6:00 - 7:30 pm- Program
MIT Kresge Auditorium

7:30 - 9:30 pm - Networking Reception
MIT Student Center, 2nd Floor

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ONLINE REGISTRATION IS CLOSED
WALK-INS WELCOME AT THE DOOR
$40 for all; Free for Students with ID

presented in partnership with

in celebration of Global Entrepreneurship Week

THE TOUGH GET GROWING:
HOW TO SUCCEED IN A DOWN ECONOMY

The current economic climate doesn't mean companies can't succeed. It just means the WAY a company succeeds has its own unique challenges.

Hear the real-world experiences of entrepreneurs from today, the lessons learned going from start-up to success story, and the research and best practices that will help YOU get growing.

Introductory remarks from MIT President Susan Hockfield

Bo Fishback
VP, Entrepreneurship
Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation

Bo Fishback is vice president of entrepreneurship for the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation. His responsibilities include developing and advancing transformative programs that strengthen entrepreneurial engagement in the economy and help entrepreneurs succeed.

Fishback joined the Kauffman Foundation in 2006 as a director in the advancing innovation area, where he studied the country's best business accelerators and university-based commercialization programs. In 2007, he joined Kansas City, Mo.-based BioMed Valley Discoveries, a translational research and development organization affiliated with the Stowers Institute whose mission is to translate basic biomedical research into applications that improve human health.

Fishback has been involved in a range of entrepreneurial initiatives. He is a founding team member of Orbis Biosciences, a drug delivery and particle fabrication company whose core intellectual property was developed from research conducted at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Fishback also is a co-founder of Lightspeed Genomics, a next-generation genome sequencing company that was spun out of a research program at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. In addition, Fishback developed the Equity Simulation Tool, OwnYourVenture.com, an educational tool aimed at helping people understand the impact of raising equity financing.

Beyond these ventures, he has worked with a variety of life sciences and high-tech startup companies in varying capacities. Currently, he is on the board of directors for Orbis Biosciences, LightSpeed Genomics, and Infegy, the developer of SocialRadar, a social media monitoring and Web analytics company.

Fishback received his Bachelor of Science degree in biomedical engineering from Southern Methodist University and earned an MBA from the Harvard Business School.

Eugene Fitzgerald '85
Merton C. Flemings-SMA Professor
MIT Department of Materials Science and Engineering

Professor Fitzgerald's group's research activities attack the current limitations of electronic materials, especially limitations created by imperfections in materials such as point, line, and planar defects. Much of the group's efforts are focused on lattice-mismatched semiconductor systems, in which layers in electronic materials and devices have different lattice parameters.

He has a strong interest in the process of commercializing fundamental technology advances; he currently has 28 issued U.S. patents and several others pending. In 1998, he founded AmberWave LLC, which became Amberwave Systems Corporation in 1999. He has previously held positions as director, chairman of the board, and chairman emeritus at AmberWave.

Currently part of the founding team of Contour Semiconductor, Fitzgerald is also founder of Paradigm Research, LLC. The author and co-author of more than 150 technical papers, Fitzgerald has served on the editorial board of Materials Science and Engineering Reports since 1995, and in 2003 he was elected to the board of the Materials Research Society.

Helen Greiner'89, SM '90
CEO
The Droid Works

Helen Greiner is CEO of The Droid Works, a startup company whose mission is to be a “SkunkWorks” for robotics.  She is co-founder of iRobot which she transformed, with business partners Colin Angle and Rod Brooks, from a Massachusetts Institute of Technology spin-off into a ~$300Million business and the global leader of practical robots. Greiner served as President of iRobot until 2004 and Chairman until October 2008.  Specifically, she developed the strategy for and led iRobot's entry into the military market place.  At iRobot, she created a culture of practical innovation and delivery that led the creation and deployment of the PackBot, PackBot EOD, PackBot MTRS, Aware Robot Operating System, and participation in many DARPA, Army and Navy research programs. She also ran iRobot's financing projects which included raising $35M venture capital and a $75M initial public offering.  She was most recently led iRobot's investment in a deployable Flash LADAR and acquisition of Nekton, a UUV company.  Greiner holds a bachelor's degree in mechanical engineering and a master's degree in computer science, both from MIT. 
 
Helen is highly decorated for her visionary contributions in technology innovation and business leadership. She was named by the Kennedy School at Harvard in conjunction with the U.S. News and World Report as one of America's Best Leaders and was honored by the Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems International(AUVSI) with the prestigious Pioneer Award. She has also been honored as a Technology Review magazine "Innovator for the Next Century," invited to the World Economic Forum as a Global Leader of Tomorrow, and has been awarded the DEMO God Award at the DEMO Conference. In 2003, she was named one of the Ernst and Young New England Entrepreneurs of the Year and has been inducted in the Women in Technology International (WITI) Hall of Fame.

Daphne Zohar
Founder, Managing Partner
PureTech Ventures

Daphne Zohar is the founder and managing partner of PureTech Ventures, a Boston-based venture firm specializing in translating breakthrough research from top tier academic institutions into therapies that will impact human health and well-being. PureTech’s senior partners include entrepreneurs and leaders from the highest echelon of pharma, biotech and academia. Ms. Zohar was named one of the world's top young innovators who will shape the future of technology by MIT's Technology Review magazine and one of the top "40 under 40" by the Boston Business Journal. 

A successful entrepreneur, Ms. Zohar created PureTech and assembled a leading team to help implement her vision for the firm. She sits on the Boards of Directors of PureTech Ventures, Solace Pharmaceuticals (where she was Founding CEO),   Follica Inc. (currently Founding CEO), Enlight Biosciences (a technology development company whose backers include Merck, Pfizer, Lilly, Johnson & Johnson, and Novartis), and Satori Pharmaceuticals (where she was Founding CEO).  She also sits on the Technology Development Fund Advisory Board at Children's Hospital Boston, the Tufts University School of Medicine Advisory Committee for Drug Discovery and Development, and is an Editorial Advisor to Xconomy, a national technology news blog.