Lynore M. Abbott is the Founder of Logical Marketing, which provides technology-centric business development, strategy development, and marketing support to small and mid-size companies. Her enjoyment of Photonics, Technology, Business Development, Sales, Marketing, and Start-ups has taken her from Polaroid Corporation, to a series of small telecom startups (2 of 3 with successful exits), to mid-size companies which executed and integrated multiple international acquisitions. She mentors local startup technology companies in New Mexico seeking venture financing.She holds an S.B. from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Materials Science and Engineering, an M.S. from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst in Polymer Science and Engineering, and an M.B.A. from the University of New Mexico. She has attained the status of Senior Member of SPIE (the International Photonics Industry Association) for her contributions to the Photonics Industry.

Peter Beerel received his B.S.E. degree in Electrical Engineering from Princeton University, Princeton, NJ, in 1989 and his M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in Electrical Engineering from Stanford University, Stanford, CA, in 1991 and 1994, respectively. He joined the the Department of Electrical Engineering–Systems at USC in 1994. Dr. Beerel was the Faculty Director of Innovation Studies at the USC Stevens Institute for Innovation from 2006 to 2008 and is currently the Faculty Director of Innovation and Entrepreneurship in Engineering for the Viterbi School of Engineering.

Andrea Belz is the inaugural Vice Dean for Technology Innovation and Entrepreneurship at the USC Viterbi School of Engineering. She serves as the Director of the NSF Innovation Corps (“I-Corps”) funded Innovation Node – Los Angeles and has served as Entrepreneur-in-Residence, with faculty appointments in the USC Viterbi School of Engineering; the Iovine and Young Academy for Arts, Technology, and the Business of Innovation; and the USC Marshall School of Business. She also currently serves as Visiting Professor of Engineering at the California Institute of Technology. Her research focuses on modeling technology-based entrepreneurial ecosystems and she has published research in optical systems, nuclear physics, geomicrobiology, and systems engineering with an emphasis on NASA SBIR program. She is the founder and chair of the Technology Transfer and Infusion session at the IEEE Aerospace Conference.

Viktor Brandtneris has a diverse financial and general management background from experiences in both corporate and entrepreneurial environments. In his early career he worked in the computer industry with IBM and Computervision. His first entrepreneurial endeavor was as co-founder of the Devonshire Trust Company, a boutique money management and mutual fund company in Salem, Massachusetts. As Principal of Brandtneris Consulting, he provides business-modeling services centered on the Lean-Start Up Customer Discovery process for corporate, governmental (Air Force Research Labs, USDA), and university clients. Viktor is a member of the national teaching faculty of the National Science Foundation’s Innovation Corps (I-Corps) Commercialization program. He is part of the teaching teams for the University of Southern California’s Innovation-Los Angeles Node and the University of Michigan, Center for Entrepreneurship. Mr. Brandtneris has an MBA in Finance & Marketing from Boston College and a double major B.A. in Economics & Psychology from the University of Pennsylvania.

Aaron Fyke has spent over twenty years as an entrepreneur, having founded, or assisted in the creation of, five companies and with a track record of building successful energy companies across a number of technology areas including fuel cell, ocean power, concentrating solar, advanced automotive engines, and energy storage technologies. He has deep experience as an operating executive, investor, and engineer. He is currently an Investment Director at Rusheen Capital, and a Venture Partner with Climate Impact Capital. He was previously the CEO of Edisun Heliostats and Energy Cache. He led the development of a $10m energy prize for the X PRIZE Foundation. Prior to that he was a Partner at Starfish Ventures, Australia’s largest venture capital firm, where Aaron led the investment into the fund’s biggest investment and exit – Ausra, a KPCB and Khosla Ventures backed solar thermal energy company. Aaron earned his MBA and MSME as an LGO fellow at MIT, and his BEng in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Victoria, where he graduated at the top of his class. He has achieved certification as a Professional Engineer both in California and British Columbia.

