Wednesday, April 26th
Martin Trust Center for MIT Entrepreneurship
Martin Trust Center for MIT Entrepreneurship
Educators Track
8:00 – 8:45 am
Symposium Introduction & Running an Entrepreneurial Center
Susan Neal | Entrepreneur in Residence, Martin Trust Center for MIT Entrepreneurship
Susan is an entrepreneur and senior executive with over 20 years of experience in eCommerce/digital, marketing, technology, and product development. In the role of CEO/co-founder, she led the launch, growth, and sale of ATACAMA, a revolutionary 3D microfluidics technology company with product applications in the apparel, healthcare, and CPG industries.
Prior to that, she held positions with increasing responsibility in two publicly-traded companies. As the EVP of Marketing, eCommerce, and Information Technology at Tailored Brands, a $2.5+ billion specialty retailer of men’s apparel (includes the Men’s Wearhouse, Jos A Banks, and Moores), Susan was responsible for strategy and the rapid revenue growth of its eCommerce operations and digital transformation. Before Tailored Brands, she was at Gymboree, a US-based children’s apparel manufacturer and retailer, where she held a variety of senior level positions overseeing eCommerce and Digital Marketing, International, and Business Development. Susan grew Gymboree’s eCommerce business from inception to $150 million in revenue.
An experienced leader, strategic thinker, and driver of digital growth and transformation, Susan holds an MBA from INSEAD in Fontainebleau, France and a BA in Economics from Harvard University. She has served on multiple boards, including Shop.org, the online retailing division of the U.S. National Retail Federation.
8:45 – 9:30 am
Adopting the Trust Center Model
Daniela Ruiz Massieu | Founding Managing Director of EPIC Lab at ITAM
Daniela Ruiz Massieu is an Associate Professor at Instituto Tecnológico Autónomo de México (ITAM), where she teaches Entrepreneurial Finance, Entrepreneurship, and Business Model Innovation. She conducts research and writes business cases on venture capital, entrepreneurship, and startup valuation in Latin America. Daniela also heads EPIC Lab, ITAM’s Center for Creativity, Innovation, and Entrepreneurship, where she is responsible for designing strategic initiatives and educational programs that provide entrepreneurs with the skills to create and scale their business ideas. Daniela served as the Director of ITAM’s undergraduate Business Program and co-designed three Executive Programs: Angel Investment Program, New Venture Creation, and Social Entrepreneurship. Daniela actively serves as a speaker, mentor, and jury in different entrepreneurial initiatives.
Prior to ITAM, her professional experience includes working as a financial analyst at Banco Santander and Standard & Poor’s, and co-founding a furniture retail business in Mexico City where she was responsible for the financing and investment activities.
She currently serves in the Management Board of Stanford’s Graduate School of Business and in the Board of Directors of Kimberly-Clark de Mexico (KCM), a publicly listed leading consumer product company.
9:30 – 10:00 am
Engaging External Stakeholders
Macauley Kenney | Entrepreneur in Residence, Martin Trust Center for MIT Entrepreneurship
Macauley is an executive leader at SurgiBox, a medical device venture creating novel surgical technologies. At SurgiBox, she oversaw the launch of the first ultraportable operating room, taking the product through the design for manufacturing process and into use on the battlefield in Ukraine. Macauley also served as the PI on a $2.5M SBIR P2 with US Air Force Special Operations Command, and as company liaison for DOD engagements.
She is passionate about human-centered design and increasing the success of impact-based ventures, particularly in hardware. Macauley teaches manufacturing technologies, with a focus on adaptation within low-resource settings, at MIT’s D-Lab. She is also the author of two patents on OR technology.
Prior to this she was an early joiner at a rapidly expanding consulting startup in Bogota, growing the company 4x in two years and overseeing the expansion into three new country offices: Kenya, Peru, and Morocco. A serial entrepreneur, Macauley has specialized in scaling organizations in emerging markets, and has led operational systems for ventures in the U.S., Rwanda, and Uganda. Additionally, she has studied early founding team dynamics and their impact on growth strategies. Her research has been featured in multiples news outlets, including Forbes and Engineering for Change.
Macauley is an accomplished public speaker, winning the MIT Can Talk competition while at university, and the North American Present Around the World Competition. She frequently serves as a competition judge, and coaches public speaking with an emphasis on stage presence and narrative building.
