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Invention to Venture: Speaker
Profiles
May 5, 2007
Click on a name to learn more about the speaker.
Iqbal Quadir
Sandy Pentland
Abigail Barrow
Colin Bulthaup
Daniel Dardani
Humera Fasihuddin
Kristin Finn
Merton Flemings
David Grosof
Harish Hande
Charles Lacy
Jose Gomez-Marquez
Jhonatan Rotberg
Joshua Schuler
Amy Smith
Phil Weilerstein
Iqbal Quadir, Founder
& Director, The
MIT Program in Developmental Entrepreneurship
Iqbal Quadir is Founder Director of the Program in Developmental
Entrepreneurship at MIT. During 2001-2005, Quadir was a fellow
and lecturer at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at
Harvard University, teaching graduate classes on how technologies
can effect change in developing countries. Quadir develops
economically sustainable ways for common people to adopt technologies
so that they can produce, distribute and consume the benefits
of such technologies. Such technological empowerment scales
up organically, and contributes to strengthening democratic
forces and making economies more equitable and progressive.
Quadir is currently involved in projects of this nature with
regard to electricity, potable water, and market information.
During 1993-1999, Quadir conceived, designed and organized
GrameenPhone which has provided virtually universal access
to telephony in his native Bangladesh and self-employment
opportunities for its rural poor. After developing a vision
for universal access to mobile phones in Bangladesh while
working in Wall Street, Quadir persuaded Grameen Bank and
the Norwegian telephone company, Telenor, to create GrameenPhone
and remained actively involved in the board and management
of the company through 1999. Today, GrameenPhone is a profitable
venture with more than six million subscribers, the largest
telephone company in Bangladesh. At the same time, it has
created self-employment opportunities to more than 200,000
Grameen Bank borrowers, giving telephone access to more than
80 million people.
Quadir’s work has been recognized as a successful
development model by leaders and organizations around the
world. He appeared on CNN and PBS and was profiled in feature
articles in The Economist, Harvard Business Review, Financial
Times, and The New York Times, and in several books. The World
Economic Forum, based in Geneva, Switzerland, selected him
as a Global Leader for Tomorrow in 1999. He received an MBA
(1987) and an MA (1983) from the Wharton School at the University
of Pennsylvania and a BS with Honors (1981) from Swarthmore
College.
Sandy Pentland, Global
D-Lab
Prof. Alex (Sandy) Pentland is a pioneer in wearable computers,
health systems, smart environments, and technology for developing
countries. He is one of the most-cited computer scientists
in the world.
He is co-director of the MIT Program in Developmental Entrepreneurship,
a co-founder of the Wearable Computing research community,
the Autonomous Mental Development research community, the
Center for Future Health, and was the founding director of
the Media Lab Asia. He was formerly the Academic Head of the
MIT Media Laboratory, and is MIT’s Toshiba Professor
of Media Arts and Sciences, and Director of Human Dynamics
Research.
He has won numerous international awards in the Arts, Sciences
and Engineering. He was chosen by Newsweek as one of the 100
Americans most likely to shape the next century.
Dr. Abigail Barrow, Founding
Director of MTTC
Dr. Abigail Barrow is the founding Director of the Massachusetts
Technology Transfer Center (MTTC). At the MTTC she is responsible
for the establishment of the Center, its overall management
and the development of its program offerings. The MTTC’s
mission is to facilitate and accelerate technology transfer
between research institutions and companies with in the Commonwealth.
Prior to joining the MTTC, Dr. Barrow served as managing
director of William J. von Liebig Center at the University
of California San Diego (UCSD). The von Liebig Center was
created in 2001 to support the commercialization of research
being performed in the UCSD Jacobs School of Engineering.
She has also served as a member of the board of directors
of the Center for the Commercialization of Advanced Technologies
Consortium (CCAT), which is comprised of UCSD, San Diego State
University, Lockheed Martin Orincon, and SPAWAR Systems Center
(US Navy).
She assists in the identification and commercialization
of technologies in the area of crisis and consequence management
and has received over $25 million in federal funding from
the Office of Naval Research.
Dr. Barrow worked in variety of roles at UCSD CONNECT from
1990 to 2001. At CONNECT she developed and expanded many of
its programs to support early stage company formation and
technology commercialization. The CONNECT program is now internationally
recognized and has been successfully replicated in other regions
in North America and in Europe. In the United Kingdom there
are active CONNECT programs in Scotland, Yorkshire and the
Midlands. Dr. Barrow received her Ph.D. from the Science Studies
Unit and a B.Sc. in Mechanical Engineering from the University
of Edinburgh.
