Plenary Panel

1:10pm-1:45pm

  • Should entrepreneurship be a form of professional development for graduate students, postdocs, and faculty? If so, how do we incentivize and support it?
  • What resources can campus provide to support academic entrepreneurship?
  • How do we promote inclusive and transdisciplinary entrepreneurship, and how can UC Berkeley make academic entrepreneurship unique?

Plenary Panelists include:

Deborah Kang is the director of Startup@BerkeleyLaw, an initiative of the Berkeley Center for Law and Business and UC Berkeley's primary platform for training entrepreneurs on the legal, financial, and operational issues confronting early stage companies. By focusing on how to form, run, and scale up a business, Startup@BerkeleyLaw serves entrepreneurs and companies across all verticals, providing a space for entrepreneurs to connect and expand their networks beyond their own disciplines. At UC Berkeley, Deborah educates and supports startups and investors from across the UC Berkeley campus, Silicon Valley, and beyond. She manages and instructs in the FORM+FUND Certificate Program and the international Berkeley Venture Capital Academies. Deborah also continues to develop and expand the Access to Entrepreneurship initiative to provide underrepresented and underserved entrepreneurs with Berkeley's rich resources and deep networks. Prior to joining UC Berkeley, Deborah was a trademark and intellectual property attorney at the law firm Fenwick & West.

Naeem Zafar has been teaching at the University of California, Berkeley since 2005. He is a Dean's Teaching Fellow, lecturer and Industry Fellow at the at the Center of Entrepreneurship and Technology. He is also the Professor of the Practice at Brown University. He teaches courses in Entrepreneurship, Technology Strategy, Innovation and New Venture Finance at Brown and Berkeley. Naeem has authored five books on entrepreneurship on topics ranging from conducting market research to seeking the right funding to successful ways to start a business. Information can be found on www.NaeemZafar.com. His books including "7-Steps to a Successful Startup" are also available on Amazon.com, Kindle and on the iTunes App store.

Rhonda Shrader is the Executive Director of Berkeley- Haas Entrepreneurship & NSF I-Corps Bay Area Node and Lecturer of Lean Transfer & LAUNCH Accelerator. Rhonda is delighted to be back at Cal (MBA '96) where she launched a transition from science to business. She has founded or was an early stage team member of start ups in biotech, retail, behavioral health, non-profit and big data. She served as a long time mentor for UCSF's Idea to IPO course, is an active advisor for NASA spinoff BrainAid, and recently lead the winning teams for both the Health Tech Forum Codeathon and the San Francisco MedHack 2.0 Hackathon.

Prof. Tsu-Jae King Liu is the Vice Provost for Academic and Space Planning at UC Berkeley, and the TSMC Distinguished Professor of Microelectronics in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences. Prof. Liu has held numerous leadership positions in both academia and in industry, and has most recently co-founded the Women in Technology Initiative at the University of California (WITI@UC) to address the disproportionate participation of women in engineering and computer science.

Prof. Randy Katz is the Vice-Chancellor for Research (VCR) at UC Berkeley, and a UMC Distinguished Professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science.

Prof. Katz has been involved in numerous entrepreneurial projects, going back to his days as a PhD student at UC Berkeley. As VCR, Prof. Katz oversees the intellectual property and innovation offices at UC Berkeley.

The Plenary Panel is moderated by:

Prof. Fiona Doyle is the Vice-Provost for Graduate Studies and the Dean of the Graduate Division at UC Berkeley, as well as the Donald H. McLaughlin Professor of Mineral Engineering. In January 2015 she was appointed as Dean of the Graduate Division, overseeing all of Berkeley's graduate programs and 11,000+ graduate students.

Entrepreneurship Panel

1:50pm-2:25pm

  • How would you describe an "entrepreneurial mindset"?
  • What kind of professional development does your program offer that may be of interest to people coming from different disciplines and backgrounds?
  • What are ways that you see Berkeley working in partnership with the broader Bay Area community (and beyond) to foster accessible and inclusive training in entrepreneurship?

Entrepreneurship Panelists include:

Iliana Perez is a consultant for Educators for Fair Consideration (E4FC), a non-profit providing support for entrepreneurial ventures by young immigrants, regardless of their immigration status. Iliana is a PhD Candidate in Educational Policy at Claremont Graduate University, studying the educational and occupational attainment of immigrant students and works as a research analyst with the Stanford Latino Entrepreneurship Initiative.

Dr. Camille Crittenden serves as Deputy Director of the Center for Information Technology Research in the Interest of Society (CITRIS) and the Banatao Institute, Director of the CITRIS Connected Communities Initiative, and Co-Founder of the Women in Technology Initiative. Prior to coming to CITRIS in 2012, she was Executive Director of the Human Rights Center at Berkeley Law, where she helped to develop its program in human rights, technology, and new media. She has written and spoken widely on these topics, as well as technology applications for civic engagement, government transparency and accountability, and the digital divide. She held previous positions as Assistant Dean for Development with International and Area Studies at UC Berkeley and in development and public relations at University of California Press and San Francisco Opera. She earned an MA and Ph.D. from Duke University.

Ilan Gur is founding director of Cyclotron Road, a fellowship program that supports hard science and technology innovators as they advance a project with the potential for global impact. While directing research and technology projects within academia, startups, and corporate labs for more than a decade, Gur found that entrepreneurial scientists and engineers often lacked access to the support and infrastructure needed to move their ideas from concept to product. He founded Cyclotron Road to bridge that gap. Gur holds B.S., M.S., and Ph.D. degrees in materials science and engineering from the University of California, Berkeley.

Ioana Aanei is the Entrepreneurship Program Manager at QB3, the California Institute for Quantitative Biosciences. She is in charge of several programs meant to guide entrepreneurs through the early stages of company formation. The QB3 Startup in a Box program is specifically aimed at the incorporation stage and includes legal help, as well as assistance with small business grant writing and building a convincing pitch deck. Ioana also manages an internship program, a freedom to operate analysis program, industry partnerships programs and new initiatives to support academic research. Ioana earned a BS in Chemistry from Caltech and a PhD in Chemical Biology from UC Berkeley.

Caroline Winnett is the Executive Director of SkyDeck. In the two years that Caroline Winnett has been Executive Director, she has built upon the SkyDeck network to include 100 SkyTeams, 72 advisors, over 320 active investors, and over 20 campus organization partnerships. The expansion of the SkyDeck program during her leadership has increased the number of startups launching from the program and the number of Advisors and partners engaged with SkyDeck. Caroline's background as a serial entrepreneur lends her the ability to speak on her personal experience in a startup. She has been an angel investor and advisor to startups prior to SkyDeck.

The panel is moderated by:

Dax viviD is the co-organizer for (Un)Tapped Potential. She was inspired to organize the event while working on her postdoc and noticing how many people were curious about academic entrepreneurship but didn't know where to begin. Dax earned her BA in Integrative Biology and Italian Studies and recently graduated with her PhD in Integrative Biology from UC Berkeley.