solid-State Circuits, an honorary doctorate from KU Leuven in 2016, and the UC Berkeley EE Distinguished Alumni Award in 2017. He was also recognized as the author with the highest number of publications in the 60-year history of the IEEE ISSCC. A fellow of IEEE, in 2015 he was elected to the National Academy of Engineering.
Chandrakasan also leads the MIT Energy-Efficient Circuits and Systems Group, whose research projects have addressed security hardware, energy harvesting, and wireless charging for the internet of things; energy-efficient circuits and systems for multimedia processing; and platforms for ultra-low-power biomedical electronics.
As dean, Chandrakasan aims to build a culture that emphasizes meritocratic openness to talent and ideas from all over the world, vibrant intellectual exchange, and interdisciplinary collaborations around complex societal problems, such as energy, water, food, transportation, security, health, environmental quality, and economic development. His leadership style emphasizes listening to and integrating the views of faculty and students into a shared vision.
Chandrakasan will rely on these established values as he guides a school that educates almost three quarters of MIT's undergraduates and half of the graduate students across eight departments, two campus-wide institutes, and dozens of laboratories and research centers that operate under the broad umbrella of the school or within individual departments. Affiliated academic programs include MIT Professional Education, the Harvard-MIT Health Sciences and Technology program, among others. Just over a third of MIT's faculty members are in the school and they account for more than half of the sponsored research at the Institute.
Chandrakasan lives in Belmont, Massachusetts, with his wife and three children, the oldest of whom graduated from MIT in 2017.
Angela Belcher is a materials chemist with expertise in biomaterials, biomolecular materials, organic-inorganic interfaces and solid-state chemistry. Her work focuses on evolving organisms to build new materials and devices for clean energy, electronics, the environment and medicine. Dr. Belcher was awarded the 24th annual MacArthur Foundation Fellowship, and the 2004 Four Star General Recognition Award. In 2006 she was named Scientific American's Research Leader of the Year. Her work has been published in many prestigious scientific journals including Science and Nature, and has been reported in the popular press including Fortune, Forbes, Discover, The New York Times, and The Wall Street Journal.
Bill Aulet is changing the way entrepreneurship is understood, taught and practiced around the world. Bill, who has degrees from Harvard and MIT, has over 25 years of business success first at IBM then as a three time serial entrepreneur. He has directly created hundreds of millions of dollars in shareholder value through his companies. During the past seven years he has been responsible for leading the development of entrepreneurship education across MIT, where he has been recognized with numerous awards. His book, Disciplined Entrepreneurship, which was released in August 2013, has become an international best seller due to its accessible and methodical approach to entrepreneurship. Bill writes and speaks logically on how entrepreneurs are created and the importance of both education and ecosystems. He has been widely published in publications such as the Wall Street Journal, TechCrunch, the Boston Globe, the Kauffman Foundation, the Huffington Post and more. He has also been a featured speaker on shows such as CNBC's Squawk Box and Bloomberg News as well as at events and conferences around the world. He is a board member of MITEK Systems (NASDAQ: MITK) and XL Hybrids Inc. (Private) as well as a Visiting Professor at University of Strathclyde (Scotland).
Brad is a writer and speaker on the topics of venture capital investing and entrepreneurship. He has written a number of books as part of the Startup Revolution series and writes the blogs Feld Thoughts and Venture Deals.
Job Titles:
- Co - Founder and CEO of Hub
Brian Halligan is Co-founder and CEO of HubSpot. Prior to HubSpot, Brian was a Venture Partner at Longworth Ventures and VP of Sales at Groove Networks, which was acquired by Microsoft. Previously, Brian was a Senior VP of Sales at PTC.
He has co-authored two books, "Inbound Marketing: Get Found Using Google, Social Media, and Blogs with Dharmesh Shah, and "Marketing Lessons From The Grateful Dead" with David Meerman Scott and Bill Walton. Recently, he's been writing about how to turn your startup into a scale-up.
He was a Top 10 Highest Rated CEO by Glassdoor in 2014, 2015, and 2017. He was named an Ernst & Young Entrepreneur Of the Year in 2011 and an Inc. Founders 40 in 2016.
Brian is a senior lecturer at MIT's Sloan School Of Management where he teaches Course 15.392 called "Scaling Entrepreneurial Ventures."