Colin Bulthaup, Squid
Labs
Colin Bulthaup is an electrical engineer with a strong background
in robotics, manufacturing, and elastomers. In 2001 he founded
Kovio, Inc. a Silicon Valley company that uses super high-resolution
printing techniques to create low-cost integrated circuits.
Prior to Kovio, Colin earned his Masters degree from MIT studying
various soft-lithographic techniques and was awarded the Collegiate
Inventors Award by the US Patent Office along with Eric. He
has also won numerous electrical and mechanical engineering
competitions, including the International Design Competition
held in Sao Paulo, Brazil. Most recently Colin was recognized
by Technology Review Magazine as one of the TR100, a collection
of the top 100 innovators under the age of 35.
Daniel Dardani, Associate
Technology Licensing Officer, M.I.T.’s
Technology Licensing Office
Daniel Dardani is an Associate Technology Licensing Officer
at M.I.T.’s Technology Licensing Office. He assists
Associate Director Jack Turner with licensing. His technology
areas include: electronics, computer science and software,
algorithms, digital imaging, bioinformatics, information technologies,
and other physical sciences. Daniel is well experienced in
the scientific, technological, and legal aspects of intellectual
property. He works with patents, copyrights, and trademarks,
counseling both inventors and entrepreneurs on how to utilize
and effectively leverage university technologies into commercialization
opportunities. Daniel has drafted and negotiated license agreements
with a wide variety of business ventures from startup companies
to large global corporations. Daniel is the TLO’s liaison/coordinator
of the Cambridge - MIT Institute (CMI), the 125 million dollar
joint venture between MIT (US) and the Univ. of Cambridge
(UK) to promote and grow a wide variety of commercial patent
initiatives and business transactions in and around the UK.
Before coming to M.I.T., Daniel worked as a senior test
engineer for an international telecommunications networking
company. There he worked on assignments in Greece, Israel,
Japan, Mexico and within the US. In his own time, Daniel helps
teach a survey course in Intellectual Property at Harvard
University, led by Allan A. Ryan, Director of Intellectual
Property for the Harvard Business School Publishing. Additionally,
Daniel is a teaching assistant for Harvard’s History
and Ethics of Biotechnology taught by Dr. Nadine Weidman.
Daniel has undergraduate degrees in physics and political
science from the University of Rochester, and is presently
finishing a Master’s degree in the history of science
from Harvard University.
Humera Fasihuddin,
Program Director, NCIIA
Humera Fasihuddin is the Program Director for Invention
to Venture, a workshop series in technology entrepreneurship
intended for faculty and students throughout the country.
Responsible for holding nearly 25 such events in 2006, Fasihuddin
is credited with streamlining program processes in order to
enable the program to scale. She also manages BMEidea, a national
student competition in biomedical engineering. Fasihuddin
is the co-founder of Edical
May, a manufacturing and business development company
enabling scale-up of new medical devices. She began this venture
after four years spearheading a technology association in
Western Massachusetts called the Regional
Technology Corporation. There she developed a broad network
and insight into regional commercialization strategies. Fasihuddin
began her career at materials manufacturer Intelicoat in South
Hadley, MA (also known as Rexam Graphics, Graphic Technology
International, James River and Scott Graphics). In her seven
year career she worked her way up from operations to technical
support, and finally to product management where she managed
a $40 million business unit in the CAD arena and cultivated
a new digital proofing business unit. Fasihuddin earned her
MBA from UMASS Amherst in 2000 and her B.S. in Mathematics
(minor in Economics) from Smith College in 1992.
Kristin Finn, Executive
Director of the Lemelson-MIT
Program
Kristin Finn has been executive director of the Lemelson-MIT
Program since 2001. She helped launch InvenTeams grants for
high school invention teams, broaden LMIT’s outreach,
and refocus the national awards program on inventors who are
rising in their careers and working in the area of sustainability.
Her previous advocacy work included positions at an environmental
non-profit and a socially responsive investment firm, as well
as a directorship at CERES, a coalition that works to integrate
sustainability into capital markets. She has also been a community
newspaper editor and chief legislative aide in the Rhode Island
State Legislature.
Merton C. Flemings,
Toyota Professor Emeritus and Director of the Lemelson-MIT
Program
Toyota Professor Emeritus Merton C. Flemings joined the Lemelson-MIT
Program as director in 2000. An inventor himself—with
31 patents—and a specialist in metallurgy and materials
science, Flemings has focused his career on how to produce
better products out of materials through understanding and
applying the underlying science of materials.
