Speaker Bios

Mr. Mel Pirchesky of Eagle Ventures

Having likely raised much more equity from angel investors than anyone else in the Pittsburgh region, Mel Pirchesky, President of Eagle Ventures, is a long-time Pittsburgh entrepreneur. He's raised over $60 million of equity for more than 30 deals solely from individuals, most of them located in the Pittsburgh region.
Eagle Ventures' most recent completed transaction was a $9 million financing completed this past summer where Mel and 60 others invested in Cardiorobotics, a robotic medical device company that spun out of CMU and Pitt. Currently, Mel is more than halfway through financing $8 million for ALung, an artificial lung company that spun out of Pitt.

He is the 'go-to' guy for coaching on Elevator Pitches. He delivers high impact coaching to entrepreneurs whereby they dramatically improve how they articulate their company's value proposition.
Mel has forty years of experience in deal evaluation and structuring. He also is a strong promoter of entrepreneurism and the Boy Scouts. Mel says he is always looking for the next 'great' deal (and that good deals need not apply).

Back To Top ^

Dr. Art Boni, John R. Thorne Chair of Entrepreneurship and Director of the Donald H. Jones Center for Entrepreneurship of The Tepper School of Business

http://www.tepper.cmu.edu

Dr. Boni's teaching interests include Entrepreneurship, Commercialization of Technology and Biotechnology, Global Entrepreneurship and Innovation, and Venture Capital.

Dr. Boni is responsible for the organization and annual operation of the McGinnis Venture Competition, a unique, intercollegiate venture competition for MBA/graduate students that bring new technologies to market through entrepreneurship. He has a B. S. and M. S. in Mechanical Engineering from Carnegie Mellon University and from the University of Southern California respectively. He also earned a Ph. D. from the University of California, San Diego in Engineering Science/Engineering Physics.

His academic background includes a term as Assistant Professor of Engineering and Applied Science at Yale University and over 80 publications in his areas of research interest.

Dr. Boni has spent most of his career as an entrepreneur in technology and life science companies in San Diego, CA and Boston, MA. In his first entrepreneurial venture, he was part of the senior management team at Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC) during the first decade of its operation. As a Senior Vice President he was responsible for building and managing a nationally-based technology business segment focusing on energy, environment and health. SAIC is a $7 billion diversified information technology and services company, and is the largest employee-owned research and engineering company in the United States. He then served as Vice President at Physical Sciences Inc. (PSI) a research and development company, where he founded and was President of PSI Technology Company, a technology development and commercialization affiliate organization. He then became Vice President for New Venture Development at Pharma-Eco Laboratories, Inc., a contract drug development and pharmaceutical manufacturing company. In addition to founding PSI Technology Co., he also founded and was Chairman and CEO of three startup companies and a joint venture that focused on medical devices, life science software, pharmaceutical development, and electro-optic process monitoring and control. He specialized in the startup and development stages of these companies, with emphasis on development of business plans, venture and non-traditional financing, product development and commercialization, market entry, and management team development.

Dr. Boni served as the Founding Director of Technology Management at the University of Pittsburgh where he was responsible for managing and developing the intellectual property portfolio of the university and its medical school.

Back To Top ^

Mrs. Tara Branstad, Associate Director of The Center for Technology Transfer and Enterprise

Mrs. Branstad works primarily with our faculty in Robotics, Biomedical Engineering, and ICES. She also works with many of our faculty in SCS, MCS, Cylab, and the Tepper School. Tara has worked with a variety of licensing models, including traditional commercial, Open Source, and new company spin-off. In her capacity as Assistant Director of CTTEC, Tara is responsible for overseeing our Enterprise Creation activities and managing our Gap Fund Program. She also assists the Director with administrative and finance duties.

Tara came to CMU in October 2005. She began her professional career at the University of Pittsburgh's Office of Technology Management. She then worked at Innovation Works, a seed stage funding and technology-based economic development organization, and as an independent consultant. Tara is married to a serial entrepreneur and has two young children. In her "spare" time, Tara likes to watch and play sports.

Tara received a BA in Biology from the University of Virginia and an MBA/MHA from the University of Pittsburgh.