Macauley holds an MS in Technology and Policy from MIT, a Sustainability Certificate from MIT Sloan, and a BS in Biomedical Engineering from WPI. Outside of her work as an EIR she serves on the Council of the Institution of Engineering and Technology, an international professional engineering society.
10:00 – 10:15 am
Break
10:15 – 11:00 am
Course & Curriculum Development
Paul Cheek | Executive Director, Martin Trust Center for MIT Entrepreneurship
Paul Cheek is a serial tech entrepreneur, entrepreneurship educator, and software engineer. He is the Executive Director and an Entrepreneur in Residence at the Martin Trust Center for MIT Entrepreneurship, a Senior Lecturer at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the MIT Sloan School of Management, and the Co-Founder and CTO of Oceanworks.
Paul was MIT’s first Hacker in Residence and has since taught, mentored, and advised thousands of entrepreneurs around the world. Each year Paul teaches hundreds of undergraduate, graduate, and PhD students in the “New Enterprises” course, which is believed to be the oldest entrepreneurship course in the country, and has also taught the advanced entrepreneurship course, “Building an Entrepreneurial Venture: Advanced Tools and Techniques.” From working closely with so many students, Paul identified a gap in the entrepreneurship curriculum, designed experimental entrepreneurship education content, and now leads a new advanced course he developed to help student entrepreneurs build their businesses called “Venture Creation Tactics”.
Outside of classes, Paul spends time coaching and mentoring entrepreneurs in a variety of programs including the MIT delta v startup accelerator, MIT fuse accelerator, Sandbox Innovation Fund, as well as other workshops and hackathons. One of which was the MIT COVID-19 Challenge, a series of global hackathons that Paul co-founded, which served over 8,500 participants around the world. To scale the impact that he and the Trust Center have within the five schools across the Institute, Paul built the digital entrepreneurship platform, Orbit, which serves over 15,000 users annually.
Paul is also the Co-Founder and CTO of Oceanworks, a for-profit company with a mission to end plastic pollution. At Oceanworks, he has developed a platform and traceability system to provide corporations with a trusted source for a variety of quality recycled ocean plastic materials at competitive prices. In the past two years, Oceanworks has diverted thousands of tonnes of plastic from the ocean, served hundreds of corporate customers in over 30 countries, and enabled the launch of a variety of high-profile sustainable products such as Clorox ocean plastic trash bags, Sperry ocean plastic boat shoes, and YKK ocean plastic zippers.
In 2021, Paul was recognized by Forbes 30 Under 30, the definitive list of young people changing the world, and for his leadership at Oceanworks, Forbes named Paul one of ten standouts who hold the future of cleantech in their hands.
11:00 – 11:30 am
Orbit: Critical Digital Infrastructure
Doug Williams | Orbit Product Lead, Martin Trust Center for MIT Entrepreneurship
In Doug’s role at the Trust Center, he is responsible for driving the strategy, research, and planning of Orbit, MIT’s digital entrepreneurship platform. The Center’s mission is to educate students in innovation-driven entrepreneurship that will best serve the nation and the world in the 21st century, and Orbit’s goal is to provide individuals worldwide with entrepreneurship education, connections, and other resources to tackle our most significant global challenges.
Doug is the Founder of CentanniPark, a full-service strategic consultancy for mobile and web technology, with projects underway for digital e-health, health equity, and affordable housing. As a technology leader for the latest FHIR healthcare data interoperability standards, Doug is serving as co-coordinator for the HL7 CodeX Consortium’s Quality Measures for Cancer in collaboration with MITRE and the Institute for Health Equity as part of HL7’s Gravity Project.
Previously, Doug was the Chief Product Officer and VP Strategic Accounts for 1upHealth, a leader in healthcare data technology through the use of the new FHIR standards. Doug played a key role in the adoption of 1upHealth’s cloud-based FHIR platform by top health insurance companies, Medicaid states, hospital systems, and life science research partners, managing hundreds of millions of patients and billions of healthcare data resources. Under his leadership, the company grew from a team of four to over 150 employees today.
As a serial entrepreneur, Doug has held the positions of CTO and VP of Engineering and Product positions for multiple successful startups, including Zipcar, Runkeeper, and the Family Education Network. These roles have given him the opportunity to lead from the early startup stages through successful acquisitions and IPOs. He is also a mentor for MassChallenge HealthTech, the MIT Enterprise Forum, and the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute.
