Andrew Bartynski, PhD is co-founder and chief executive officer of AeculaTech, a medical device company developing novel treatments for disorders of the eye. As CEO, he drives the team’s overall strategy and growth. Dr. Bartynski has extensive experience in chemistry, chemical engineering, and materials science which he uses to contribute to the development of new materials and perform diligence on potential applications. Dr. Bartynski has numerous peer reviewed publications, patents, and patent applications. He was the entrepreneurial lead in the NSF I-Corps program, was selected as a Rosenman Innovator by the Rosenman Institute, the medical device arm of QB3, and was part of the winter 2018 batch of Y Combinator. He holds a BS in Chemical Engineering from Lehigh University and a PhD in Chemical Engineering from the University of Southern California.
Kara Bortone is head of JLABS in San Diego, one of Johnson & Johnson Innovation’s incubators. Kara is responsible for external engagement, innovation sourcing, company onboarding, portfolio management, operational excellence, educational programming and P&L. She catalyzes and supports the translation of science and technology into valuable solutions for patients and consumers across the pharmaceutical, medical device and consumer healthcare sectors. She holds a BS in Chemistry from the University of North Carolina and a PhD in Biochemistry from the University of Texas.
Conrad Burke is Vice President of ISF Incubator, based in Silicon Valley, California. ISF Incubator is part of Intellectual Ventures. He is a serial entrepreneur who most recently sold his startup company, Innovalight, a nanomaterials technology firm specialized in the photovoltaics (solar) sector, to DuPont Corporation. He subsequently managed two different global marketing businesses within DuPont – photovoltaics materials and bioscience enzymes. Conrad has over 25 years of experience in multinational and technology startup companies including AT&T, NEC, Oclaro and OMM, spanning sectors from fiber-optics, semiconductors and nanotechnology to biofuels and renewable energy. He has extensive international experience having held management positions in Japan, the U.K., Germany, and the U.S. Conrad has also worked in private equity as a venture partner at Sevin Rosen Funds helping build young technology startup companies. He received the Technology Pioneer Award for cleantech energy innovations at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland and he is also a recipient of the Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year award. Conrad has a B.S. in physics from University College Dublin and an M.S. in physics from Trinity College Dublin, Ireland.
John Cabeca is the Director of the West Coast United States Patent and Trademark Office in Silicon Valley. Mr. Cabeca carries out the strategic direction of the Under Secretary of Commerce for Intellectual Property and Director of the USPTO. He established and leads the USPTO’s west coast regional office in San Jose – a region covering California, Washington, Oregon, Nevada, Arizona, Hawaii and Alaska. Focusing on actively engaging with communities across his region, John ensures the USPTO’s initiatives and programs are tailored to the region’s unique ecosystem of industries and stakeholders. A veteran of the USPTO for over 28 years, Mr. Cabeca previously served as the Senior Advisor to the Under Secretary of Commerce for Intellectual Property and Director of the USPTO. Mr. Cabeca has dedicated much of his career to the USPTO’s outreach and education programs focusing on small businesses, startups and entrepreneurs.
Asheem Chandna is a trusted venture capital partner, who is the first call for ambitious engineers and entrepreneurs who want to build new businesses. He has helped found and start multiple companies and currently invests in enterprise companies at all stages – initiate, seed, early-stage and growth. He is an experienced company board member having served on 20 technology company boards, including three public companies (Palo Alto Networks, Imperva, Sourcefire), and multiple that have been acquired in strong M&A outcomes. He has also helped create and grow multiple businesses to market-leading positions – both as a venture capitalist (2003 – present), & previously as a product executive (1988 – 2002). As a company director, he works closely with CEOs, founders, management teams to help create and grow category-leading companies that provide customers with differentiated capabilities and superior business value. He helps companies in multiple areas including strategy, recruiting, customer acquisition, business development, marketing, operational excellence, company financings and exits.
Swati Chaturvedi has been a management consultant, an investment professional and is now an entrepreneur. Prior to starting Propel(x), Swati was an investment professional at Exigen Capital, where she worked on IT Telecom, Travel, and BPO deals. Before that, she was a management consultant working across a variety of industries. Swati is the co-founder of the MIT Alumni Angel Investors group. She founded and led the group 2013 – 2015, and continues to be on the screening committee. She has an MBA from the Sloan School of Management, an M.S. from MIT, an M.S. from UC Berkeley, and a Bachelor’s degree from the Indian Institute of Technology, Roorkee.