Brian recently donated $1.6 million to the Southern Poverty Law Center for Jerry Garcia's guitar to support two things he cares deeply about: social justice and music. Around his hometown of Boston, his favorite charity is Camp Harbor View, serving over 1,000 youths from Boston's at-risk neighborhoods through summer camp on Boston Harbor.
He has a BSEE from the University Of Vermont and an MBA from MIT's Sloan School Of Management.
In his spare time, he practices his guitar, plays tennis, and follows the Red Sox.
Job Titles:
- Member of the National Academy of Engineering
Chancellor Barnhart was appointed to her position by President Reif in February 2014. A Ford Foundation Professor of Engineering, Chancellor Barnhart is also a Professor in the Civil and Environmental Engineering Department and previously served as Associate and Acting Dean of the School of Engineering. She has focused her research and teaching activities on the development of optimization models and methods for designing, planning, and operating transportation systems.
She has served as President of the INFORMS Women in Operations Research/ Management Science Forum, as President of the INFORMS Transportation and Logistics Section, as President of INFORMS, as Area/ Associate editor for Operations Research and Transportation Science, as Co-Director of MIT's Center for Transportation and Logistics, and as Co-Director of MIT's Operations Research Center.
Chancellor Barnhart is a member of the National Academy of Engineering, and has been awarded the Franz Edelman 2nd Prize for Achievement in Operations and the Management Sciences, the Junior Faculty Career Award from the General Electric Foundation, the Presidential Young Investigator Award from the National Science Foundation, the INFORMS First Prize Award for Best Paper in Transportation Science & Logistics, and the INFORMS award for the Advancement of Women in Operations Research and Management Science.
Chancellor Barnhart earned an SM in transportation and a PhD in civil engineering from MIT.
Job Titles:
- Lecturer in MIT 's Department of Electrical Engineering
Christina Chase is a Lecturer in MIT's Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science and is the Managing Director of the STE@M Sports Technology Group. In EECS, she teaches 6.933 Entrepreneurship in Engineering and is part of the StartMIT organizing team. As part of the sports technology group, she works with the MIT community and sports industry leaders, such as Adidas, the US Olympic Committee/TeamUSA, and the PGA, to create cutting-edge solutions at the intersection of engineering and sports, in addition to teaching 2.98 Sports Technology: Engineering & Innovation.
Prior to this, she was a Lecturer and Entrepreneur-in-Residence at the Martin Trust Center for MIT Entrepreneurship where she helped hundreds of teams go from concept to company. In 2013, she was named one of the 25 Most Influential Women in the Boston Tech Community and in 2014, Mashable named her one of the 15 People Shaping Boston's Tech Scene.
Christina is an entrepreneur with a track record of success in a several industries, starting her first company when she was 18 years old. Most recently she was the CEO and co-founder of Firehoze, an education technology company that focused on online education that involved over a hundred instructors from the most prestigious universities. Prior to that, she worked with the founding team of the healthcare IT startup, Casenet, to build and run the marketing and business development division, where she positioned the company as the industry leader.
At the photonics company, Labsphere, Christina ran the Materials and Coating division where, in under a year, she tripled her division's revenue and led the group to file three key patents. She has also worked at Dartmouth College's Entrepreneurial Network to help launch startups that commercialized Dartmouth College's intellectual property portfolio. At HP, Christina managed marketing for the newly formed OEM data storage division and changed the OEM marketing model to become an embedded member of strategic accounts. The division grew by $750 million in a year.
Christina is a Techstars mentor and serves on the Board of the MIT Enterprise Forum, SXSW Accelerator Advisory Board and SXSW V2V Advisory Board. In 2013, she was named one of the 25 Most Influential Women in the Boston Tech Community.
Job Titles:
- Member of the StartMIT Planning Committee
David Schmittlein joined the MIT Sloan School of Management as John C Head III Dean in October, 2007. Prior to his appointment at MIT Sloan, Dean Schmittlein served on the faculty at The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania from 1980 until 2007. While at Wharton, he was the Ira A. Lipman Professor and Professor of Marketing. He also served as Interim Dean during July 2007 and as Deputy Dean from 2000-2007. In addition, he was chair of the editorial board for Wharton School Publishing.