11:30 am – 12:15 pm
Mission, Vision, Values & The Future of Educational Entrepreneurship + AMA
Bill Aulet | Ethernet Inventors Professor of the Practice, MIT Sloan; Managing Director, Martin Trust Center for MIT Entrepreneurship
Bill is changing the way entrepreneurship is understood, taught, and practiced around the world. He is an award-winning educator and author whose current work is built off the foundation of his 25-year successful business career, first at IBM, and then as a three-time serial entrepreneur. During this time, he directly raised over a hundred million dollars and, more importantly, created hundreds of millions of dollars of shareholder value through his companies.
Since 2009, Bill has been responsible for leading the development of entrepreneurship education across MIT at the Trust Center. His first book, “Disciplined Entrepreneurship,” was released in August 2013, has been translated into over 20 languages, and has been the content for three online edX courses, which have been taken by hundreds of thousands of people in 200 different countries. The accompanying follow on book, “Disciplined Entrepreneurship Workbook,” was released in April 2017.
On July 1, 2017, Bill was named a Professor of the Practice at MIT Sloan, the first at the school in the area of entrepreneurship since Alex d’Arbeloff received the designation in 2003. In 2019, Bill was awarded the Outstanding Contributions to Advancing Innovation and Entrepreneurship Award by the Deshpande Foundation. In 2021, Bill was recognized by the United States Association for Small Business and Entrepreneurship (USASBE) as the 2021 Entrepreneurship Educator of the Year.
Disruptive Technology Track
1:00 – 1:30 pm
Overview of the Tech Landscape
George Whitfield | Entrepreneur in Residence, Martin Trust Center for MIT Entrepreneurship
George is a serial entrepreneur with three degrees from MIT: BS in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, and an MEng and PhD in Materials Science and Engineering. As an Entrepreneur in Residence at the Trust Center, George is excited to help build future generations of entrepreneurs, drawing upon his experiences in innovation-driven entrepreneurship, engineering, and student life.
George’s interdisciplinary career spans computational aspects of e-commerce, FinTech, robotics, transportation, renewable energy, and nanotechnology. Today, George is the Co-Founder and CEO of FindOurView, which is extracting insights from consumer reviews and conversations to help companies do product research, using AI and machine learning. George envisions building on this work to drive mutual understanding across society.
Prior to FindOurView, George was Director of Simulation at Nucleus Scientific, where he joined as an early employee and helped grow the company by 10x in size over the course of seven years, working on electric vehicles. While in the PhD program at MIT, George co-founded and was CEO of SunPoint, a solar tracking company that won the MIT Making and Designing Materials Engineering Competition and the Renewables Track of the MIT Clean Energy Prize. George also co-founded Socially Conscious Software to build mobile apps in the early days of the iPhone app store.
George was a co-instructor at MEFTI, the MIT Entrepreneurship and FinTech Integrator held at the MIT Hong Kong Innovation Node. He served as a co-instructor, advisor, and mentor at Station1 Socially Directed Science and Technology. George was also a guest lecturer in MIT’s Mechanical Engineering Department on numerical simulation.
1:30 – 2:15 pm
Robotics: Realities, Myths & Potential
Jenny Larios Berlin | Entrepreneur in Residence, Martin Trust Center for MIT Entrepreneurship
Jenny was the co-founder and Chief Operations Officer for Optimus Ride, an MIT spinout, whose mission was to deploy inside of geofenced communities safe, sustainable, and equitable autonomous mobility solutions through shared and electric vehicle fleets.
Before getting acquired by Magna, a global innovator in mobility technology, Optimus Ride deployed operations in California, Massachusetts, Washington, DC, Virginia, and New York, growing business operations to over 200 employees and fundraising over $75M in venture capital. It was featured in multiple news outlets, including the New York Times.
Jenny also partnered with others in the MIT community to co-found and advise limeSHIFT, another MIT spinout. limeSHIFT is a socially-driven creative agency, working at the intersection of business, community, and art. Taking a bootstrapped approach, it quickly realized revenue by partnering with organizations like Life is Good, Yale School of Management, and YouTube to implement socially engaged art.
