Founders

Luke Barrington, TomNod

Luke Barrington, M.S. is a Ph.D. candidate at the University of California San Diego. He received the BE (elec) degree from University College Dublin (UCD), Ireland in 2001 and MS degree from the University of California, San Diego (UCSD) in 2004. He is about to complete his Ph.D thesis on “”Machines that Understand Music,”" a dissertation on the intersection between music, signal processing, machine learning, data mining and distributed, online human computation. He is a co-founder of the UCSD Computer Audition Laboratory and of Music Search, Inc. As a member of the Valley of the Khans project, he traveled to Mongolia on a National Geographic expedition to search for the tomb of Genghis Khan. He is an avid musician and wails on the guitar. He is a 2011 Fellow in the Startup Leadership Program in San Diego.

Bill Lennon, Interlingua Machine Translation

Bill Lennon is the co-founder of Interlingua Machine Translation, Inc.—C. Bill is a Ph.D. student in Electrical and Computer Engineering at UCSD and is interested in the intersection of neuroscience and engineering. Bill believes that understanding the functional circuitry of the mammalian brain is the key to solving problems like machine translation, computer vision and speech recognition. He holds undergraduate degrees in Mathematics and Business Administration from UC Berkeley. While an undergraduate, Bill successfully co-founded a slew of impressively unsuccessful internet ventures. He has also worked at a number of startups and technology companies in roles from ‘Assistant to the CEO’ to ‘Data Scientist’. He became an entrepreneur at age 12 when he started a black market for candy bars in middle school.

Colin Slade, VirtualPortfolioOnline.com

Colin Slade is the Co-Founder of Virtual Portfolio Online (VPO), a new online marketing training and branding platform for the Beauty and Wellness industry. VPO aims to forever change the online interaction of beauty schools, their students and their clients with innovative tools and training. Colin, a serial entrepreneur, has started multiple training and web companies including How2Trainer, How2LocalMarketing, Virtual Resume Online and has a unique ability to interface technology and people while negotiating win/win partnerships and long term deals. Prior to Virtual Portfolio Online he was the lead business development executive for Axero Solutions a social networking and business collaboration software used by some of the top fortune2000 companies. He was integral in creating an innovative sales program that tripled sales over a one year period and was instrumental in closing over 10 six figure licensing and partnership deals internationally which helped bring the company global recognition. He has a passion for online business, learning and human computer interaction and is working to create training platforms and programs that actually engage the user. He has also been speaking at events around the country and created or given trainings for companies such as Wells Fargo, Reebok, Borders Book, L’Oreal and thousands of small business owners. Colin received his Bachelors degree in Cognitive Science from University of California, San Diego and during his free time loves to play any type of sport, enjoys learning about new cultures by traveling the world, will never turn down a good plate of food and always enjoys spending time with his family and friends. He is 2012 Fellow in the Startup Leadership Program in San Diego.

Rebecca Breitenkamp, Intezyne

In 2004, Rebecca Boudreaux Breitenkamp co-founded Intezyne Technologies and served as Chief Financial Officer for four years and as a member of the company’s Board of Directors. Currently, Dr. Breitenkamp serves as a consultant to startup ventures, assessing the commercialization potential of scientific inventions and determining key steps for product development. Because of her work at the interface of technology and business, Dr. Breitenkamp has given invited lectures at the University of Connecticut, University of Massachusetts, University of California Santa Barbara, University of South Florida Center for Entrepreneurship, and Apple Inc.’s MacWorld Conference. She was a founding Fellow and Program Leader of both the Silicon Valley and San Diego chapters for the Startup Leadership Program and currently serves on the Board of Directors. She serves as a finance domain expert in the CONNECT Springboard Program and a board member for UrbanPromise International. Dr. Breitenkamp is a member of the NYC-based W.O.M.E.N. in America Mentoring Program, San Diego Venture Group, ATHENA San Diego, and the American Chemical Society. She earned a B.S. in Polymer Science (magna cum laude) from the University of Southern Mississippi and a M.S. and Ph.D. in Polymer Science and Engineering from the University of Massachusetts, where her research focused on the design and use of amphiphilic graft copolymers as gene delivery vectors. Dr. Breitenkamp has a broad range of academic and industrial experience, having performed research at MIT, Princeton University, University of Southern Mississippi, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, and National Starch and Chemical. She has co-authored six peer-reviewed publications and is a co-inventor on six patent applications. .