Kevin DeBré is the chair of the Stubbs Alderton & Markiles, LLP’s Intellectual Property & Technology Transactions Practice Group. Kevin advises entrepreneurs and companies that use intellectual property to build their businesses. Kevin has particular expertise in structuring and negotiating technology commercialization and patent licenses, strategic alliances, research and development collaborations, trademark licensing and brand merchandising agreements and manufacturing, distribution and marketing arrangements. He also counsels clients on compliance with data security and privacy laws and regulations.
Andre Doumitt is the Director of Innovation Development at The Aerospace Corporation, a federally funded research and development center based in El Segundo, California. Previously he served as President and founder of Digital AdopXion LLC, a consulting company set up to help transition R&D technology in the airborne and space-based data collection and processing domains. Mr. Doumitt served as President and CEO of Geosemble Technologies, an In-Q-Tel funded start-up founded as a spin-out of USC’s computer science department. Mr. Doumitt holds dual BA degrees from the University of California and an MBA from the American Graduate School of International Management (Thunderbird).
Balaji Gopinath has spent over 20+ years managing, building and scaling companies. Most recently, Balaji joined SAP.iO Fund & Foundry, an early stage investment arm of SAP (Seed and Series A) focused on investing in companies in the areas of Machine Learning/AI, Blockchain, Analytics/Big Data, Commercial/Industrial IoT and other frontier technology that could benefit from the advantages of SAP’s data and APIs. Prior to SAP.iO Fund & Foundry, Balaji was active as an angel investor and advisor to both B2B and B2C companies and worked with and alongside several Corporate VCs in sourcing, analyzing, interim executive roles and co-investing into startups. Balaji has also launched and managed several accelerator models at UpRamp/Cable Labs, R/GA Venture Studio, Acceleprise, Nike, and Turner MediaCamp. He has also held executive positions at Time Warner/Turner, Nike, and several startups ending in two IPOs, acquisitions, and some miserable failures. Balaji helped launch Hotwire.com, Sephora.com, MLB.com, and Realtor.com among others during the dotcom era and holds 2 patents in the interactive advertising and automated content recognition space.
Zain A. Gulamali works in Corporate Development and Ventures at Amazon, where he manages the Amazon Alexa Fund, Amazon’s $200MM venture capital fund investing in artificial intelligence, enterprise, IoT and connected devices, robotics, voice technology, and more. Zain has led the Alexa Fund’s investments in Tact, Greenlight Financial Technology, June Oven, Owlet Baby Care, TrackR, Mojio, Embodied, and Rachio. He was also responsible for establishing the Alexa Accelerator in partnership with Techstars, now recruiting for its 2nd annual cohort. Prior to Amazon, he worked in mobile gaming (Pocket Gems), private equity (Warburg Pincus and Monitor Clipper Partners), and investment banking (Goldman Sachs). Zain is a graduate of the Stanford Graduate School of Business and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).
Vivin Hedge is the Director of the Technology Office at Hilti, one of the world’s leading construction tools and services providers. He has over a decade of cross functional leadership experience in management consulting, sales, project management and operations. At the Technology office he works with startups and VCs to bring in outside in technology to Hilti while helping the startups grow and develop to achieve full potential. Prior to setting up the Technology office for Hilti, Vivin led Sales and Strategy teams for Hilti and McKinsey across multiple geographies including US, Europe, Africa, SE Asia and India particularly in the areas of Construction, Industrials, Automotive and Metals and Mining.
Todd Hitomi is a project manager at Los Angeles Cleantech Incubator. He is applying his experience in non-profit governance and technology design and development to help the LACI streamline its internal processes, maximize its organizational efficiency, and effectively deliver on its charter to help incubate and commercialize new clean technologies.
Pradeep Iyer is currently a Research Fellow, an honor that reflects the highest rung within Avery Dennison’s R&D career ladder. For more than 2 decades, Dr. Iyer has served, as an accomplished scientist, mentor & manager, in various roles catalyzing commercial product launches, leading scores of projects, platforms and strategic initiatives. His technical contributions are wide ranging and include novel NMR applications (chemometrics to solid-state catalysis), agrochemical development, electro-optical devices (electrochromic to liquid crystals), functional coatings & adhesives (anionic to controlled-free-radical polymerization). Currently, he also helps lead the company’s efforts to leverage the external innovation ecosystem – from co-creative collaborations to Merger & Acquisitions. He has always been active advocate in mentoring STEM interns by a multitude of means e.g. Institute for Educational Advancements (high school); Science Olympiad judging; undergraduate/graduate summer internships from local campuses etc.