Job Titles:
- Executive Producer of the Inclusive Innovation Challenge
Devin Cook is the Executive Producer of the Inclusive Innovation Challenge (IIC), an international program that celebrates organizations addressing a grand challenge of our time - to create shared prosperity by reinventing the future of work. Launched at MIT's Initiative on the Digital Economy under Devin's leadership, the IIC awards $1 million to Inclusive Innovators that create economic opportunity for the many and not just the few in the digital age.
Devin's expertise lies in accelerating entrepreneurship and entrepreneurial ecosystems for economic growth. As a Fulbright Scholar in India, Devin examined entrepreneurship as a driver of economic development among textile artisans. She holds an MBA from MIT, where she engaged in research and theory development with leading innovation and entrepreneurship faculty and trained in design thinking. Devin received the Ronald I. Heller Award for her substantial contribution to entrepreneurial spirit and activity on campus. With practical experience working at multiple start-ups, as well as leading international projects and seminars for Fortune 100 clients, Devin brings a deep understanding of how solutions that address the world's biggest challenges can be scaled up to achieve maximum positive impact.
Devin is a Jurist for the INDEX: Award, the world's largest design prize. She holds a Graduate Certificate in Socially Responsible and Sustainable Apparel Business from the University of Delaware and a BA from Middlebury College.
Job Titles:
- Associate
- Member of the National Academy of Engineering
Dr. Karen K. Gleason is Associate Provost and the Alexander and I. Michael Kasser Professor of Chemical Engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. She has been a member of the MIT faculty since 1987 and has served as Executive Officer of the Chemical Engineering Department, Associate Director for the Institute of Soldier Nanotechnologies; and as Associate Dean of Engineering for Research.
Gleason is a member of the National Academy of Engineering, a fellow of the American Institute of Chemical Engineering (AIChE) and held the Donders Visiting Professorship Chair at Utrecht University, Netherlands. Her awards include the ID TechEx Printed Electronics Europe Best Technical Development Materials Award, the AIChE Process Development Research Award, and Young Investigator Awards from both the National Science Foundation and the Office of Naval Research. She has delivered the Van Ness Award Lecture at the Rensselaer Polytechnic University and the Tis Lahiri Lecture at Vanderbilt University.
Dr. Tom Leighton co-founded Akamai Technologies in 1998 and served as Akamai's Chief Scientist until he became CEO in 2013. Under Dr. Leighton's leadership, Akamai evolved from its origins as a Content Delivery Network (CDN) into one of the most essential and trusted cloud delivery and cybersecurity platforms upon which many of the world's best brands and enterprises build and secure their digital experiences. During his initial four years as CEO, Akamai's revenue and profit grew by 70%, and annual revenue from Akamai's security business grew 15 fold to more than $400 million per year.
Dr. Leighton has served on numerous government, industry, and academic advisory panels. He is one of nine CEOs who make up the Technology CEO Council, the information technology industry's leading CEO advocacy organization. And he was one of 18 CEOs invited to the White House in 2017 for the launch of the American Technology Council to develop solutions to modernize and secure the U.S. government's IT systems. From 2003 to 2005, he served on the President's Information Technology Advisory Committee and chaired its Subcommittee on Cybersecurity.
Dr. Leighton has been personally committed to increasing the pipeline of students pursuing STEM careers for over thirty years; first as a mathematics professor at MIT and now through his leadership at Akamai. He is a strong supporter of the Akamai Foundation, which promotes mathematics education, and he oversaw the creation of the Akamai Technical Academy, an innovative program developed in house and aimed at training diverse non-technical professionals for technical careers. He also supports numerous charitable organizations dedicated to improving STEM education and opportunities for K-12 students, including The Center for Excellence in Education, the Society for Science and the Public (sponsor of the Intel Science Search), The Mathematical Association of America (sponsor of the Math Olympiad), the Math Competition for Girls, and Girls Who Code.
Job Titles:
- CEO and Co - Founder of Ixcela
Erika is the CEO and co-founder of Ixcela, a Biotechnology start-up company aimed at developing diagnostic tests and natural interventions to improve gut microbiome efficacy and prevent neurodegenerative and cardiovascular diseases.
Erika served as a Commissioner for the MA Commission on the Status of Women. Erika was Miss Massachusetts 2004 in the Miss America Scholarship program. At age 11, she became interested in isolating natural antiviral products from an herb. She continued to purse this interest for the next 7 years, winning multiple state, national, and international science fair competitions.