Baback Elmieh, Human Engines

Baback Elmieh is President of Products and Co-Founder of Human Engines Incorporated. He runs the day to day operations that are crucial to the overall progress of the company. Baback knows the ins and outs of many facets of the industry with twelve years of leadership experience in embedded software, console games, numerous internet start-ups, and computer vision research. Baback is also in charge of keeping our customers continually impressed, directing the development of innovative services and products for Human Engines’s client base. The H.E. Product President was previously the Software Lead for Qualcomm’s Advanced Content Group, where he led projects on graphics and User Experience development tools such as the uiOne 3DWidget, QX Engine, Adreno Profiler, and the Neocore OpenGL-ES benchmark. At Qualcomm, Baback made his mark by actively evangelizing solutions that enabled customers in raising the bar on mobile device user experiences. His work continues to be used at Qualcomm by numerous OEM’s and developers to optimize and ship commercial devices and software for internationally recognized brands. Baback’s ultimate revelation was that the way people work on console games can transform how content is created for all devices; this innovative principle and impassioned mission was the founding intention of Human Engines Inc., and so remains today. Baback holds Masters and Bachelors degrees in Science and Computer Science, and is a regular speaker at industry conferences. He is a 2011 Fellow in the Startup Leadership Program in San Diego.

James Adams, ZapMe

James Adams is startup junkie who co-founded med-tech company Awarepoint in 2002 and now serves as CEO and co-founder of ZapMe, a mobile payments company targeting brick and mortar merchants. Awarepoint is a med-tech company that has grown to 60+ employees, products installed in 90 hospital chains, received $40 million in venture funding. In 2011, he founded and is CEO of ZapMe, a social mobile wallet app and payment network. James is interested in learning from others, seeing people smile, and swinging for the fences. He holds a BA in Political Science from the Point Loma Nazarene University. He is 2012 Fellow in the Startup Leadership Program in San Diego.

Jason Fiedler, Qapsule Technologies

Jason Fiedler is the co-founder and Vice President of Qapsule Technologies, Inc; a biotech startup that utilizes a novel nanotechnology to enhance almost any enzyme for scientific and industrial markets. This enabling technology allows small molecule manufactures to eliminate costs, waste and to become leaders in Green Chemistry. He holds a B.A. degree in Biology and Biochemistry from the Univeristy of MN, Morris. He is currently pursuing a PhD in Biomedical Science at The Scripps Research Institute, and is part of the Molecular Evolution Training Program. During the summer, he mentors high school students in the laboratory and enjoys inspiring young minds to pursue science as a career. He has researched a wide range of topics including mosquito neuroscience, bumblebee behavior, viral capsid assembly and even small dairy economics. He is an expert in molecular biology, recombinant protein expression, protein nanotechnology and enzymology. When Jason is not growing bacteria for protein expression, he is culturing yeast for his home winemaking operation. He also enjoys snowboarding, rollerblading, playing frisbee and growing his own vegetables. He is an advocate for eating locally produced food and is focused on developing technologies to reduce mankind’s’ ecological footprint. He is a 2012 Startup Leadership Program Fellow in San Diego, CA. He is 2012 Fellow in the Startup Leadership Program in San Diego.