Aleksandar Giga is a postdoctoral research fellow at the USC’s Viterbi School of Engineering. His research interest lies in understanding the development, commercialization, and financing of transformative technologies. His research projects include an evaluation of government grants to small innovative businesses, an analysis of firm financing through equity crowdfunding, and experimental work on decision making under risk and uncertainty. He has a Ph.D. in Economics from the University of Southern California and a B.A. in Economics (with honors) from the University of Pennsylvania.

Trina Gregory is a senior lecturer for ITP teaching technology, programming, and mobile classes. She began teaching at USC in January 2007 as a part-time lecturer and transitioned to a full-time, non-tenured track faculty position in August 2009. Trina created and oversees the Mobile App Development minor. After getting a bachelor’s degree in Mathematics-Computer Science from UCSD, she worked full-time in the computer science field for over 12 years. She mainly worked for SAIC developing, writing, and managing software for the Department of Defense. She received a master’s degree in Computer Science from USC. Trina loves helping students achieve their goals and is thus involved in various student organizations and initiatives supporting entrepreneurship.

Stephanie Hurder is the founder of retrain.LA, a Los Angeles-based nonprofit that helps working adults find the high-quality training they need to advance their careers.  Previously, Stephanie was a Project Leader in the Boston Consulting Group’s Los Angeles office, where she was an expert in the People and Organization practice and co-authored numerous BCG publications. Prior to joining BCG, Stephanie was an academic economist studying labor markets and held research positions at Harvard and MIT.  Stephanie has a BA in mathematics, magna cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa, an MA in economics, and a PhD in business economics, all from Harvard University. Outside of work, Stephanie is a founding board member and Board Chair of Libertas College Prep, a high-performing charter middle school in South Los Angeles.

Richard Kuntz, Founder of Torrey Pines Venture Advisors, provides technology commercialization advice to academic researchers, scouts technology for U.S. governmental entities, and counsels early-stage technology companies on their business models and financing strategies. Rich has nearly 35 years of experience as a venture capitalist, with deep domain expertise in healthcare, medical technology, and life sciences. He has helped create several companies formed to commercialize technologies licensed from major research institutions. Rich is a Chartered Financial Analyst (CFA) with SB and SM degrees in aeronautics and astronautics from MIT, and an MBA from the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University.

Gene Kym is an American biotech entrepreneur. He trained as a protein engineer and is an expert in antibody therapeutics and synthetic biology. Gene has worked at several biotech startups and in venture capital. He taught entrepreneurship at leading universities in the US, Asia, and Europe. Gene holds a doctorate from Caltech, and also studied at Berkeley, Seoul National, and Beijing Language and Culture University.

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.

Tom McGovern has served as Managing Director of Idealab since January 2012 and sits on various private company boards. Idealab is a Los Angeles based technology incubator and seed stage investor that has started more than 100 companies. Prior to this most recent role, Tom co-founded and led as CEO 3 Idealab operating companies. Tom joined the Idealab in 1999 from Warner Bros. where most recently he was Senior Vice President of International. Before Warner Bros., Tom was a management consultant with Management Horizons, a strategy consulting division of PriceWaterhouseCoopers. Tom holds an MBA from the Harvard Business School and a BS from the University of Colorado.

Jillian O’Connor is the I-Corps Teaching Assistant and a project specialist with the Lloyd Greif Center for Entrepreneurial Studies at the Marshall School of Business, University of Southern California. Working with the Node’s collaborating institutions, USC, UCLA and Caltech, as well as its regional partners, she helps IN-LA realize its mission to accelerate technology commercialization, support engineering entrepreneurship and educate innovation leadership throughout Southern California and beyond. Before joining the IN-LA team, Jillian served as a project manager at USC’s Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism and School of Cinematic Arts. She holds a BA in English from Temple University and an MA in Cultural Studies from Claremont Graduate University.

