Rob Ryan

Chairman and Founder, Actuality Systems, Inc.
Founder and former CEO, Ascend Communications, Inc.
Co-Founder, Silicon Spice
Principal, Entrepreneur America

Rob Ryan, founder of Ascend Communications and Entrepreneur America , was honored as Cornell Entrepreneur of the Year in 2002.

Ryan earned national attention when he grew his 1989 start-up company, Ascend Communications, Inc., to more than $500 million in sales by 1995. Lucent Technologies acquired Ascend in 1999 for $23 billion, in what was termed the "largest technology merger ever."

Back surgery sidelined Ryan from Ascend in June of 1995, but soon after his recovery he reinvented himself as a "boot camp mentor" at his Montana ranch and began helping budding high-tech entrepreneurs formulate winning business plans and teaching them how to sell their ideas. Since Entrepreneur America began, Ryan has counseled dozens of aspiring entrepreneurs and as a result, 18 companies have been founded and mentored by his organization. Three of those companies rose to billion-dollar valuations.

Ryan received his BA degree in 1969 from Cornell and began his career as a systems analyst with Burroughs, then worked at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) on the first non-military extension of Arpanet, the precursor to the Internet. In the late 70s, he was the principal architect of DecNet and the Intel portion of the Ethernet specification while working at DEC in the Boston area. He founded Softcom, Inc. in the early 80s; sold it in two years to Hayes Microcomputer Products, Inc. and was Director of R&D until the late 1980s.

Ryan is a member of Cornell's University Council and its University-wide Entrepreneurship and Personal Enterprise Program (EPE) Advisory Council. He is the visionary behind the Cornell Entrepreneur Network (CEN), a program that brings Cornellians together for networking events in cities across the country and offers a Web site ( www.cen.cornell.edu ) to help alumni connect for career advancement.

Cornell Press is now publishing Ryan's book Smartups - Lessons from Rob Ryan's Entrepreneur America Boot Camp , which helps entrepreneurs "become streetsmart startups instead of 'bubbleups'," Ryan said.

James Lally

Partner Emeritus, Kleiner, Perkins, Caufield & Byers

Jim Lally began his career in technology as a practicing engineer in advanced thin film research at TRW. Later, at Hewlett-Packard, he was responsible for the management of HP's Minicomputer Product Line, and was a highly regarded salesperson before joining Intel. At Intel he founded three major microcomputer systems divisions, serving as the General Manager, with profit and loss responsibility for each.

Jim has served on the boards of Proteon, Sequent Computer Systems, Symantec, Walker Interactive Products and Wyse Technology.

Jim currently serves on the boards of Ascend Communications, Visioneer, National Dispatch Center, NeoMagic , Wireless Access, and Vivid Semiconductor.

He holds a Bachelor of Science in Electrical Engineering from Villanova University.

Robert Gelfond

Founder and CEO, MagiQ Technologies, Inc.
Former Managing Director, Millennium Partners

Robert Gelfond is the CEO and founder of MagiQ Technologies, Inc. MagiQ's mission is to perform research and development on the exploitation of quantum information technology. Bob is an active angel investor who was a first round investor in Amazon.com. Prior to MagiQ, from 1992-1998, he developed quantitative financial forecasting and risk models and profitably managed a portfolio of currencies, equities, and fixed income instruments in developed and emerging markets. From 1989-1992, he was Director of International Trading at D. E. Shaw & Co. where he was in charge of research, development and implementation of a variety of successful trading and arbitrage strategies in the global financial markets. In 1982, Bob founded Statistical Analysis Research and Development Co., which traded financial and commodity markets and was among the first to take advantage of mispricings in stock index futures (1982) and stock index options (1984) at their inception of trading. Bob graduated from the University of Virginia with degrees in Mathematics and Economics in 1981.

Alain Hanover

Managing Director and CEO, Navigator Technology Ventures
Co-Founder, Viewlogic Systems, Inc.
Co-Founder, CommonAngels

Mr. Hanover has over 30 years of experience in venture capital, executive management, software development, and engineering. He has served as CEO for over 15 years at InCert and Viewlogic, as well as being an early stage investor or advisor in over 20 private companies. He also co-founded CommonAngels, Boston's leading Angel Investor group.

Most recently, he served as Managing Partner of Main Street Partners, a seed-stage, venture capital firm, where he helped launch five start-ups: IPVision, SemiDAQ, Bitpipe, ShieldIP and Saoirse. Previously, he co-founded InCert Software Corporation and led the company as President and CEO from 1997-2000. In 1984 Hanover co-founded and served as President, CEO, and Chairman of Viewlogic Systems, Inc., an electronic design automation software company, took it public in 1991, and grew it to $150M in sales when it was sold to Synopsys in 1997. He was awarded the Entrepreneur of the Year Award in 1993.