Jayant Menon, Winrose Medical

Jayant Menon is a Neurosurgeon in his final years of residency at the University of California San Diego. He is a co-founder of Windrose Medical, a neurosurgical device company and in 2009, co-founded Tritonics, which received funding from the UCSD’s Entrepreneur Challenge competition. His aims to be a surgeon and engineer who translates novel technologies to improve the treatment of human diseases and improve the lives of his patients and fellow physicians. Currently, he is in pursuit of a Masters in Biomedical Engineering degree from the Jacobs School of Engineering at UCSD and his passion is the improvement of clinical outcomes through engineering advancements. Present research endeavors include efforts to translate point of care cancer diagnostics and the design of novel neural prosthetic devices. His goal is to be an entrepreneur who delivers revolutionary medical advances to the world.

Jose Morachis, NanoSort

Jose is co-founder and CEO of NanoSort Inc, a development-stage biomedical device company focused on building innovative flow cytometry technologies for the research, drug discovery, and diagnostic markets. He has been awarded over $1.3 Million in grants from the NIH to advance NanoSort’s technology. Jose is also a co-founder of MySDscience.com, a niche website for scientists in San Diego and aims to be “The Online Café for Scientists in San Diego”. Prior to joining NanoSort and MySDscience, he co-founded ScholarNexus, LLC where he has been a managing partner and consultant for diverse projects in biotechnology, information technology, and business development. Morachis brings diverse biomedical research and clinical training from his postdoctoral training at UCSD Skaggs School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences, previous research at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies and the Howard Hughes Medical Institute Med-into-Grad fellowship program, and industry experience at Amgen, Inc. Jose holds a doctorate in Biology from UCSD and a B.S. in Biochemistry from UC, Riverside. He is 2012 Fellow in the Startup Leadership Program in San Diego.

Kendall Chuang, MySDscience

Kendall Chuang is a cofounder of MySDscience, an online café for scientists in San Diego. He left his job at Qualcomm to work at the biotech startup NanoSort. Kendall also has consulted with several local startups helping develop their web and mobile technology prototypes. He has worked with PieTrust on a JavaScript front-end prototype for their web-based reputation service, and Explorence on an iPhone app based on their mobile gaming platform. He worked at Qualcomm for three years where he lead an effort to develop an internal software automation tool. Kendall is also an active volunteer at Room to Read, working to organize fundraising events to support children’s education. Kendall received his Bachelor’s Degree in Computer Engineering at the University of Illinois, and his Master’s Degree in Electrical Engineering at Georgia Tech. He is passionate about enabling new collaborations with web and mobile technology. He is a 2012 Fellow in the Startup Leadership Program in San Diego.

Matthew Libby, US Green Building Council & Quiznos

In addition to working on a web-based startup, Matthew Libby is presently the Manager of Alliances at the US Green Building Council, working at the forefront of green building innovation and strategy. He got his entrepreneurial start as an owner and operator of a Quizno’s Franchise and served his country in the US Coast Guard. He is 2012 Fellow in the Startup Leadership Program in San Diego.

Melani Gordon, Taphunter.com

Melani Gordon is co-founder and CEO of Taphunter.com, a web and mobile technology platform that directs users to beer-centric venues from pubs to breweries, special events, and festivals in 10 major cities across the US. It also serves as a full-fledged consulting firm, providing craft beer-focused businesses Internet marketing and social media solutions, plus event-based promotions. Melani is also founder and PrMesident of gWave Consulting where she leads gWave’s web savvy team to help clients enhance their Internet presence by building brand awareness through the use of search engine optimization, strategic marketing, online marketing communications, and social media. Prior to founding gWave and Taphunter.com, she served as marketing manager at an Internet technology company, where she led the marketing, branding and communication efforts for more than 20,000 real estate agents and brokers. She also is a founding partner of San Diego’s dynamic craft beer conference, Beer-Con. Melani earned a bachelor’s degree in business administration and marketing from San Diego State University. She is passionate about giving back to the community and demonstrates that through her support of the San Diego chapter of Volunteers of America and the Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer Foundation. In her spare time, she enjoys road biking, mountain biking, camping, and snowboarding the Sierras near her hometown, Reno, Nevada. She is a 2012 Fellow in the Startup Leadership Program in San Diego. She is 2012 Fellow in the Startup Leadership Program in San Diego.