Dr. Rosemary Rohde was born in sunny Miami, Florida. She moved to LA and graduated from UCLA on a full scholarship. Dr. Rose studied chemistry with Jim Heath at Caltech and received her PhD in 2009. She was a co-founder and senior scientist of Indi Molecular, a biotech company that designed artificial antibodies for medical diagnostics. After working on that project for six years, now she teaches and develops science curricula for H-bar Tutoring, which she co-founded and where she currently serves as CEO; and Ad Astra School, where she is the Founding Science Director, Chair of Admissions, and serves on the Administrative Team. Dr. Rose is looking forward to working with a motivated group of high students this summer at USC interested in entrepreneurship with the SCIHI program.

Known as “the catalyst”, Stacyann P. Russell expects something to change after she walks into the room.  She is a results-driven business professional with a passion for innovation and entrepreneurship.  As a supply chain consultant for a “Big 4” accounting firm, she enjoys optimizing operational processes to ensure companies can deliver products and services to their customers in the most efficient and cost-effective manner.  Her work as a national instructor for the National Science Foundation’s (NSF) I-Corp program also allows her to extend her optimization skills to researchers and scientists by training them on the most effective way to commercialize the technology they are developing in the lab.  Stacyann previously spent five years working in multi-disciplinary teams to lead process design and continuous improvement initiatives for large-scale projects in the manufacturing, aerospace and defense, energy, and nonprofit industries.  Her passion outside of work includes making sure the youth has access to opportunities in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM), as well as entrepreneurship.  She serves as a Regional Advisor for the Great Lakes region of the National Society of Black Engineers (NSBE); and is a board member for the Youth Business Alliance in Los Angeles.  Stacyann has a bachelors of science in industrial and systems engineering from The Ohio State University, masters of science in engineering management from The George Washington University, and a masters of business administration from the University of Southern California.  She resides in Los Angeles, California.

Rob Schoeben is currently a strategic advisor and mentor to tech startups and social entrepreneurs. He most recently held the dual role of Chief Marketing Officer and Chief Strategy Officer for a disruptive 3D printing startup, Carbon. In addition to guiding corporate strategy, he oversaw product management, marketing, business development and sales. Previously, Rob was VP of Worldwide Product Marketing for Apple, where he supported product development and marketing for applications including Aperture, Final Cut Studio, iLife, iWork, Logic Studio and Apple’s Internet service MobileMe (now iCloud). Before his time at Apple, Rob spent eight years with Microsoft, most recently as GM of the TV services division. Prior to Microsoft, he was a Senior Vice President at Ogilvy & Mather. He is also a cofounder of CASSY, a nonprofit agency that partners with local schools to support students’ social and emotional wellbeing. Rob holds a B.S. in Computer Science from Duke University.

Dr. Helena Yli-Renko is the Director of the Lloyd Greif Center for Entrepreneurial Studies at USC Marshall. She teaches courses in entrepreneurship on the graduate and undergraduate levels and is well known for her research on young, technology-based firms—in particular the business model development, customer relationships, new product development, and internationalization of such firms. She has published 18 journal articles and book chapters, and her research has won awards from the Academy of Management, the National Federation of Independent Business, and the American Marketing Association. Dr. Yli-Renko is also co-founder of technology start-up Perception Robotics where she leads business development and financing activities. Prior to joining USC, Dr. Yli-Renko worked as strategy consultant at McKinsey & Company and as research fellow at London Business School.

Fernando Zapatero is a financial economist who studies problems in asset pricing and corporate finance, with an emphasis on mathematical and computational methods. His research has been published in the Journal of Finance, Journal of Financial Economics,Review of Financial Studies, Econometrica, Journal of Economic Theory, Mathematical Finance, and Management Science, and he coauthor of Introduction to the Economics and Mathematics of Financial Markets (MIT Press). He is an associate editor for Annals of Finance, Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Mathematical Finance, and Mathematics and Financial Economics. Before joining USC, Professor Zapatero served on the faculty of the University of Texas, UC-Berkeley, and ITAM.