Kathleen Jurman is a Technology Scout with DowDuPont’s Ventures and New Business Development Group. In her current role, she identifies opportunities for external partnerships, joint development, licensing, new business development and venture capital funding which aligned with and accelerate DowDuPont’s growth strategy. Kathleen has held a variety of roles in her 23 years with DowDuPont, starting as an engineer in Union Carbide’s Process R&D group in process analytics & control and reaction engineering. She later moved into roles commercializing new products and applications for products sold into consumer and industrial markets, improving operations as a Master Black Belt in Six Sigma and leading business initiatives as internal consultant. Most recently, she has focused on bringing innovation to DowDuPont’s supply chain by improving end-to-end visibility through the use of big data and analytics. Kathleen holds degrees in Chemical Engineering, a B.ChE. from the University of Delaware and M.S. & Ph.D. from Purdue University, as well as M.B.A. from NYU Stern.
Steven Konsek joined the National Science Foundation in September 2012 as a Program Director in the Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) program. Prior to joining the NSF he was the Chief Technology Officer at Illumitex, a venture-backed company developing light emitting diode chips, packages and fixtures for general illumination. He previously served as Chief of Technical Staff at Glo, recognized as one of Europe’s top LED startups. Prior to Glo Steven was the Director of Device R&D at Nantero, a memory startup. Throughout his career Steven has developed innovative, game-changing technologies across a range of semiconductor applications. He has a PhD in Physics from the University of Washington and a BS in Mathematics from Purdue University. He holds numerous patents and publications in LEDs, memory, process integration and nanoscale devices. At the National Science Foundation he serves as a program director in the I-Corps and SBIR programs.
Omkar P. Kulkarni is Children’s Hospital Los Angeles’s first chief innovation officer. In his role, Kulkarni is responsible for fostering innovation across CHLA’s clinical and research enterprises – including finding successful new methods of care, incubating new medical tools and software, and rallying communities in and out of the hospital to solve problems in the field of pediatrics – all with the goal of enhancing the experience and outcomes for the children and families CHLA serves. Prior to joining CHLA, Kulkarni served as executive director of the Cedars-Sinai Accelerator powered by Techstars, where he helped build and launch the accelerator program. In that role, he evaluated over 3,000 health care start-ups and provided extensive mentoring, serving as the main liaison between the start-up community and Cedars-Sinai Medical Center.
Arye Lipman is co-founder and CTO of BioBuilt, LA’s synthetic biology accelerator. He works with biotechnology companies on technology development and commercialization, with a focus on hardware, biologics, and imaging. Prior to this work, he was a science director at InVentiv Health, and co-founder of ImaginAb, a UCLA spin-out, focused on antibody based imaging agents for therapy management in immuno-oncology. He currently serves as a board member and advisor for life sciences start-ups and accelerator programs in Southern California, including Asimov Labs, LabLaunch, Larta, Biocom, and The L4b. Mr. Lipman holds degrees in Molecular and Cellular Biology from UCLA.
Alice Liu is the Assistant Director for the Office of Technology Innovation and Entrepreneurship. She leads innovation activities at Viterbi including the competitions and awards (Maseeh Entrepreneurship Prize Competition and the Min Family Engineering Social Entrepreneurship Challenge) and the Viterbi Startup Garage. Previously, Alice was the Director of Business Development and Strategy for Applied Minds, a multidisciplinary innovation company that designs, builds, and creates new technology solutions and companies in partnership with leading companies and entrepreneurs. She has also been a management strategy consultant for both the Boston Consulting Group and Bain and Company. Alice earned her Ph.D. in Computation and Neural Systems from the California Institute of Technology and taught classes there in data science for business.
Richard Morganstern is an active Angel investor and currently serves on the Executive Committee of the Tech Coast Angels Los Angeles Network. He is the former President of the Tech Coast Angels LA Network. He also serves as the Board Chairman of the Los Angeles Cleantech Incubator (LACI). Mr. Morganstern also serves on the Board of Advisors in the UCLA Anderson School of Management’s Global Access Program. Mr. Morganstern was the former Managing Partner of a Beverly Hills based intellectual property and business litigation and counseling law firm. He was the former Chairman of a NASD licensed investment-banking firm, which focused on arranging funding, principally from foreign sources, for domestic early stage technology companies. He co-founded Language Weaver, Inc. an In-Q-Tel funded company spun out of USC’s computer science department and the world’s leading supplier of statistically based natural language translation systems. He is a member of the California, New York, Patent Office and Supreme Court Bars. He holds a BEE degree from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and a JD degree from Cornell University.