Michael Mueller, Moquility

Michael is the founder of Moquility Inc., which is developing a new near-field communication hardware and software platform for education and merchant settings. He is an M.B.A. candidate at San Diego State University and he is a J.D. candidate at Thomas Jefferson School of Law. In additional to high tech, biotechnology and green technology are among his entrepreneurial interests. At San Diego State University, Michael is an Aztec Innovation Fellow. At Thomas Jefferson School of Law, he is an Intellectual Property Fellow, a Law Review Editor, and a member of the Intellectual Property Law Association. His legal emphasizes are antitrust, patent prosecution, and patent litigation. Michael is admitted to practice before the United States Patent and Trademark Office. He is also a member of the San Diego County Bar Association and the Licensing Executives Society. Before pursuing his J.D./M.B.A., Michael attended the University of Minnesota (Twin Cities), where he received a Bachelor of Chemical Engineering (2009). He is 2012 Fellow in the Startup Leadership Program in San Diego

Omid Sabet, SFinX Productions
Omit Sabet is the co-owner and CEO of SFiNX Productions and co-owner of eDrinkit, Omid graduated from UCSD with a bachelor in electrical engineering, where he and his colleagues also founded SFiNX productions. He went on to work for Northrop Grumman as an engineer for 5 years followed by 3 years of technical sales at Tektronix and a year of engineering consulting . Omid has always had the thought frame of an entrepreneur and was so excited about the potential of eDrinkit that he quit his six figure salary and other perks to pursue it full-time in Nov. 2010. Omid’s nine years of experience in the nightlife industry and his experience & interaction with management of the top nightclubs and bars ( from their grand openings to their current status) provided valuable insight that impacts all eDrinkit decisions. Today, Omid oversees all elements of eDrinkit and SFiNX productions and understands the importance of brand integrity and image. He is 2012 Fellow in the Startup Leadership Program in San Diego.

Ping Wang, Mytek International

Ping Wang focuses on unlocking creative synergies between disparate disciplines and regions. He is a founder of the Ansir Innovation Center technology accelerator and incubator in San Diego, and is head of strategy and business development at Mytek International, a diversified business group spanning Asia and the Americas producing over 200 products in the appliance and electronics space, where he leads initiatives in innovation and design, including a ‘Venture Manufacturing’ model for entrepreneurial product designers. Previously, he worked for Hewlett-Packard/Agilent Technologies, various Silicon Valley startups, and later founded VEA Technologies, a consumer electronics company focused on display technologies. Dr. Wang received an interdisciplinary PhD in Computational Neuroscience from the Salk Institute and the University of California, San Diego in addition to a double major B.S. degree in Computer Science and Biology from Stanford University, and an M.S. in Electrical Engineering, also from Stanford, and has been published in a number of high level scientific and technical journals, such as Science and IEEE. He was a Mayfield Fellow in the highly-selective entrepreneurship training fellowship program of the Stanford Technology Ventures Program. He is 2012 Fellow in the Startup Leadership Program in San Diego.

Joshua Ansell-McKinnon, NEWHAF

Joshua Ansell-Mckinnon is the founder and CEO of NEWHAF, an online consulting, marketing and media company. Josh graduated from San Diego State University in 2007 with a Bachelors in Science in Business Administration with a Finance focus. Josh is dedicated to surfing, health and fitness, and has a keen interest in the environment. He is a 2011 Fellow in the Startup Leadership Program in San Diego.

Innovators

Forest Flodin, CovX

Florian Flodin is passionate about improving the human condition through science and technology. Currently, he works at CovX (acquired by Pfizer), where he contributes to the development of cutting edge bioconjugates for the treatment of cancer and metabolic disease. Forest has also worked at Arena Pharmaceuticals and Discovery Partners. He is an expert in new product development. Forest was awarded an inaugural Rady Innovation Fellowship. He holds an MBA for Rady School of Management, UC San Diego and a B.S. in Chemistry from University of Illinois-Urbana. He is 2012 Fellow in the Startup Leadership Program in San Diego.