Back To Top ^

Dr. Rick Carley, Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering

Professor L. Richard Carley joined the faculty of the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Carnegie Mellon University in 1984 and has been a major contributor to the research and educational missions of that department.

Professor Carley was named the ST Microelectronics Professor of Engineering at CMU in March of 2001. Prior to joining Carnegie Mellon, Dr. Carley received his S.B. (1976), S.M. (1978) and Ph.D. (1984) in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Dr. Carley works in the fields of CAD for analog integrated circuit synthesis, high speed analog signal processing IC design, and the design of microelectromechanical systems (MEMS). Dr. Carley is the co-author of two textbooks, the author or co-author of more than 150 papers in technical journals and conferences, and the co inventor on 18 patents.

A dedicated educator, Prof. Carley has graduated 34 M.S. students and 20 Ph.D. students who are now pursuing careers in academia and industry. For his contributions in research and teaching, Dr. Carley was elected a Fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) in 1997. In 1997, Dr. Carley co-founded Neolinear, a Pittsburgh-based company specializing in analog CAD synthesis tools that was sold to Cadence in 2004. In 2001, Dr. Carley co-founded IC Mechanics, a MEMS sensor startup that was respun into an RF MEMS focus as Renaissance Wireless in 2007.

Back To Top ^

Mrs. Babs Carryer of Carryer Consulting, President, and Tepper School of Business, Adjunct Professor

http://www.carryer.com

Mrs. Babs Carryer is adjunct professor of entrepreneurship at the Heinz College and the Don Jones Center for Entrepreneurship in Tepper School of Business. Babs is also is President of Carryer Consulting, which provides strategic marketing and business planning services to technology companies and organizations in the software and life sciences sectors. Babs currently is director of deal flow for BlueTree Allied Angels. She is the embedded entrepreneur for Project Olympus, which was founded within CMU's Computer Science Department to stimulate commercialization of new technologies. Babs co-founded, was past president, and still serves as a consultant and board director of LaunchCyte LLC , a development company that creates, seeds, and harvests life sciences innovations from leading research universities across the U.S. Currently, LaunchCyte has six life sciences portfolio companies, which have raised collectively approximately $65 million, and which have a combined value of approximately $200 million. Babs teaches new technology commercialization through the University of Pittsburgh's Offices of Enterprise Development and Technology Management. In the fall of 2008, Babs was the Bishoff entrepreneur-in-residence at Penn State University.

Back To Top ^

Dr. Robert F. Davis, The Clare Bertucci Distinguished Professor of Materials Science and Engineering

Robert F. Davis is a John and Clare Bertucci Distinguished Professor in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering at Carnegie Mellon University. He received his Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley. He is a member of the United States National Academy of Engineering and a Fellow of the American Ceramic Society. He has received the ALCOA Distinguished Research Award, the Alumni Research Award, the ORNL Excellence in Publications Award, the Richard M. Fulrath Memorial Award and the R.J.R. Reynolds Award for Outstanding Research, the Alexander Holladay Medal for Excellence in Teaching, Research and Outreach and the John Bardeen Award. He was a guest lecturer of the Troisiéme Cycle de la Physique en Suisse Romande. His research interests include (i) growth and characterization of, GaN, AlN, SiC and ZnO, and nitride alloy thin films, (ii) development of novel nanoscale optoelectronic materials and devices, and (iii) the fabrication of nanostructures and devices via STM-based decomposition of adsorbed molecules. He has edited or co-edited seven books, authored or co-authored more than 270 chapters in edited proceedings or in books, published more than 400 peer reviewed papers in archived Journals and given more than 160 invited presentations.

Back To Top ^

Mr. Randy Eager, Executive in Residence of Innovation Works

Mr. Eager has more than 25 years of successful start-up and product commercialization experience. He is currently an Executive in Residence at Innovation Works where he works with the management teams of start-up technology companies to identify and address critical business issues. Randy co-founded his second company, DeisgnAdvance Systems, with CMU professor, Jonathan Cagan. As CEO of this CMU spin-off, Randy led the company from inception to successfully raising over $6 million, building a team, and securing contracts from the likes of Cisco, Intel, Motorola, and Apple, all in less than 2 years. Prior to DeisgnAdvance, Randy was a Licensing Officer at CMU, where he licensed technology to industry and worked with Carnegie Mellon faculty to spin companies out of the university. Randy has earned an engineering degree from Michigan State and an MBA from the University of Pittsburgh's Katz School.