Flemings received his S.B. degree from MIT in the Department
of Metallurgy in 1951, followed by his S.M. and Sc.D. degrees
in Metallurgy in 1952 and 1954, respectively. He developed
an interest in metallurgy as a sophomore at MIT. "It
looked like a good hands-on field with a lot of chemistry
and physics involved," he commented. Older fraternity
brothers in the field were also an influence.
Flemings became employed as an assistant professor at MIT
in 1956 and, later, professor in 1969. The department head
and faculty professors particularly inspired him at the start
of his career. Climbing the ladder at MIT, Flemings established
the Materials Processing Center in 1979 and was its director
until 1982, when he was promoted to the department head of
Materials Science and Engineering. After several visiting
professorships, he served as the MIT director of the Singapore-MIT
alliance from 1998-2001.
Among Flemings' most notable inventions are two processes
widely used in industry. The first is the process to use magnetic
fields to improve the quality of silicon single crystals and
of steel continuous castings. The second process produces
and forms metals in the semi-solid state; it is used to produce
high-quality lightweight aluminum components for cars.
Flemings is the author or co-author of over 300 papers and
two books. He has received numerous medals, awards and distinctions
and is a member of the National Academy of Engineering and
the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
Flemings' advice to aspiring inventors: "Keep focused,
work hard, don’t get discouraged and have fun."
David Grosof, President,
OptiOpia, Inc.
David Grosof is President of OptiOpia, Inc., a for-profit
social venture developing two products to meet the eyeglass
needs of hundreds of millions of people in middle and low
income countries, and also to improve vision screening in
richer countries. By developing a low-cost autorefractor to
de-skill the detection and diagnosis of refractive error and
an innovative lens molding device (invented by former MIT
Media Lab student Saul Griffith, 2004 recipient of the Lemelson-MIT
Student Prize) for on-demand, on-the-spot spectacle lens manufacture,
OptiOpia will increase access to eyecare and lower the cost
of eyeglasses. Key seed financing is being provided by a program-related
investment of The Lemelson Foundation. David obtained a bachelor’s
degree in Social Studies at Harvard, a PhD in neurobiology
at University of California, Berkeley, and an MBA from MIT’s
Sloan School. He performed both eye and brain research at
NYU, NASA Ames Research Center and at Washington University’s
School of Medicine, where he was on the ophthalmology faculty.
Harish Hande, Managing
Director, SELCO-INDIA
Harish Hande is the Managing Director of SELCO-INDIA. SELCO-INDIA
was the first rural solar service company in India that created
India's first rural solar financing program, utilizing the
networks of the regional rural banks. The model has since
been replicated in other parts of the world. SELCO is also
responsible for creating India's first sustainable rural service
network in the field of renewable energy plans and operations.
Dr. Hande is a board member of Solar Electric Light Company
and all SELCO subsidiaries, a Board Member of International
Development Enterprises (IDE), New Delhi, Advisory Board Member
of Karnataka Renewable Energy Development Limited and Founding
Member of the International Rural Energy Delivery Service
Group. He is also on the board of Global Village Energy Partnership
(GVEP). He has published several papers on Renewable Energy
for Developing World. He holds as B.Tech. (Hons) from the
Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur, and a Ph.D. from
the University of Massachusetts, Lowell, USA in Energy Engineering
(Solar), specialized in Solar Energy for Developing Countries.
Charles Lacy, President,
Barred Rock Fund
Charles Lacy is President of Vermont-based Barred Rock Fund,
a venture capital fund targeting businesses that create economic
opportunities for lower income people. Barred Rock is also
one of the largest lenders to community loan funds in New
England. He is founder or director of numerous food and agriculture
enterprises which support sustainable rural development. Previously,
he was President of Ben & Jerry’s Ice Cream.
Jose Gomez-Marquez, Co-Inventor
and Founder, Aerovax
Jose Gomez-Marquez is co-inventor and founder of Aerovax,
a medical device company that is developing innovative and
low-cost solutions for vaccinating developing populations
in the “last mile” of healthcare against deadly
infectious diseases. Aerovax has designed a safe, user-friendly,
portable aerosol device for delivering vaccine that eliminates
the need for needles, requires no training and no electrical
power, at an immunization cost that is 40% lower than current
methods. Aerovax was the 2006 winner of the MIT IDEAS Award
for International Technology (sponsored by the Lemelson-MIT
Program) and a finalist in the MIT $100K Entrepreneurship
Competition and has been profiled by Forbes, the Dow Jones
Emerging Ventures Conference, and Booz Allen Hamilton’s
Technology Petting Zoo.