How-Lun Chen, CareFusion

How-Lun Chen is a medical device professional with 14 years of experience turning concepts and ideas into commercial products and is currently a R&D Engineering Manager for V. Mueller, a division of CareFusion. He graduated from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign with a B.S. in Mechanical Engineering and received a M.B.A. from the University of Chicago Booth School of Business with concentrations in Marketing and Entrepreneurship. How-Lun started his career at Ethicon Endo-Surgery (EES), a Johnson & Johnson company that specializes in disposable minimally invasive surgical devices. While at EES he was involved in a variety of projects including the successful launch of a new line of handheld surgical instrumentation and leading a R&D team located in China and the U.S. to commercialize a gastric banding product. At CareFusion, How-Lun led a R&D team to commercialize surgical products and refine technologies obtained from the acquisition of a San Diego-based startup company. He has been instrumental in crafting product strategies centered around single port surgery and the creation of a new category of devices that focuses on increasing efficiencies in the operating room, which have the potential for creating a new platform of products and generating new revenue streams for V. Mueller. As a hobby, How-Lun dabbles in creating iPhone apps for parents worldwide that are interested in teaching their child Cantonese, Mandarin Chinese and English, through his start-up company, Why You. He is fascinated by rapid development of the consumer electronics industries and is actively seeking ways to synthesize advancement in that industry into medical devices in hopes of creating compelling products that benefit both the patients and healthcare providers. Currently How-Lun holds one patent and nine patent applications. He is 2012 Fellow in the Startup Leadership Program in San Diego.

Manisha Aswani, Intuit

Manisha Aswani, M.S. is a Software Quality Engineer at Intuit and has 7 years of Quality Assurance experience both in performance and feature testing. She has worked with CitiOnline and Symantec before she joined Intuit. She is currently working on e-filing systems enabling electronic transmissions to the IRS for payroll and income tax returns. She is responsible for test planning, automation and execution. She works with multisite high availability architecture that guarantees no customer downtime and minimal customer impact during production roll outs. Her technical expertise are in software tools/languages like C++, Java, SQL. She has experience with tools like Tibco, Splunk, Wily monitoring, NetTool, Oracle. She has been a participant in the IdeaJam Contest at Intuit. She hold a Masters degree in Computer Science and is currently working on an idea for a web based startup. She is a 2011 Fellow in the Startup Leadership Program in San Diego.

Galen Beers, Cornell

Galen Beers, M.B.A. is a recent transplant into San Diego and MBA graduate from the Johnson School at Cornell University. He also earned a bachelor’s degree from Cornell University in 2002 in Applied Economics and Management. After his undergraduate studies, Mr. Beers worked as a professional lacrosse player in Boston, a primary school teacher in Manchester, England, a software/strategy consultant in Baltimore, and a government funded venture capital intern in Dublin, Ireland. After working in the venture capital industry, his excitement for entrepreneurship and early stage companies was born. He currently works with the sport and social club of San Diego called VAVi as an Event Manager. He is a 2011 Fellow in the Startup Leadership Program in San Diego.

Abhijit Bhat, CovX

Abhijit (Abhi) Bhat, Ph.D. is Director of Chemistry at CovX, a division of Pfizer Biotherapeutics Research. He joined CovX in Feb 2003 as one of the early employees and helped establish and build the chemistry group at CovX. During his tenure at CovX and previously Ontogen, Abhi has managed preclinical discovery programs in diverse disease areas such as Diabetes, Wound healing, Pain, HIV and Oncology and has a successful track record of rapidly advancing programs to deliver development candidates. Abhi has the unique experience of managing a project from early discovery stage through clinical development as he was the project leader for both the preclinical and the clinical teams for CVX-060, an anti angiopoietin-2 targeting CovX-Body that is currently in Phase II trials for treatment of renal cell carcinoma. Abhi has made key contributions on the technology front that have resulted in bifunctional biologics CVX-241 and CVX-426 that are currently in clinical development. Abhi received a PhD in Medicinal Chemistry from Ohio State Univ. and conducted postdoctoral research at the Univ. of Arizona exploring therapeutic applications for carbohydrates. He is a 2011 Fellow in the Startup Leadership Program in San Diego.