Back To Top ^

Dr. Erica Fuchs, Assistant Professor of Engineering and Public Policy

Mrs. Fuchs teaches and does research as part of the interdepartmental Ph.D. Program in Strategy, Entrepreneurship, and Technological Change and the new professional masters program in Engineering and Technology Innovation Management. Before coming to CMU, Dr. Fuchs completed her PhD in Engineering Systems at M.I.T. in June 2006, where she was a 2005-2006 Alfred P. Sloan fellow at the MIT Industrial Performance Center. Her work won "Best Doctoral Presentation" at the 2005 Annual Technology Management and Policy Doctoral Consortium and won MIT's "Best Technology and Policy Masters Thesis" in 2003. After completing her bachelors in Materials Science and Engineering, and prior to returning to M.I.T. for graduate school, she worked for the United Nations in Beijing, China, on policies to encourage innovation in state-owned industrial boiler manufacturers. Her work has been published in High Temperature Materials and Processes, Composite Science and Technology, International Journal of Vehicle Design, Journal of Lightwave Technology, and the Annual Proceedings of the Academy of Management.

Back To Top ^

Ms. Sanna Gaspard of TLneoCare, President, and Carnegie Mellon PhD Candidate

Ms. Gaspard graduated from the University of Miami (Miami, FL) in 2004 with a BS in Biomedical Engineering and a minor in Electrical Engineering before she went on to pursue her masters ('05) and PhD (August 2010) at Carnegie Mellon in Biomedical Engineering. Her graduate research at Carnegie Mellon has been focused on the area of medical device development. For her Master's research she worked on developing a new carotid artery embolic filter system and an in-vitro bench top model with patient specific geometries currently being used at the Vascular Biomechanics and Biofluids Laboratory. For her PhD research she is working on designing a novel point of care device to diagnosis pressure ulcers to help improve the accuracy of pressure ulcer diagnosis. Ms. Gaspard has experience in entrepreneurship, medical device start ups, and product commercialization. She is working to develop a pediatric device through TLneoCare, which she founded. She has received several accolades for her research and work in medical devices ranging from business plan competitions to national engineering awards including the 2010 IEEE New Face of Engineering recognition.

Back To Top ^

Mr. Tom Jones, Chief Marketing Officer of BxVideo Solutions, Angel Investor

Mr. Jones has extensive experience in corporate management, marketing, investment fundraising and technology development/commercialization activities in high-tech markets. He has founded and held senior executive operating positions in numerous entrepreneurial corporate and startup high technology and investment organizations.

Tom previously served as an Executive-in-Residence at the Don Jones Center for Entrepreneurship in the Tepper School of Business at Carnegie Mellon University traveling to Doha, Qatar to teach entrepreneurship and mentor student teams in Pittsburgh and Doha on business ideas, company formation, and planning. Tom also co-founded BlueTree Capital Group, LLC, a group focused on investing in seed and early-stage high growth high-tech startups.

Tom spent many years researching companies for corporate acquisition or equity positions for organizations such as Digital Communications Associates, Novell and FORE Systems/Marconi. He was involved in product management, product marketing, licensing of technology, formation of industrial partnerships, selection and development of spin-off companies and joint ventures with strategic partners. Tom is also the founder of a pc networking software and services organization that took advantage of the boon in corporate PC networking in the mid 80's. The company produced software to allow the linking of data from PC applications to mainframe applications.

Tom received his BS in Computer Science at the University of West Florida and an MBA from the University of Pittsburgh.