Prior to her entrepreneurial endeavors, Jenny was entrenched in the car sharing technology industry, leading operations teams at Zipcar, Flexcar, and Hertz. At Zipcar, she scaled their university campus program and, as National Member Services Manager, was responsible for all service operations in all Zipcar cities worldwide.
She earned her bachelor’s at the University of Maryland, College Park, and two master’s – an MBA from MIT Sloan and a master’s in City Planning from the MIT School of Architecture and Planning.
2:15 – 3:00 pm
The Future Impact of Biotech
Sangeeta Bhatia | John J. and Dorothy Wilson Professor of Health Sciences and Technology, MIT
Sangeeta Bhatia earned her BS at Brown University, followed by an MS in mechanical engineering at MIT, a PhD in biomedical engineering at the Harvard-MIT Division of Health Sciences and Technology, and an MD at Harvard Medical School.
Prior to her appointment at MIT, Bhatia held a tenured position at UCSD. She and her trainees have launched multiple biotechnology companies to improve human health. As a prolific inventor and passionate advocate for diversity in science and engineering, Bhatia has received many honors including the Lemelson-MIT Prize, known as the “Oscar for inventors,” and the Heinz Medal for groundbreaking inventions and advocacy for women in STEM fields.
She is a Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator, Director of the Marble Center for Cancer Nanomedicine at the Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research at MIT, and an elected member of the National Academy of Sciences, the National Academy of Engineering, the National Academy of Medicine, the American Academy of Arts and Science, the National Academy of Inventors, and Brown University’s Board of Fellows. Bhatia is a board member of Brown University, Vertex Pharmaceuticals, and the Association for Women in Science. She has an advisory role with Chan Zuckerberg Biohub, Global Oncology Inc., Glympse BIO, CEND Therapeutics, and Satellite Bio. She has a consulting role at Moderna Therapeutics and receives sponsored research funding from Johnson & Johnson.
3:00 – 3:15 pm
Break
3:15 – 4:00 pm
Tech in Healthcare
Leo Celi | Physician, Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center; Associate Professor, Harvard Medical School
As clinical research director and principal research scientist at the MIT Laboratory for Computational Physiology (LCP), and as a practicing intensive care unit (ICU) physician at the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (BIDMC), Leo brings together clinicians and data scientists to support research using data routinely collected in the process of care.
His group built and maintains the publicly-available Medical Information Mart for Intensive Care (MIMIC) database and the Philips-MIT eICU Collaborative Research Database, with more than 20,000 users from around the world. In addition, Leo is one of the course directors for the classes HST.936 – global health informatics to improve quality of care, and HST.953 – collaborative data science in medicine, both at MIT.
He is an editor of the textbook for each course, both released under an open access license. “Secondary Analysis of Electronic Health Records” has been downloaded more than a million times, and has been translated to Mandarin, Spanish, Korean and Portuguese. Leo has spoken in more than 35 countries across 6 continents about the value of data and learning in health systems.
Christine Hsieh | Entrepreneur in Residence, Martin Trust Center for MIT Entrepreneurship
Her early interest in developing new health technologies led her to work at the intersection of psychology, new ventures, and science commercialization. Over the years Christine has won many awards recognizing her work and commitment to cutting edge R&D and health innovation.
Most recently she was the Chief Strategy and Research Officer at DayToDay Health, a digital care management company. She was recruited to develop and execute a cross-functional strategy to capture new markets and enabled launch of the first digital product within four months of starting development. Under her leadership the company was able to bridge silos across commercial, product, clinical, and R&D teams, enabling scaling of operations for three countries within three years’ time. After serving 7000+ acute care patients around the world even through the Covid pandemic, DayToDay was acquired by Babylon Health, a publicly traded virtual care company.
Prior to DayToDay Health Christine launched her entrepreneurial career as Founder and CEO of Salubris Analytics. In this role she built a grant-launched, highly capital efficient venture focused on behavior change for chronic care management. She led the development of a digital product with personalization features and algorithms, science-based content, and analytics. Christine then partnered with leading U.S. healthcare systems to validate the solution and closed a revenue-generating contract with a prominent three million member insurer.