Kurt Breitenkamp, UCSD

Kurt (Chip) Breitenkamp, Ph.D. holds a graduate degree in Polymer Science and Engineering from the University of Massachusetts and a B.S. in Polymer Science from the University of Southern Mississippi. His scientific research has focused on synthetic organic and polymer chemistry with an emphasis in the areas of drug delivery, polymer photovoltaics, and structure-property relationships of materials. Dr. Breitenkamp was a co-founder and Chief Technology Officer of Intezyne Technologies, a biotechnology company focused on the development of advanced, synthetic polymers for targeted drug delivery. As Intezyne’s CTO, Dr. Breitenkamp supervised research and product development while creating and implementing the corporate IP strategy and establishing industrial partnerships. He currently serves as a Research Associate in the M.G. Finn laboratory at The Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla, CA where he initiated the group’s efforts in developing functionalized conducting polymers for application in organic photovoltaic devices. Dr. Breitenkamp has co-authored 10 peer-reviewed scientific publications and is a co-inventor on 17 patents and patent applications. He is a 2011 Fellow in the Startup Leadership Program in San Diego.

Andrew Dennis, AgileNano

Andrew Dennis earned a B.S. in Chemistry from Yale University and has a background in Biomedical Engineering, Chemistry, Medical Imaging, and Biochemistry. He has performed research at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Yale University, Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research, and the University of California Santa Barbara. His research involved developing ÒsmartÓ calcium sensing MRI contrast agents, biodegradable polymer drug delivery nanoparticles, and novel MRI contrast agents. Mr. Dennis has also worked in industry at a nutraceutical company, Sun Farms, and as a Science Analyst intern at Biomed REIT, where he investigated the competitive position of the tenant portfolio based on the science, market share, and competitive landscape of each tenant. Mr. Dennis currently serves as Lead of Research and Development at AgilenNano, Inc, which he joined as the first employee, and develops novel nanomaterial-based shock absorbing materials. Mr. Dennis is a 2010 recipient of an Innocentive Award, on the PGC200 Leadership Committee, and a member of the San Diego Biotech Network. He also founded and runs the Innovation Brainstorming program for PGC200, where members brainstorm ideas, form connections, and work collaboratively on for-profit and non-profit science and technology projects. Mr. Dennis is the Founder of the Collaborative Open Innovation Link, a platform for facilitating collaboration to work on Open Innovation projects. He is a 2011 Fellow in the Startup Leadership Program in San Diego.

Stephen Larson, UCSD

Stephen Larson, M.Eng. is a Ph.D candidate in Neuroscience at the University of California, San Diego. His research focuses at the intersection between the study of the structure and function of the nervous system and modern computational technologies that expose structured data on the internet both graphically and textually in the discipline of Neuroinformatics. His projects include several online resources for neuroscience such as neurolex.org and wholebraincatalog.org. His Master’s thesis dealt with self-organizing knowledge representations in the field of artificial intelligence. He has published in several academic journals and presented at two dozen forums. Prior to his graduate studies, he worked as a software engineer for Morgan Stanley, building applications for their Equity Research division. He earned a Master and Bachelor of Computer Science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He was selected as a 2011 Fellow to the Startup Leadership Program in San Diego.