Job Titles:
- Executive Director of the MIT Legatum Center for Development
Georgina Campbell Flatter, MEng (Oxon) SM, is the Executive Director of the MIT Legatum Center for Development and Entrepreneurship at MIT and Lecturer in Technological Innovation, Entrepreneurship, and Strategic Management at the MIT Sloan School of Management.
In her role as Director and Lecturer, she works to implement educational programming and curricula for MIT students who are building and scaling sustainable impact-ventures across the developing world. Flatter has been emerged in, and an active contributor to, MIT's innovation ecosystem for several years through her roles as Executive Director of MIT Regional Entrepreneurship Acceleration Program (REAP), Director and Lecturer of the XPRIZE Lab @ MIT and, as a student, a researcher at the Langer Lab, and Managing Director of the MIT Clean Energy Prize. She has also led several innovation projects at the World Bank and worked as a research associate at a renewable fuels spinout from MIT.
Flatter earned an MEng in materials science from the University of Oxford and an SM in technology and policy from MIT.
Job Titles:
- Professor of Chemical Engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Job Titles:
- Professor of Biological Engineering and Materials Science and Engineering, MIT
Angela Belcher is a materials chemist with expertise in biomaterials, biomolecular materials, organic-inorganic interfaces and solid-state chemistry. Her work focuses on evolving organisms to build new materials and devices for clean energy, electronics, the environment and medicine. Dr. Belcher was awarded the 24th annual MacArthur Foundation Fellowship, and the 2004 Four Star General Recognition Award. In 2006 she was named Scientific American's Research Leader of the Year. Her work has been published in many prestigious scientific journals including Science and Nature, and has been reported in the popular press including Fortune, Forbes, Discover, The New York Times, and The Wall Street Journal.
Jamie Goldstein is an experienced founder and investor in early stage companies. He is the founder of Pillar, a new Boston-based investment firm. Jamie founded Pillar in collaboration with 16 of Boston's leading technology company CEOs with the aim of building the next generation of pillar technology companies.
Jamie was previously an investing partner for 18 years at North Bridge Venture Partners and has been instrumental in the formation and successful growth of many companies. His active investments include Actifio (copy data virtualization), Plexxi (simplified data networking), Layer3 TV (next-generation cable), and O3b Networks (international satellite company providing internet and mobile capability to billions of people in more than 180 countries).
Jamie co-founded PureSpeech, a venture-backed speech recognition software and applications company using artificial neural networks and natural language processing in the mid 90s. PureSpeech was acquired by Voice Control Systems [NASDAQ: VCSI] and subsequently sold to Nuance [NASDAQ: NUAN].
During business school, he co-founded WattsUp?, a company selling consumer electricity meters that remains in business today.
Jamie grew up in the Boston area and is a graduate of MIT in Electrical Engineering and the Harvard Graduate School of Business Administration. He served as both Chairman and President of the New England Venture Capital Association (NEVCA) and served as Chairman and is currently Vice Chairman of Match Education, a leading charter school and innovative education reform organization. He is the co-founder and featured speaker of StartMIT, the boot camp for MIT student entrepreneurs.
Jamie is an avid skier, snow boarder, and mountain biker and spends his weekends chasing his three boys around various athletic fields.
Jinane Abounadi has recently joined MIT as the executive director of the Sandbox Innovation Fund Program. Abounadi brings a unique combination of experiences, from academic research to senior operational and strategic roles in start-up companies and large businesses. After completing her graduate work, she worked as a research scientist at BBN and as a postdoctoral lecturer at MIT, where she advised both undergraduate and graduate students. She then held leadership roles in two of the most successful local Boston area start-ups, ITA Software and Kayak, where she gained deep knowledge about the travel technology sector. Most recently, she ran a global portfolio of 3rd party products for Travelport, giving her the opportunity to establish partnerships with companies across the globe and to advise and evaluate a number of start-ups in the Travel sector.
Abounadi earned her PhD in electrical engineering and computer science at MIT, a BS in electrical engineering from Caltech, and a BA from Bryn Mawr College. She has several publications in the fields of machine learning and communication networks. She's passionate about teaching and working with college students, and as a long-time housemaster at MIT, she has gained extensive experience in student life. She lives in Cambridge with her husband and three children. Outside of her professional life, she volunteers at her children's schools. She served on the Board of trustees of Shady Hill School for 6 years, served on the founding school committee of the Center of Arabic Culture, and spends her free time cheering and supporting her children's sports teams.