As a student in science policy and engineering at the Worcester
Polytechnic Institute, Jose focuses his policy research on
international technology transfer studies, reverse engineering
in developing countries, and indigenous technology clusters.
His biomedical design experience includes designs for the
Aerovax vaccine delivery system, the SafePilot — a next
generation cane for the blind that enhances their spatial
awareness — and a hybrid medical technology program
to enhance TB therapy adherence in developing countries.
Prior to WPI, Jose held marketing positions at an institutional
investment firm in Atlanta, GA. Originally from Honduras,
Jose came to the United States on a Rotary Scholarship and
currently lives in Brookline, Massachusetts.
http://www.aerovax.net
http://LittleDevicesThatCould.blogspot.com
Jhonatan Rotberg, Researcher,
MIT Media Lab
Jhonatan is currently a researcher at the MIT Media Lab
and specializes in the development of ICT-enabled business
models and implementations for developing countries (mainly
Latin America).
Educated at Universidad Anáhuac and Brown University,
he was the founder and CEO of Aprendiendo.com, SA de CV, co-founder
and member of the board of directors at General Hipotecaria,
SFOL, and most recently the manager of new business development
at Telmex. Jhonatan’s main interest is in how increasingly
pervasive communications can enable collaborative networks
within developing countries, in order to stimulate bottom-up
empowerment, collaboration and development.
Joshua Schuler, InvenTeams
Officer, Lemelson-MIT Program, Massachusetts Institute of
Technology
Joshua Schuler has been working for the Lemelson-MIT Program
since 2003. A non-profit organization within MIT’s School
of Engineering, the Lemelson-MIT
Program, recognizes outstanding inventors, encourages
sustainable new solutions to real-world problems, and enables
and inspires young people to pursue creative lives and careers
through invention.
At Lemelson-MIT, Joshua runs InvenTeams,
the program’s national initiative to foster inventiveness
among high school students. InvenTeams asks teams –
composed of students, teacher(s) and industry mentors –
to collaboratively identify a problem that they want to solve,
research the problem, and provides up to US$10,000 for them
to develop a prototype. During the 2007-2008 academic year,
InvenTeams is providing grants to twenty teams from public,
private and technical magnet high schools in urban, suburban
and rural communities across the United States.
Joshua is a graduate of Tufts University (Political Science/Environmental
Science) and MIT (Technology and Policy/Entrepreneurship),
and holds a MBA from the Collège des Ingénieurs
(Paris, France). While in France, Josh worked for Renault
on the Renault-Nissan Alliance. Prior to joining Lemelson-MIT,
Josh was a private consultant for several start-up companies,
a high school rowing coach and teacher, chief assistant to
the Mayor of Ithaca, NY and a firefighter (not concurrently).
Amy Smith, Founder, International
Development Initiative at MIT
Amy Smith is the founder of the International Development
Initiative at MIT and has taught classes related to this subject
for ten years. She served in the US Peace Corps in Botswana
for four years and has worked in Senegal, South Africa, Nepal,
Haiti, Ghana and Honduras. She is currently a senior lecturer
in mechanical engineering. She has taught engineering design
at a variety of levels, ranging from high school enrichment
programs to graduate courses in sustainable development. She
won the 1999 BF Goodrich Collegiate Inventor’s Award
also won the 2000 Lemelson-MIT Student Prize for Invention.
In 2004 she was selected as a MacArthur Fellow, recognizing
her efforts in creating technologies to improve lives in the
developing world and for finding opportunities to inspire
students to do the same. Her current projects are in the areas
of water testing and treatment, agricultural processing and
alternative energy.
Phil Weilerstein,
Executive Director, NCIIA
Phil Weilerstein, Executive Director, began his career as
an entrepreneur while still a
graduate student at the University of Massachusetts. He, along
with classmates and an
advisor, launched a start-up biotech company which eventually
went public. This
experience, followed by several other entrepreneurial ventures,
brought him a lifelong
passion for entrepreneurship, which he has lived out through
his work with the National
Collegiate Inventors and Innovators Alliance. Phil’s
tenure at the NCIIA is marked by his
skill for network-building and expert leverage of resources.
He has a special talent for
seeking out gifted educators and other important contributors
and putting them to work
for the betterment of invention, innovation, and entrepreneurship
education in the U.S.
and worldwide. As an entrepreneur in a not-for-profit organization,
he has grown the
NCIIA from a grassroots group of enthusiastic faculty to a
nationally known and in-
demand knowledge base and resource center.
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