John Lin, Proveri

John Lin is the CFO of a prostate cancer diagnostic company. He was previously Senior Associate with Moore Venture Partners, a venture capital firm investing in technology and life sciences companies. Prior to Moore Venture Partners, Dr. Lin interned at Morrison & Forester Venture Network where he helped high quality new ventures on their capital raising needs and coached executives on company business strategy and investor presentations. Dr. Lin was previously Associate at Pantek Partners, a startup M&A investment bank focused on US-China transactions. Additionally, Dr. Lin interned briefly as an equity research analyst at Nicholas Investment Partners, a hedge fund firm. Dr. Lin started his career at Industrial Technology Research Institute (Taiwan) where he was first a Project Leader leading research and development of drug delivery products and subsequently a Business Development Project Manager for biologics. He is trilingual in English, Chinese-Mandarin, and Taiwanese. Dr. Lin received his M.B.A. from University of California, San Diego, his PhD, as a NASA Fellow, in Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering from University of Pennsylvania, and his BS with Distinction, in Chemical Engineering from University of Wisconsin-Madison. He was selected as a 2011 Fellow to the Startup Leadership Program in San Diego.

David Matthews, UCSD

David Matthews is the co-founder of a recent analytics startup company and a Ph.D. candidate in Computational Neurobiology at the University of California at San Diego and the Salk Institute. Mr. Matthews graduated with honors from Princeton University in molecular biology, bioengineering, and neuroscience, and has also studied and performed research at the University of Oxford, Beijing Normal University, and the University of Pennsylvania. He is a National Science Foundation Predoctoral Grant award winner, an NSF Center for Theoretical Biological Physics Fellow, and has served as Adjunct Professor of Neuroscience at the University of St. Augustine at San Marcos, CA. His current work uses cutting edge laser technology to create 3D maps of neural circuits for touch perception. He wants to understand the human brain and to make its realtime measurements available publicly. He was selected as a 2011 Fellow to the Startup Leadership Program in San Diego.

Philip Meier, UC San Diego

Philip Meier is the co-founder of newly-launched high tech start-up and a PhD candidate at the University of California San Diego. Even before attending the School of Art at Washington University in St. Louis, Philip was always fascinated by vision. Why do the best computer vision systems pale in comparison to a ?ve year old child? To pursue an deeper understanding of biological visual systems, he began a PhD in Computational Neuroscience at UCSD. He received three fellowships from the National Science Foundation, spanning all seven years of his research. His PhD work focuses on the neural code of the early visual system. He plans to continue his career in research, combining basic machine learning with biologically inspired algorithms to solve problems of digital information processing. He was selected as a 2011 Fellow to the Startup Leadership Program in San Diego.

Adele Noon, Procopio

Adele Noon, M.S., J.D. is a patent attorney at Procopio, Cory Hargreaves, & Savitch, and specializes in working with early stage companies. Her practice focuses on preparing and prosecuting foreign and United States patent applications in various areas including telecommunications (signal antenna interference cancellation, OFDMA, and CDMA technology), computer software and architecture, signal processing, electronic circuits, computer security, networking architecture and software, and medical devices. Prior to joining Procopio, Ms. Noon was an associate at McDermott, Will & Emery LLP, and, prior to law school, worked as a registered patent agent with Conley Rose, P.C. in Houston, Texas where she prosecuted patent applications across a broad spectrum of industries including catalysis, petrochemical refinement, separation technology, computer hardware, acoustic lodging, drill bit technology, photonics, tissue engineering and nanotechnology. She earned her S.B. in Materials Science and Engineering in 1999 from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and both her M.S. in Electrical Engineering (2006) and her J.D. (2007) from the University of Iowa.