In her doctoral work at the Harvard-MIT Division of Health Sciences and Technology, Christine won independent research funding to design novel personalized treatments for depression, anxiety, and pain. The new treatment significantly reduced depressive symptoms and was published in national conferences and journals. Prior to her thesis work she also developed bioimaging and neuroimaging technologies in prominent labs at Massachusetts General Hospital and Massachusetts Eye and Ear Infirmary, and tangible interfaces at the MIT Media Lab.
Christine is currently most passionate about redefining impact on health by shifting the ways we work, live, and play to be more health-enhancing. She is an Entrepreneur in Residence at MIT and also serves on the Board of Directors of HealthTech Build, a Boston-based nonprofit creating catalytic community events accelerating healthcare and life sciences technology adoption.
Bryan Wang | CEO, bosWell
Bryan Wang is the CEO of bosWell, a company that is building the bridge to help healthcare organizations collaborate with community-based organizations (CBOs) to take care of the overall health of underserved communities and become an integral part of healthcare delivery. The company does this through its free client management software for food pantries to register clients, check them in for visits, and automatically generate reports.
Bryan has previous work experience with Amazon, Bain & Company, Lenovo, and as a product and program manager in the healthcare space. He has an MBA from MIT Sloan and is an alumni of the Trust Center’s prestigious MIT delta v accelerator program.
4:00 – 4:45 pm
AI, Web 3.0, ChatGPT, and All the Other Things You Should Know About
George Whitfield | Entrepreneur in Residence, Martin Trust Center for MIT Entrepreneurship
(see full bio above)
4:45 – 5:15 pm
Lab Tour: Conformable Decoders (departs from Trust Center)
Energy, Climate, and Sustainability Track
1:00 – 1:20 pm
The Landscape
Ben Soltoff | Entrepreneur in Residence, Martin Trust Center for MIT Entrepreneurship
Ben Soltoff is a systems thinker who is passionate about exploring how new ideas, technologies, and business models can address the world’s most pressing problems, particularly climate change and other environmental challenges.
Ben wears many hats at the Trust Center. He’s the point person for all things climate tech; he manages TEX-E, a partnership between Boston and Texas to train entrepreneurs tackling the energy transition; he coordinates our relationship with the Queensland University of Technology in Australia; and he leads the delta v accelerator, the capstone entrepreneurial experience for students at MIT.
Prior to joining MIT, Ben was the Environmental Innovation Manager at the Yale Center for Business and the Environment (CBEY) and the Environmental Innovation Fellow at the Tsai Center for Innovative Thinking at Yale (CITY). In that dual role, he helped students to design, build, and launch environmental solutions.
He has been part of several environmentally relevant startups, ranging from a social enterprise in Mexico installing off-grid solar energy, to a hardware company in Silicon Valley building energy-efficient ovens that cook with light. He has also worked on international climate policy at World Resources Institute in Washington, DC, as well as at grassroots climate resilience initiatives in rural India.
1:20 – 2:40 pm
The Dual Challenge
David Baldwin | Partner, Energy Transition, and C0-Founder of OpenMinds, SCF Partners
David Baldwin joined SCF in 1991 and currently serves as the Partner in charge of the firm’s energy transition initiatives. In this role, he is responsible for SCF’s energy transition strategy, including identifying new platform investments, and helping SCF’s existing companies develop exposure to new energy growth markets. Previously, he was Co-President of the firm, and led SCF’s efforts financing and helping to build North American focused companies. During his time at SCF, David has supported the creation and development of public companies National Oilwell Varco, Oil States International, Complete Production Services Forum Energy Technologies, Select Energy Services, and Nine Energy Services.
David earned his degree in Petroleum Engineering and his MBA from the University of Texas at Austin. During his previous career as an engineer with Union Pacific Resources, David was involved in developing and commercializing the horizontal drilling techniques that ultimately led to the US “shale revolution”. While in graduate school he worked for General Atlantic Partners, a global venture capital firm and early investor in SCF.
David’s civic activities include Greentown Labs, The Center for Pursuit, and Baylor College of Medicine, where he currently serves as Chairman of their Board of Trustees. In 2016, he and his wife Maire created “Pursuit for Those with DisABILITIES”, where they led 300 volunteers in a cross-country bicycle ride that raised $13 mm to help build a new state of the art campus for The Center for Pursuit. In 2018, he was awarded the Hoover Medal for his 30+ years of work supporting persons with disabilities. He also is the co-founder of OpenMinds, a coalition of 50+ entrepreneurs, business leaders, scientists, and politicians focused on creating an equitable solution to the “Dual Energy + Climate Challenge”. He and SCF colleague Andy Waite are also involved in Houston’s Energy Transition Initiative (“HETI”).