Carmen Palafox is a Partner at Make in LA, an accelerator and venture capital fund that inve
Hemai Parthasarathy is the Scientific Director of Breakout Labs, a philanthropic fund and program to support radical, science-based, startup companies. She is responsible for establishing the scientific priorities of Breakout Labs, evaluating submitted proposals, and advising portfolio companies. She is also a Partner in Breakout Ventures, a new, early stage fund that backs bold scientist-entrepreneurs working at the intersections of technology, biology, materials, and energy. Previously, Hemai served as the North American Editor for Nature and was a founding editor of PLOS, the open-access publisher of PLOS ONE. As a consultant, she has also advised research institutes, non-profits, and biotechnology companies on the development and communication of their scientific portfolios. She holds a Ph.D. in Brain and Cognitive Sciences from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a B.A. in Biophysics from The Johns Hopkins University.
Mike Premi leads Virtual Reality Software Innovation at Intel’s Developer Relations Division, working with Intel Software Partners to deliver new and disruptive solutions including Education/Training, Healthcare/Life Sciences, and Retail/Sales. His passion is to apply technology to improve peoples’ lives, and to make a social impact, for example, using VR for Pain Management with Firsthand Technology and for PTSD Therapy working with the Medical VR Team at USC Institute for Creative Technologies. Mike’s startup experience includes serving as product manager of a Security SaaS Business startup from initial concept demos through launch and successful sale of the ongoing business to VeriSign. Mike is a US Military Veteran and volunteers extensively in the community, recently selected as the Intel Involved Global Hero. Mike earned a Bachelors in Computer Science from the University of Southern California, and an MBA from Babson College, and has multiple US patents in Security Software.
Marie Rippen is the CEO of Lab Launch Inc., a non-profit dedicated to providing LA’s biotech entrepreneurs with quality, affordable lab space. She has been with the company since they opened their first laboratory facility in Monrovia and has helped Lab Launch grow from three members to more than 20. Marie is now planning to open a second Lab Launch location in Chatsworth. While at Lab Launch, Marie recruited twelve organizations to form the Biotechnology Entrepreneurship Coalition, a group of LA-area non-profits, industry organizations, and research institutions that are working to educate academic scientists about entrepreneurship. Marie completed her PhD in developmental and stem cell biology at USC in 2015 and is a proud graduate of CSU Long Beach.
Curtis Rodgers is a construction technologist, investor at Brick & Mortar Ventures, and lecturer with six years of process improvement experience on commercial, infrastructure, industrial, and defense projects at both Kiewit and McCarthy Construction. Curtis founded The Society for Construction Solutions (SCS) in 2014, contributes to the NASA Centennial 3D Printed Habitat Challenge, and participates as a lecturer for the US Dept. of Energy’s Project Leadership Institute. Curtis holds a Bachelors of Business Administration and a Masters of Science in Industrial Technology from Texas State University.
Lt. Jacob Singleton is currently a program manager for the Air Force Research Laboratory’s Center for Rapid Innovation. He leads a portfolio of programs responding to urgent operational needs within Air Force Space Command, Air Force Global Strike Command, and Air Mobility Command. He has successfully led programs transitioning technology to TRL 9 into operational use. Lt Singleton currently leads the Space Technology Accelerator program which is a new innovative platform to accelerate commercial solutions to defense technology needs with a new acquisitions strategy, encouraging more agile business practices and nontraditional partnerships with industry.
David Wilson is the chief innovation officer of Bechtel and manages Bechtel’s Future Fund, a program designed to encourage colleagues across the company to create, share, explore and develop new ideas to enhance performance and competitiveness. David joined Bechtel in 2001 as a mechanical systems engineer at the Waste Treatment and Immobilization Plant in Richland, Wash. His most recent role was as manager of innovation and virtual project delivery for the infrastructure global business unit. David is a graduate of the University of Utah and received a master’s degree in 2006 in Engineering and Technology Management. He is a certified professional engineer and Six Sigma Master Black Belt.