Back To Top ^

Mr. James Jordan, Vice President and Chief Investment Officer of Pittsburgh Life Sciences Greenhouse (PLSG)

Mr. Jordan is an accomplished Fortune 20-level executive with strong experience in industry, consulting, and academia. A recognized expert in market development and guiding the successful formation of entrepreneurial startup businesses in the Life Sciences Industry, Mr. Jordan joined the Pittsburgh Life Sciences Greenhouse (PLSG) in 2005 and became Vice President and Chief Investment Officer in 2007.

Prior to joining the PLSG, Mr. Jordan served as Senior Vice President of a $3.0 billion division of McKesson Corporation and Vice President, Marketing at Johnson & Johnson. He has held a range of management positions in sales and marketing, operations, supply chain, information technology, finance, and quality assurance with several Fortune 500 medical device companies including C.R. Bard, Inc. and Boston Scientific, Inc. Mr. Jordan has leveraged this experience in several startup ventures and is active on several Boards of Directors.

Mr. Jordan's consulting experience includes numerous companies such as Medtronic, Frost & Sullivan, Circuit City, Philip Morris, Northrop Grumman, Schwartz Pharmaceutical, and Otsuka Pharmaceutical. A Certified Hypnotherapist and a member of the National Guild of Hypnotists, Mr. Jordan leverages these skills as effective tools in the area of change management.

Mr. Jordan previously served as an Adjunct Associate Professor at the University of Richmond and he is currently a Distinguished Service Professor of Biotechnology Management and the Director of the Master of Science in Biotechnology Management at Carnegie Mellon University. He holds a Bachelor of Science Degree in Business Administration from Merrimack College and a Masters degree in Business Administration degree from Boston University.

Back To Top ^

Mrs. Carol McCague, Angel investor of BlueTree

Mrs. McCague is the Founder and Principal of E=Mc. In her role she is responsible for building and cultivating networks of relationships with executives across a variety of industries. Carol is able to forge strong relationships with her clients through her dedication and commitment to high quality service and her willingness to partner in the future of their businesses.

Prior to founding E=Mc, Carol worked at the Jewish Family and Children's Services Career Development Center in Pittsburgh, an international agency providing outplacement assistance to downsizing organizations. Carol successfully led the effort to expand the Center's outreach of services to the broader business community. She secured client relationships with Fortune 500 companies, including medical and pharmaceutical providers, manufacturers, as well as telecommunication and transportation companies. And, she established client relationships within non-profit organizations including educational institutions. As part of the effort, Carol defined and delivered outplacement services, counseling services, and career development workshops. Her placements covered a wide range of positions including executive management, operational and administrative roles. Through her efforts at the Career Development Center, Carol identified the opportunity to create E=Mc and harness the extensive network of executive relationships she had established across a wide spectrum of industries.

Earlier in her career, Carol worked as a consultant for Robert Half & Associates, which provides retained searches for accounting executives. Carol was instrumental in growing and diversifying the business by helping establish the Account Temp Division. She built the team for this new venture, created the training and incentive programs for the staff and sold the account temps concept to new and existing customers. Through Carol's leadership, the Division secured Fortune 500 manufacturers including Westinghouse, U.S. Steel and others, at both a corporate and plant level.
Carol started her career at Fortune Personnel - an executive placement firm providing retained searches. At Fortune, Carol was promoted through a variety of positions with increasing responsibilities. As part of her efforts, she helped support counselors, build relationships and identify candidate pools for industrial and discrete manufacturers across the country. Carol's personal skills allowed her to interview candidates across multiple business functions including engineering, finance, sales and marketing.

Carol sits on the advisory board of Duquesne University, the advisory board of Mercy Hospital, and is a member of the Women's Committee of the Carnegie Museum of Arts. She is a steering committee member of the ARCS Foundation for post graduate science education based at Carnegie Mellon University. She is a national board member of the Business Women's Network International in Washington, D.C., and New York.
Carol is a nationally certified career facilitator, and in addition to her numerous career accomplishments, she has raised a family of five wonderful children with her husband Dr. James McCague.

Back To Top ^

Mr. Jeremy Michalek, Assistant Professor of Mechanical Engineering and of Engineering and Public Policy

Mr. Michalek is the founding director of the Design Decisions Laboratory and an active member of the Green Design Institute and the Center for Product Strategy and Innovation. His research focuses on systems optimization, design for market systems, green design and environmental policy.