In the early 80's, Hanover managed VLSI Advanced Development for Digital Equipment Corporation. Hanover began his professional career in the 70's as an early employee at the start-up Xylogics, later acquired by Dymo Graphics and subsequently by Itek. He spent one year prior to that as a technical staff member of MIT's Lincoln Laboratory.

He currently serves on several corporate and non-profit boards of directors, including Applix, Inc. of Westborough; Bitpipe, Inc. of Boston; CommonAngels of Lexington; InCert Software Corp. of Cambridge; the MIT Venture Mentoring Service, Massachusetts Technology Collaborative; and the Massachusetts Software & Internet Council.

Hanover holds B.S. degrees in electrical engineering and mathematics from MIT; an M.S. in applied math from Harvard University; and an executive MBA/OPM program degree from the Harvard Business School.

Michael Goldstein

President and Chief Executive Officer
Actuality Systems, Inc.

Mr. Goldstein has over twenty years experience leading technology and growth oriented companies ranging from start-up to over $1 billion. Most recently, as President of iFire Technologies Inc., he led the company from start-up to become the largest publicly held flat panel display company in North America. Through a combination of organic growth, acquisition, and strategic alliance, he helped to establish iFire as a leading candidate for the $100 billion consumer flat panel television market.

Prior to that he was Executive Vice President and General Manager of Leybold, a leading manufacturer of systems, components, and services to the flat panel display, semiconductor, and medical device industries. In this capacity he was responsible for global operations in twenty countries. Mr. Goldstein also had lead roles at General Electric, where he was responsible for development and manufacturing operations for NASA's Mars Observer deep space mission, and at Gemini/Ernst & Young Consulting, where he led growth programs for Fortune 100 companies worldwide.

Mr. Goldstein's education includes a Bachelors degree in Engineering from the University of Southern Illinois, and an MBA from the Wharton School.

Feel free to contact Michael at mgoldstein at actuality-systems.com

David Pryor, MD

Senior Vice President, Clinical Excellence and the senior clinical officer of Ascension Health, St. Louis, MO

David B. Pryor, MD, is the Senior Vice President, Clinical Excellence and the senior clinical officer of Ascension Health, the largest not-for-profit healthcare delivery system.

Prior to joining Ascension Health, Dr. Pryor was Senior Vice President and Chief Information Officer for Allina Health System in Minneapolis, Minn. Prior to Allina, Dr. Pryor was President of the New England Medical Center Hospitals in Boston, Mass.

Dr. Pryor spent the first 15 years of his career at Duke University Medical Center in Durham, N.C., where he served as Director of the cardiology consultation service, the section of Clinical Epidemiology and Biostatistics, the Duke Database for Cardiovascular Disease, and clinical program development.

Dr. Pryor has participated on numerous national and international committees. He has also served as an advisor to a number of developing companies.

In addition to his position at Ascension Health, Dr. Pryor's academic appointments include: Consulting Associate Professor of Medicine at Duke University Medical Center and Adjunct Professor at St. Louis University School of Public Health.

Gregg Favalora

Chief Technical Officer and Founder
Actuality Systems, Inc.

Gregg Favalora began researching 3-D displays in 1988 and graduated from Yale in 1996 with a B.S. in Electrical Engineering. In order to build Actuality Systems, he exited Harvard's Ph.D. program and received an S.M. in Engineering Sciences in 1998. Gregg is a winner of the BFGoodrich / National Inventors Hall of Fame's Collegiate Inventor's Competition, is a $10k winner of the MIT $50k Entrepreneurship Competition, and is a member of Technology Review magazine's "TR100," a group of 100 of the top technologists under the age of 35.

Gregg is a frequent speaker on entrepreneurship, having given invited presentations for the National Inventor's Hall of Fame, the MIT $50k Entrepreneurship Competition, garage.com's Bootcamp for Startups, Future Forward, the Harvard Entrepreneurs Club, and the MIT Enterprise Forum.

Gregg's research interests include volumetric 3-D displays, holographic video, and neuromorphic engineering. He is on the committee of the SPIE/IS&T Stereoscopic Displays and Virtual Reality Applications Conference and is a peer reviewer for several optics publications. He holds six U.S. patents and has several pending.

Feel free to contact Gregg at favalora at actuality-systems.com.