Job Titles:
- Chief Product Officer and Co - Founder of Confer Health
Josh is Chief Product Officer and co-founder of Confer Health, which he founded in October 2015 with two entrepreneurs he met at The Martin Trust Center for MIT Entrepreneurship, where he also served as an Entrepreneur-in-Residence. Previously, Josh was co-founder and VP, Product at Inkling, a Sequoia-backed enterprise digital publishing platform. Josh is a Lecturer in Product Management at MIT Sloan and holds a BA in Computer Science from Harvard University and an MA in Computational Biology from Princeton University.
Kirk Arnold brings deep experience leading technology businesses to her role as CEO of Data Intensity, a high growth, cloud-based services and data analytics provider. With over thirty years of experience in the business-to-business technology marketplace, Kirk has a passion for delivering the value of transformative technologies to enterprise customers.
Prior to joining DI, she was COO of Avid, a technology provider to the media industry. Before joining Avid, Kirk was the CEO and President of Keane, Inc., then a publicly-traded billion dollar global services provider. Before Keane, she held senior leadership roles at Computer Sciences Corp., where Kirk was President of the Consulting and Systems Integration Division, Fidelity Investments and IBM. In addition, she was a founder and CEO of NerveWire, a leading edge technology and consulting service provider.
Kirk is active in the technology and business community, serving on the Board of Trustees of the Massachusetts Technology Leadership Council and the Mass TechHub Collaborative. She serves on the Board of Directors of EnerNOC Inc., a provider of Energy Intelligence Software, and is on the Board of Cramer Marketing, a digital marketing firm. In addition, Kirk is a Lecturer at MIT Sloan School of Management.
She received a Bachelor's Degree from Dartmouth College. Kirk and her husband have two children and reside in Boston.
Job Titles:
- Entrepreneur in Residence at the Martin Trust Center
Kit Hickey is an Entrepreneur in Residence at the Martin Trust Center for Entrepreneurship at MIT and is the co-founder of Ministry of Supply.
While a student at MIT, Kit co-founded Ministry of Supply. Infusing technology into fabric development and through advanced manufacturing processes, Ministry of Supply invented a new category of clothing: performance professional. The company has been featured in the NY Times, Fast Company, Elle Magazine and on the TODAY Show. While at the company, Kit built and led numerous high performing teams. Passionate about how people experience new products, Kit was instrumental in building and leading the customer experience team, implementing the company's consumer-centric design approach and spearheading the company's expansion into retail.
Prior to Ministry of Supply, Kit started a nonprofit which helped entrepreneurs in emerging markets gain access to financing. The nonprofit merged with BiD Network, a Netherlands-based company with a similar mission. Before that, she was in investment banking, where she advised early-stage companies raise Series A and Series B funding.
Kit loves mountains and dogs.
Job Titles:
- Associate Professor of Mechanical Engineering at MIT
Kripa K. Varanasi is an Associate Professor of Mechanical Engineering at MIT. He received his BTech from IIT Madras, India, and his MS (ME and EECS) and PhD from MIT. Prior to joining MIT as a faculty member, Prof. Varanasi was a lead researcher and project leader at the GE Global Research Center. The focus of his work is in understanding the physico-chemical phenomena at interfaces and developing novel materials and coatings that can dramatically enhance performance in energy, water, agriculture, transportation, medical, and consumer devices. Prof. Varanasi has received various awards for his work including NSF Career and DARPA Young Faculty Award. He is active in entrepreneurship and has co-founded several companies such as LiquiGlide, DropWise, and UniPolar for translating the technologies from his lab to market. Time and Forbes Magazines have named LiquiGlide as one of the Best Inventions of the Year. He was most recently awarded the Outstanding Young Manufacturing Engineer award by the Society of Manufacturing Engineers, Bergles-Rohsenow Heat Transfer Award by American Society of Mechanical Engineers, Boston Business Journal's 40 under 40, Distinguished Achievements Award from TMS Energy Materials, and 2017 DOE Cleantech Startup Award for the Infinite Cooling Technology.