Kathryn Olson, California Medtech

Kathryn Olson, M.Eng. is a co-founder of a San Diego-based medical device company developing surgical instruments to reduce the incidence of clogging in ventricular catheters, which are used in the treatment of hydrocephalus and other diseases. Ms. Olson oversees the internal workings of the company and is responsible for business strategy, resource allocation, product development, intellectual property and adhering to FDA regulations. Ms. Olson also serves as the San Diego business development director for California MedTech, an outsourcing partner which develops and manufactures medical devices and biotech instruments for OEMs. At Cal MedTech, Ms. Olson is responsible for forming engineering partnerships with San Diego life science companies. She also briefly worked in marketing at Carl Zeiss in Germany and in research and development at two start-up medical device companies in the San Diego area, Kinetic Surgical (now a part of CareFusion) and Spinal Elements. Ms. Olson received her Master of Engineering and Bachelor of Science degrees from the University of California, San Diego in Bioengineering with a focus on medical device design and development. He is a 2011 Fellow in the Startup Leadership Program in San Diego.

Kathy Pyle, Life Technologies

Kathy Pyle is established as a business development and accounting professional and has over seven years of progressive domestic international financial analysis and internal audit experience. She provides auditing and financial strategies for multi-million dollar, globally recognized organizations. Her aggressive pursuit of capital has helped launch entrepreneurial ventures in business sectors including health care, manufacturing, telecommunications and waste management. She is presently an internal auditor with Life Technologies. Prior to joining Life Technologies, Ms. Pyle was a venture member at InLab, an early stage Angel and Venture Capital Fund using a scientific based process and methodology to pick and build winning companies. The Lab process evaluates potential investments and portfolio companies through a proven discipline approach, based on systematic, objective, new venture framework. She has also worked as a consultant at The Siegfried Group and in Audit and Assurance Services for Deloitte and Touche. Ms. Pyle earned a B.S. in Business Economics with an emphasis in Accounting from the University of California Santa Barbara. He is a 2011 Fellow in the Startup Leadership Program in San Diego.

Adrienne Rothwell, Life Technologies

Adrienne (Abby) Rothwell, M.B.A. is a financial analyst for Life Technologies and has worked in a variety of industries including medical devices, property development, and biotechnology. She worked with Vet-Stem Inc., a rapidly growing biotechnology company in San Diego, which focused on regenerative veterinary medicine. While with Vet-Stem, she conducted, observed, and supported the research, process development and validation, and intense scientific analysis that went into developing and maintaining products, services, and procedures. Ms. Rothwell also worked with Amgen, Inc’s R&D finance team. In this position, she gained a comprehensive understanding of R&D budgeting and decision making in an extremely successful organization. Ms. Rothwell earned a B.S. in Biology from UC Santa Barbara and M.B.A. from Cornell University’s Johnson Graduate School of Management.

Soren Solari, Stealth Mode Company

Soren Solari, Ph.D. is the founder of a stealth mode startup. He has a B.A./B.S. in Electrical Engineering, an M.S. in Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering specialized in Control Theory, and completed his Ph.D. at the University of California, San Diego in Integrative Neuroscience. Dr. Solari’s diverse engineering background combined with his expert knowledge on mammalian neuroanatomy and brain function have produced a unique set of skills that place him as one of the worlds experts at the intersection of understanding human brain function and technology. In addition, he also has strong experience in algorithmic genomic DNA data mining. The utilization of cutting edge science knowledge, in order to advance technologies in society and vice versa, is at the root of his entrepreneurial goals. Dr. Solari has worked as a senior analytics consultant for Opera Solutions, consulting for Fortune 500 companies. He has also held senior engineering positions at Cadence design systems working on the test and characterization of custom integrated circuits, in both cases delivering real world solutions from conception to development to production. He is a 2011 Fellow in the Startup Leadership Program in San Diego.

Joseph Young, PixelActive

Joseph Young, M.B.A. is the Director of Marketing at PixelActive and is a software product manager with 5 years of product management and development experience focusing on the Video Game industry for the mobile and console platforms. Experience with multiple start ups, working in the trenches, discussing long-term strategies, and everything in between. Mr. Young’s specialties include product management, branding, entrepreneurship, video games, emerging technology and business models, groundswell/social marketing, and public speaking. He earned his M.B.A. from the Rady School of Business at University of California, San Diego. He is a 2011 Fellow in the Startup Leadership Program in San Diego.