Dava Newman | Director, MIT Media Lab; Apollo Program Professor of Astronautics; Harvard-MIT HST faculty
Dr. Dava Newman is the Apollo Program Professor of Astronautics at MIT and a Harvard–MIT Health, Sciences, and Technology faculty member. Her research in multidisciplinary aerospace biomedical engineering investigates human performance across the spectrum of gravity, including space suits, life support and astronaut performance. Newman has been the principal investigator on 4 spaceflight missions on the Shuttle, MIR, and ISS.
Known for her second skin BioSuit™ planetary spacesuit, her inventions are now being applied to “soft suits/exoskeletons” to enhance locomotion on Earth. Her BioSuit™ museum exhibits include the Venice Biennial, American Museum of Natural History, Victoria and Albert and Museum, and Metropolitan Museum of Art. Her latest research includes Earth Speaks™ – an open source platform of curated space data that applies AI, natural language and supercomputer visualizations to help accelerate actions to help regenerate Earth’s oceans, land and climate. Newman is the author of Interactive Aerospace Engineering and Design, has >300 publications, and has supervised 90 graduate students and mentored >200 undergraduates.
Dr. Dava Newman served as NASA Deputy Administrator from 2015–2017, nominated by President Obama and unanimously confirmed by the U.S. Senate. Along with the NASA Administrator, she was responsible for the agency’s vision, leadership and policy direction, and representing NASA to the White House,Congress, international space agencies, and industry. Dr. Newman was the first female engineer to serve in this role and was awarded the NASA Distinguished Service Medal. She championed the human journey to Mars, technology and innovation, and education. She and her partner, Guillermo Trotti, circumnavigated in 2002–2003, sailing 36,000 nm around the world and teaching ‘Exploration via Space and Sea’. Newman earned her Ph.D. in aerospace biomedical engineering, Master of Science degrees in aerospace engineering and technology and policy from MIT, and her Bachelor of Science degree in aerospace engineering from the University of Notre Dame.
2:40 – 3:00 pm
TEX-E Project Overview
Ben Soltoff | Entrepreneur in Residence, Martin Trust Center for MIT Entrepreneurship
(see full bio above)
3:00 – 3:15 pm
Break
3:15 – 4:00 pm
Measuring Progress & Having an Impact: An Energy Startup Panel
Shreya Dave | CEO, Via Separations
Dr. Shreya Dave is the Co-Founder & CEO of Via Separations, an MIT spinout dedicated to reducing the emissions in industrial manufacturing. Via is a venture-capital backed company that was recognized as one of C&EN’s 10 startups to watch in 2019, and has received awards from ARPA-E, NSF, and MassCEC.
Shreya was awarded Technology Review’s “35 Innovators under 35” in 2018. Shreya holds Bachelors, Masters’ and Doctoral degrees from MIT in Mechanical Engineering and Technology & Policy. She also enjoys serving on MIT’s Corporate Development Committee, the board of directors for Greentown Labs, and lecturing in MIT’s product design and development course, 2.009.
Ben Glass | CEO & CTO, Altaeros
Dr. Dava Newman is the Apollo Program Professor of Astronautics at MIT and a Harvard–MIT Health, Sciences, and Technology faculty member. Her research in multidisciplinary aerospace biomedical engineering investigates human performance across the spectrum of gravity, including space suits, life support and astronaut performance. Newman has been the principal investigator on 4 spaceflight missions on the Shuttle, MIR, and ISS.
Known for her second skin BioSuit™ planetary spacesuit, her inventions are now being applied to “soft suits/exoskeletons” to enhance locomotion on Earth. Her BioSuit™ museum exhibits include the Venice Biennial, American Museum of Natural History, Victoria and Albert and Museum, and Metropolitan Museum of Art. Her latest research includes Earth Speaks™ – an open source platform of curated space data that applies AI, natural language and supercomputer visualizations to help accelerate actions to help regenerate Earth’s oceans, land and climate. Newman is the author of Interactive Aerospace Engineering and Design, has >300 publications, and has supervised 90 graduate students and mentored >200 undergraduates.