Marty Culpepper, a Professor of Mechanical Engineering, is MIT's first Maker Czar. He leads MIT's effort to upgrade legacy spaces/equipment, introduce new technologies, create new campus makerspaces, foster maker communities, and collaborate with peer universities, alumni, government, and industry. Professor Culpepper is the recipient of an NSF Presidential Early Career Award, two R&D 100 awards, a TR100 award, and a Joel and Ruth Spira Teaching Award. His areas of expertise are in Precision Engineering, Manufacturing, and Thermo/Fluid system design.
He is a self-described gear head who loves working on his Ducati and Mustang, but not as much as riding/driving them. He loves building things at MIT and at home in his own shop. His favorite maker tools are mills and waterjets, though he's become fond of glass blowing.
Michael Troiano is a venture capitalist who brings nearly 25 years of executive leadership and marketing experience to bear for entrepreneurs. He most recently served as the Chief Marketing Officer of Actifio, a global enterprise data-as-a-service provider he helped turn from an obscure virtualization technology into a venture capital "unicorn" valued at over $1.2 Billion. As CMO from 2012 to 2017, Michael helped grow revenue over 80% per year, creating the Copy Data Virtualization category while expanding the business into blue chip accounts across 37 countries.
Michael spent his early career at top worldwide ad agencies including McCann-Erickson and FCB and was named the founding CEO of Ogilvy & Mather Interactive in 1995. He later served as the president of NASDAQ-listed systems integrator Primix and as General Manager of mobile content pioneer m-Qube from inception through one of the largest Boston-based venture capital exits of 2006.
Michael is a graduate of Cornell University and Harvard Business School, a TechStars mentor, a Board Member of the New England Venture Capital Association, and a strategic advisor to Actifio. He is ranked in the top 1% of the most influential people on Twitter and among the most popular writers on venture capital and entrepreneurship on Medium, and he hosts the popular Boston startup community podcast How Hard Can It Be?
Job Titles:
- Mizuho Financial Group Professor of Finance at Harvard Business School
Mihir A. Desai is the Mizuho Financial Group Professor of Finance at Harvard Business School and Professor of Law at Harvard Law School. He received his Ph.D. in political economy from Harvard University; his MBA as a Baker Scholar from Harvard Business School; and a bachelor's degree in history and economics from Brown University. In 1994, he was a Fulbright Scholar to India. Professor Desai's areas of expertise include tax policy, international finance, and corporate finance. He has testified several times to Congressional bodies on various tax policy questions. Professor Desai has taught extensively as an award-winning teacher at HBS and at Harvard University. Recently, he created an online finance course through the HBX platform titled Leading with Finance and his most recent book is The Wisdom of Finance: Discovering Humanity in the World of Risk and Return, published in May 2017.
Job Titles:
- Senior Program Coordinator
Natalya Bailey is the CEO and a Co-Founder of Accion Systems, a company providing in-space propulsion for satellites and spacecraft. An Oregon native, Natalya moved to Cambridge to complete her doctorate in space propulsion at MIT where she helped invent the first working prototype of an ion engine technology for small satellites, which would become the first product at Accion. Prior to MIT, she participated in research into a chemical rocket technology at Duke University.
Natalya was a New England Entrepreneur of the Year finalist in 2017, a Boston Business Journal Woman to Watch in 2017, and named to Inc. Magazine's 30 Under 30 in 2017 and Forbes' 30 Under 30 list in 2016. During graduate school, Natalya was a National Science Foundation Fellow and a NASA Ambassador to the US at the International Aeronautical Congress. In her free time, she works with the group YouthCITIES to show children they can work on changing the world and having fun at the same time in STEM fields. She is also learning to program in Python with her husband.