Jeremy earned his B.S. from Carnegie Mellon (1999) and his M.S. (2001) and Ph.D. (2005) from the University of Michigan in Mechanical Engineering. In 2005 he worked as a postdoctoral research fellow at the University of Michigan before beginning his current faculty position at Carnegie Mellon.

Jeremy teaches courses in design, product development, economic analysis, and optimization. His research and educational efforts have appeared in Bloomberg, CNN Money, The Pittsburgh Tribune Review and U.S. News and World Report, and he has written policy briefs for members of the United States Congress and the Administration. He has earned awards including the ASME Design Automation Committee's Best Paper Award, the George Tallman Ladd Research Award for outstanding research and professional accomplishments, the ASME Design Automation Outstanding Young Investigator Award, and the National Science Foundation CAREER Award. Jeremy is involved in ASME, INFORMS, AIAA, CESUN, and the TRB.

Back To Top ^

Mr. Jeff Mullen, CEO of Dynamics Inc

Mr. Mullen is the Chief Executive Officer of Dynamics Inc. which produces next generation payment cards. Dynamics has invented the world's first fully programmable magnetic stripe. Accordingly, a Dynamics card can magnetically change any information on the programmable stripe at any given time. A typical Dynamics card includes a variety of buttons, a display, and the programmable magnetic stripe.

In doing so, a Dynamics card can change payment information both visually via a display (for online use) and magnetically via the programmable magnetic stripe (for in-store use). While Jeff was still a student at CMU, Dynamics won a number of business plan competitions that netted Dynamics nearly $400,000 in prizes. Before his role at Dynamics, Jeff served as a Patent Attorney at the Fish & Neave IP Group of Ropes and Gray where he first began as a technical specialist, matured as a patent agent, and then excelled as a patent attorney. Jeff earned his MBA in Entrepreneurship from Carnegie Mellon University, his JD from the New York Law School, and his B.S. in Electrical & Computer Engineering from Carnegie Mellon University.

Back To Top ^

Mr. Larry Pileggi, Professor of Carnegie Mellon Electrical & Computer Engineering

Mr. Pileggi is the Tanoto professor of electrical and computer
engineering at Carnegie Mellon University and the director of the Center for Circuit and System Solutions (C2S2), one of six centers in the SRC/DARPA Focus Center Research Program. He previously held positions at Westinghouse Research and Development and the University of Texas at Austin. He received his Ph.D. in Electrical and Computer Engineering from Carnegie Mellon University in 1989. He has consulted for various semiconductor and EDA
companies, and was co-founder of Fabbrix Inc., Xigmix Inc., and Extreme DA.

His research interests include various aspects of digital and analog design and design methodologies. He has received various awards, including Westinghouse corporation's highest engineering achievement award in 1986, and the Semiconductor Research Corporation Aristotle award in 2008. He is a co-author of "Electronic Circuit and System Simulation Methods," McGraw-Hill, 1995 and "IC Interconnect Analysis," Kluwer, 2002. He has published over 200 refereed conference and journal papers and holds 22 U.S. patents.

Back To Top ^

Mr. Ned Renzi of Birchmere

Mr. Renzi joined Birchmere in 2000 and is primarily responsible for cleantech and medical device investments. He focuses on engineering driven innovations that create a more sustainable planet and improve the human condition. He is actively involved as a past or current director of Cvent, Entigo, Inspired Technologies, Lightningcast, and Plextronics. Ned also led our investment in Miasolé.

Ned has over 20 years experience in founding, managing, and investing in high technology companies. He is general partner of an unaffiliated venture fund where he was instrumental in leading the fund into software-related investments. Ned was previously Manager of Information Transfer Technology at Concurrent Technologies Corporation, a $250 million high technology research organization, where he developed CTC's telemedicine business and was also responsible for electronic commerce, web programming, high speed networking, and virtual reality projects. Ned was also a Senior Manager in the U.S. Department of Defense Special Projects group where he was responsible for wireless communications, custom software projects, robotics, and various sensor technologies.