Dr. Dava Newman served as NASA Deputy Administrator from 2015–2017, nominated by President Obama and unanimously confirmed by the U.S. Senate. Along with the NASA Administrator, she was responsible for the agency’s vision, leadership and policy direction, and representing NASA to the White House,Congress, international space agencies, and industry. Dr. Newman was the first female engineer to serve in this role and was awarded the NASA Distinguished Service Medal. She championed the human journey to Mars, technology and innovation, and education. She and her partner, Guillermo Trotti, circumnavigated in 2002–2003, sailing 36,000 nm around the world and teaching ‘Exploration via Space and Sea’. Newman earned her Ph.D. in aerospace biomedical engineering, Master of Science degrees in aerospace engineering and technology and policy from MIT, and her Bachelor of Science degree in aerospace engineering from the University of Notre Dame.
Bar Pereg | Founder, PollyLabs
PollyLabs is pioneering a groundbreaking approach to impact innovation called technology repurposing. The company leverages existing technology that has already been developed and deployed in commercial use cases to tackle major societal challenges and address the unmet needs of underserved segments. PollyLabs seeds and incubates mission-driven, for-profit startups that aim to address low-hanging societal challenges by utilizing existing technologies, sourced for best-in-class technology partners with the goal to not only achieve immense impact through its companies, but also to catalyze the tech repurposing movement, unlocking positive social and financial returns that benefit the ecosystem as a whole.
Bar spends her days and energy on purpose-driven companies, the technologies that make new things possible, and, most of all, the humans who drive both of those things. She has been working with Fortune 500 company executives, advising (and working) for startups, running accelerators, starting her own ventures (as an entrepreneur and intrapreneur), and consulting for governments on innovation. All of Bar’s work has been at the intersection of growth strategy, technology, and social impact. She has global experience (having worked on all the continents minus Antarctica, but it’s on the list), and finds tons of joy in leading diverse teams.
Bar is passionate about driving purpose-driven growth, starting new stuff, and understanding behavior change to drive inclusive prosperity. She is an evangelist for harnessing technology to stretch the boundaries of equity and improve the human experience.
Desiree Plata | Gilbert W. Winslow (1937) Career Development Professor in Civil Engineering, MIT
Desiree Plata has been a member of MIT’s Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering since 2018. She earned her bachelor’s degree in chemistry from Union College, and her PhD in chemical oceanography and environmental chemistry from the MIT-Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution’s joint program in oceanography.
Plata was the John J. Lee Assistant Professor of Chemical and Environmental Engineering at Yale and associate director for research at the Center for Green Chemistry and Green Engineering at Yale. Previously, she was in the civil and environmental engineering department at Duke, where she was active in several international research networks, such as the EPA-funded LCNano (studying the environmental implications of nanomaterials across the life cycle) and the NSF-funded Partnership for International Research and Education, studying water and commerce as related to the energy sector.
Plata’s work is in the area of environmental chemistry, with applications in minimizing the environmental impact of emerging industries — with a particular focus on nanotechnologies across the energy sector. She has made fundamental contributions to the field of heterogeneous catalysis with respect to the bond-building mechanisms in carbon nanotube synthesis, which can be leveraged to lessen environmental impacts. Her work continues to illuminate novel chemistries that occur during environmental transformation processes of organic molecules. Plata is an NSF CAREER awardee, a National Academy of Engineers Frontiers of Engineering fellow, and a two-time National Academy of Sciences Kavli Frontiers of Science fellow, and was recently recognized for excellence by Caltech’s Resnick Sustainability Institute.
Elise Strobach | CEO & Founder, AeroShield
Elise is the CEO & Founder of AeroShield, a company that is making the next generation of energy-efficient windows possible by manufacturing super-insulating aerogel sheets. The company’s product is a composite designed to integrate into the existing double-pane manufacturing process to create a window 50% more insulating, reducing energy use and improving comfort.
Elise is also an Entrepreneurial Research Fellow at Activate, a non-profit that empowers scientists to reinvent the world by bringing their research to market. At MIT she was a graduate research assistant in the Device Research Laboratory under Professor Evelyn Wang, working their full-time while working on her Masters and PhD degrees in Mechanical Engineering.
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