Columbia University

Technology Ventures

2013

Siddhartha (Sid) Dalal

Area of expertise: 
Tech, Energy
RAND Corporation, Xerox, Bell Laboratories
Year Served: 
2013
Bio 

Siddhartha (Sid) previously served as the chief technology officer (CTO) at RAND Corporation and a professor at the Pardee RAND Graduate School. At RAND, he was responsible for creating and coordinating strategies and architecture for new technology research and platforms; and for developing potential paths to commercialization, including product licensing and development. Prior to this, Sid served as senior adviser to the RAND President on technology, launching a major initiative in “big data” research systems. He was also the principal technical architect behind a revolutionary early warning system developed by RAND for identifying toxic chemicals among tens of thousands of other compounds which resulted in a first ever spin-off from RAND. Before joining RAND in 2007, Sid was vice president of research at Xerox, in charge of Xerox's worldwide imaging and software services research. He has also worked at Bell Laboratories and at Bellcore/SAIC/Telcordia Technologies, where he served as Chief Scientist and Executive Director. Sid has coauthored over 100 peer reviewed publications and holds patents related to software and network engineering and testing, machine learning, risk analysis, data/document mining, and statistical and econometrics modeling. He is also currently on the board of a start up, Praedicat Inc. Dalal received his B.S. from the University of Bombay and his M.B.A. and Ph.D. from the University of Rochester. More detailed information can be found here.

 

 

Shane Eten

Area of expertise: 
Tech, Energy
Feed Resource Recovery
Year Served: 
2013
Bio 

Shane Eten is a successful entrepreneur with a passion for creating and capitalizing on sustainable business opportunities. Shane has a proven track record of developing industry disruptive solutions, closing complex sales with fortune 50 clients and building teams capable of delivering customers long-term value. For the past eight years, Shane has focused his efforts on leveraging proven and efficient technologies (both CleanTech and Web-based) to create a business model capable of redefining the waste industry. Today, this profitable venture—Feed Resource Recovery, Inc—designs, deploys and operates food-waste digestion facilities for some of the largest food retailers in the world. As the majority shareholder and board of directors member, Shane is now directing his knowledge and expertise towards finding the next generation of opportunities within the space where business, technology and the environment converge. These days Shane is an active advisor/mentor to numerous start-ups and is frequently retained by VC and PE firms to consult on various projects. More detailed information can be found here.

 

 

Sam Kongsamut

Area of expertise: 
Biomedical
Rudder Serendip LLC, Sanofi
Year Served: 
2013
Bio 

Sam has over 20 years of pharmaceutical R&D and business development experience at a succession of five different companies (Hoechst-Roussel Pharmaceuticals Inc, Hoechst Marion Roussel, Aventis, Sanofi-Aventis, now Sanofi), experiencing a company purchase, a merger of equals, a takeover, and a "transformation", all while remaining in Bridgewater, NJ. Sam managed various-sized groups of scientists in biochemical pharmacology that served multiple project teams in the neuroscience area, and was a member of the CNS Board that managed the CNS project portfolio. He led or worked on a variety of multi-disciplinary drug discovery and development projects covering a range of technologies and therapeutic indications in neuroscience and aging (OCD, anxiety-depression, schizophrenia, Alzheimer's Disease, Parkinson's Disease, sleep disorders, multiple sclerosis, spinal cord injury, stroke, hearing loss, pain, circadian rhythm disorders, urology, musculoskeletal disorders), helping to translate animal pharmacology to human pharmacology, including being involved with two marketed drugs that are now helping patients. From 2009-2012, Sam was Director of External Innovation at Sanofi-Aventis, using his experience to identify opportunities for collaboration and licensing for broad therapeutic interests within the Aging Unit. Since leaving Sanofi in 2012, Sam founded Rudder Serendip LLC, a consulting practice that serves clients at universities, foundations and biotechnology companies with advice on R&D plans and business development. Sam obtained a PhD at the University of Chicago and received postdoctoral training at Cornell and Yale Universities. More detailed information can be found here.

 

Jerry Korten

Area of expertise: 
Biomedical
GE, iSonea Medical, Versamed Inc
Year Served: 
2013
Bio 

Jerry is a Medical Device Company Executive with expertise in product development, business development and regulatory approval planning. Previously the CEO of Versamed, Inc. which was sold to GE Healthcare where he served as GM for business development during the transition. He is now working as an advisor to investment bankers in the healthcare field and serves as a mentor to inventors in academia for the NYC Investment Fund. Jerry is a Director for iSonea Medical and has been a Director for three medical device companies. His technical expertise is in algorithm development using digital signal processing and instrumentation design with a focus on cardio-pulmonary measurements and embedded engineering design. More detailed information can be found here

Wim Sweldens

Area of expertise: 
Tech, Energy
Alcatel-Lucent, Bell Labs
Year Served: 
2013
Bio 

Wim was most recently the President of Alcatel-Lucent’s Wireless Division, where he led the global development and deployment of LTE 4G technology and oversaw the introduction of the award-winning lightRadio small cell portfolio. Earlier in his role as VP of Network Technology, Wim took the company’s Applications Enablement strategy from paper to practice, allowing service providers to open and leverage their networks for the development of new services and applications. As founder and leader of Alcatel-Lucent Ventures, a strategic new business incubator and investment division inside of Bell Labs, Wim managed the lifecycle - from concept to commercialization - for eight ventures, ranging from enterprise and consumer applications to groundbreaking mobile innovations for operators. Wim also developed several compression algorithms including the one used in the JPEG2000 standard. He authored and co-authored several top cited technical papers, was a member of MIT Technology Review's inaugural class of top young innovators (1999 TR100), and was selected by Global Telecoms Business for its "Power 100 of 2009” list. He is a fellow of the IEEE and member of the Royal Belgian Academy of Sciences. Wim received his PhD in Computer Science from the University of Leuven, Belgium. He lives with his family in New Jersey. You can follow him on twitter @wimsweldens. More detailed information can be found here.