Ned is a charter member and director of TiE/Pittsburgh (an international entrepreneurial support group) and is a member of Allegheny County's Green Action Team. He holds a B.S. in Electrical Engineering from The Pennsylvania State University, an MBA from the University of Pittsburgh, and a Master's Degree in Engineering Management from George Washington University.

Back To Top ^

Mr. Ray Steeb, Founder, President and CEO, of FASTTAC, Inc.

Mr. Steeb has worked on FASTTAC from its inception when it began as a research project at Carnegie Mellon University. Ray is a thirty year veteran of the construction industry having been Vice President and General Manager of the Pittsburgh Office of Turner Construction Company and President of his own commercial construction and program management companies from 2002 to 2007.
Ray began his career in field supervision on projects ranging in value form $3 million to $150 million where he obtained various levels of project responsibility. He then moved into middle management where he had total responsibility for profit and loss at the project level. Ray became the VP and General Manager of Turner's Pittsburgh office in late 1997 where he took on P & L responsibility for the business unit. This unique experience in field operations, project management and business unit leadership provides FASTTAC with the insight and guidance of an industry insider providing solutions that address the specific challenges and risks of the construction industry.

Ray's considerable construction experience includes responsibility for projects such as the David L. Lawrence Convention Center, Pittsburgh, PA; One Mellon Bank Center, Pittsburgh, PA; UPMC Presbyterian Hospital, Pittsburgh, PA; Penn State University's Information Science and Technology Center, State College, PA; Alcoa Corporate Headquarters, Pittsburgh, PA; O'Reilly Theater, Pittsburgh, PA; Federal Courthouse, Buffalo, NY; Buffalo Airport, Buffalo, NY; and Johnson and Johnson research facility, Rochester, NY.

Ray holds a BS in Civil Engineering from Penn State University, a Professional Engineers License in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania and an MBA from the University of Pittsburgh's Katz Graduate School of Business.

Back To Top ^

Mr. Alan Veeck of Meakem Becker Venture Capital

Mr. Veek is a partner with Meakem Becker Venture Capital, a traditional venture capital firm focused on making significant investments in early-stage startup companies. Prior to Meakem Becker, Alan spent seven years at Ariba (formerly FreeMarkets), working with a number of the company's largest customers across many industries, and managing acquisition integration activities. Before Ariba, Alan was an associate at McKinsey & Co, a management consulting firm, from 1996 through 1999. While at McKinsey, Alan worked extensively within the Purchasing and Supply Management practice, serving a range of Global 1000 clients in the healthcare and diversified manufacturing industries. Alan holds a bachelors degree in chemistry from the College of William and Mary in Virginia, and a Ph.D. in chemistry from the University of California, Berkeley. Alan lives with his wife and four children in Sewickley, PA.

Back To Top ^

Mr. B. Erik Ydstie, Professor of Chemical and Electrical Engineering

Mr.Ydstie a BS and MS degree in Chemistry from the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (1977) and a PhD in Chemical Engineering from Imperial College in London (1982). He got a teaching position in Chemical Engineering at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst in 1982. In 1992 he moved to Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh where he is Professor of Chemical and Electrical Engineering. From 1999 to 2000 he was Director of R&D with ELKEM ASA in Oslo, Norway. During his tenure there he restructured the R&D organization and initiated R&D programs aimed towards developing new processes for making aluminum and high purity silicon for solar cells. Erik was engaged as Professor II of Materials Technology (NTNU 2001-04) and Professor II of Electrical Engineering (NTNU 2008-). In 2005 he founded iLS Inc., a company which commercializes nonlinear adaptive control systems. He is at present CEO of iLS. Erik holds consulting agreements with companies like PPG, Elkem, Hydro Solar and ALCOA. He is on the advisory boards of the American Chemical Society, Petroleum Research Fund and the Worcester Polytechnic Institute. He has held visiting positions at Imperial College, ENSMP in Paris and UNSW in Australia. Erik has authored over 180 articles on process control, adaptation, optimization and modeling of chemical processes. His current areas of research are process control, modeling, design and scale-up. He works on supply chain management and solar cells, aluminum production processes and oil and gas field control and optimization systems.

Back To Top ^