Robert Langer is an Institute Professor at MIT (there are 13 Institute Professors at MIT; being an Institute Professor is the highest honor that can be awarded to a faculty member). His h-index of 228 is the highest of any engineer in history and he has 1,100 issued and pending patents worldwide. His patents have licensed or sublicensed to over 300 companies. He served as Chairman of the FDA's SCIENCE BOARD (it's highest advisory board) from 1999-2002. Langer is also one of very few individuals ever elected to the National Academy of Medicine, the National Academy of Engineering, the National Academy of Sciences and the National Academy of Inventors. He is one of four living individuals to ever receive both the United States National Medal of Science and the United States National Medal of Technology and Innovation. In 2015, Dr. Langer received the Queen Elizabeth Prize for Engineering, the world's largest engineering prize. He has also received the Charles Stark Draper Prize (sometimes referred to as the engineering Nobel Prize), the Albany Medical Center Prize, the Wolf Prize for Chemistry, the Millennium Technology Prize, the Priestley Medal (highest award of the American Chemical Society), the Gairdner Prize, the Kyoto Prize, the Breakthrough Prize in Life Sciences and the Lemelson-MIT Prize, for being "one of history's most prolific inventors in medicine." He holds 29 honorary doctorates including honorary degrees from Harvard and Yale.
Job Titles:
- President and Co - Founder of Toast
Steve Fredette is President and co-founder of Toast, where he leads product and innovation initiatives. Prior to Toast, he worked on mobile app development before the iPhone came out, creating the first Flickr and Shoebuy.com apps. At Endeca, now Oracle, he co-founded their mobile commerce business, building the product team and driving sales, marketing, and services to over $10 million in revenue in two years. He also ran the Special Operations team at Endeca, creating new prototypes for various customer and business needs, including Endeca's business intelligence platform.
Steve holds a BS degree from MIT.
Trish Cotter is an Entrepreneur-in-Residence at MIT and Director of the Global Founders' Skills Accelerator (GFSA) at the Martin Trust Center for MIT Entrepreneurship where she mentors students through the accelerator process for their start-up ventures. In addition, she is a lecturer at the MIT Sloan School of Management on topics related to entrepreneurship.
Trish was previously an executive at two emerging companies which she helped to bring public (Netezza in 2007 and Visual Networks in 1998). When Netezza was acquired by IBM for $1.8 billion in 2010, Trish served in the role of president of Netezza LLC during the integration process. She has a background in engineering, and has held various engineering and management positions at Honeywell, Computervision, Sun Microsystems and Stratus.
Trish holds a BA in business administration from Boston College, an MBA from Northeastern University, an AMP from Harvard Business School, and a MEd and EdD from the University of Pennsylvania. For her doctorate, Trish focused on work-based learning and closing the 21st century skills gap. You can follow Trish's blog at www.trishcotter.com.
Job Titles:
- Associate Dean for Innovation in MIT 's School of Engineering
Vladimir Bulović is the Associate Dean for Innovation in MIT's School of Engineering. He is a Professor of Electrical Engineering at MIT, holdingthe Fariborz Maseeh Chair in Emerging Technology, leading the Organic and Nanostructured Electronics laboratory, co-leading the MIT Innovation Initiative and co-directing the MIT-ENI Solar Frontiers Center. He is an author of over 180 research articles (cited over 30,000 times) and an inventor of over 90 U.S. patents in areas of lightemitting diodes, lasers, photovoltaics, photodetectors, chemical sensors, programmable memories, and micro-electro machines, majority of which have been licensed and utilized by both start-up and multinational companies. He is a co-founder of several start-up companies that together employ over 200 people, including QD Vision,Inc., producing quantum dot optoelectronic components; Kateeva, Inc., focused on development of printed organic electronics; and Ubiquitous Energy, Inc., developing nanostructured solar technologies. Bulović received his Ph.D. from Princeton University, where his academic work and patents contributed to the launch of the Universal Display Corporation and the Global Photonics Energy Corporation.
Will Dickson is the University Champion for iHub within General Motors (GM). iHub is the catalyst for transformational innovation at GM. iHub empowers and unleashes the creativity of GM employees through a combination of crowdsourcing and collaboration, incubating ideas from napkin sketches into experience demonstrators. The focus of iHub is to deliver transformative solutions to complex problems.
Dickson joined GM in 2015 as a Hardware-in-the-Loop Engineer, learning extensively about vehicle dynamics systems. In 2016, he was named Assistant Program Engineering Manager for GM's next generation of trucks, where he gained valuable insight into the "nuts and bolts" of how to take an immensely complex product from design to production. In his current role as the University Champion for iHub, Dickson works collaboratively with university ecosystems to connect passionate problem solvers to real-world problems in industry.
Dickson earned a Bachelor's of Science in Materials Sciences and Engineering from MIT in 2014 and a Master of Engineering in Materials Sciences and Engineering from University of California,