Bo has 30 years business development, funding, strategic consulting, and team building experience. His primary focus is to bring money to companies via angel, corporate, private equity, VC investment, strategic alliances, development partnerships, or OEM sales. Bo has operations, sales, & marketing management experience in computer software & peripherals and in leading edge reconfigurable computing systems. He has worked with clean energy, ecommerce, image processing, nanotechnology, reconfigurable computing, information technology, & wireless companies as well as consulting to government agencies & economic development initiatives. Bo's focus is on "right message to the right people at the right time". He has staged 60+ nanotechnology or clean energy conferences & forums since 2000, primarily through the nanoSIG. He networks at two or three technology commercialization or investing events each month, mostly in Silicon Valley.

Ken Epstein - Principal, NewCap Partners

Ken is a principal with NewCap Partners & brings 20+years of investment banking & venture management experience, including P&L responsibility for both major business units and startups. His diverse client base includes private & family-owned businesses, strategic equity investors, large corporate venture funds, & material, high-tech & life science firms. Ken's transaction experience encompasses selling & buying companies, negotiating global marketing & production alliances & joint ventures (JVs), as well as providing advisory services for strategic planning, acquisition & valuation. With an extensive background in materials (ceramics, chemicals, metals, nanotechnology, plastics), Ken also advises clients aggressively seeking expansion opportunities into new material markets (e.g. pharmaceutical, aerospace, semiconductor, energy, etc.) on acquisition candidates as well as small companies seeking larger global partners or exit strategies. Ken started his global, multi-functional career with the Dow Chemical Company. He spent the majority of his Dow career ( US , Singapore , Brazil ) in Dow's Corporate Venture Group working with high tech & materials global companies & technologies. He also started businesses, bought and sold small companies, & negotiated a variety of JVs & strategic alliances in North America, Europe, & Asia . Ken has a BS in Chemical Engineering from the University of Rhode Island & an MBA in International Finance from the University of Michigan.

Chris Rowan - Semiconductor Industry Advisor

Chris has over 15+ years experience in sales and marketing in the semiconductor and electro-optical industries and is the founder of Arscienta LLC. His principal strengths include: strategic planning, new business development, conceptualizing opportunities, process improvement, forecasting, and product launches. He invented the patent-pending Consistency of Purpose (COP) strategic planning methodology while responsible for strategic marketing at Cymer, a supplier to the semiconductor equipment industry, the number one IPO of 1996, and with a market share today of approximately 90%. At Cymer he was responsible for strategic planning, creation of revenue forecasts, and obtained a SEMATECH contract for optical material testing of $1.3M. Prior as an account General Manager, he increased sales at SVGL from $300K to $11M, successfully negotiated a GPA contract, laser specification, final-test documentation, implementation of an action item tracking cross-company communication protocol, and negotiated three service agreements for a total value of $869K.

Rocky Rawstern - Founder bir consulting

Rocky Rawstern is a knowledge management, presentation, and research consultant as well as founder of bir consulting. Rocky served as Editor of Nanotechnology Now (NN) 5+ years, and was instrumental in the creation of and updates to the NN website, products, and services. During that time he collected, categorized, and posted over 20,000 nanotechnology and nanotech-related news articles and press releases, and interviewed hundreds of stakeholders. For "outstanding journalistic or other communication endeavors that lead to a better public understanding of molecular nanotechnology and its high social and environmental impact," Rocky was awarded the 2005 Foresight Prize in Communication. Since 1998 he has been a lead search engine optimization analyst and has a deep understanding of world wide web search.

Michael Ede - Manager Corporate & Government Projects

Michael has 17 years of experience in the technology industry in early-stage and multinational companies in the hardware, software solutions and communications infrastructure sectors. He has proven skills in business development, negotiating and managing technology partnerships, developing reference account relationships, positioning businesses for acquisition and investment, in business planning, project management, business communications and creating strategic plans for market entry and growth. His current consulting practice provides business development services to international technology companies that are entering the American market and want a presence in Silicon Valley . His clients include the Government of Alberta. Prior engagements include Packeteer; Apple Computer - Manager of Technology Policy in Washington DC ; and Apple Canada - Director of Corporate Development. Michael has an MBA from INSEAD in Fontainebleau , France , an MPA from the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University , and an BA (Honors) from McGill University , Montreal.

Sandra Kay Helsel, Ph.D. - Senior Consultant Marketing & Marketing Communications

Sandra is the Founder & Managing Director of SK Helsel & Associates, & a successful technology writer, editor, & conference organizer for 15+ years. Her clients have included Internet.com, Mecklermedia (Internet World), Silicon Graphics, Inc. (SGI), PennWell, IBM, Sun Microsystems, Sony Film Institute, Fraunhofer Institute, Getty Institute, & Intellimation. In addition to her PR and superior relationship-building skills, Sandra Kay's doctorate in Educational Media gives you an edge in getting your story across to your target audience - while staying on message. This is especially true in Nanotechnology, Biotechnology, Energy, Optics, Photonics, or Image Processing - Visualization - Simulation. Sandra is equally at home promoting the latest high-performance chip or successful end-user application. Her team at SK Helsel & Associates includes emerging technology PR specialists in key fields: Internet infrastructure, start-up/early stage business development, conference & exhibition management, and information design & display.

Claudia Lindquist - Senior Consultant, Technical & Executive Recruiting

Claudia completed technical & managerial recruiting assignments for multi-national firms such as Motorola, Perkin Elmer, Allied-Signal & Genentech as well smaller firms with unique products such Molecular Devices, I-O Displays, IDEO, & Selectica. Her search work includes nanotechnology, IT & ecommerce. In the last 3 years, Claudia has completed assignments for new ventures & VC firms by identifying Board members, Scientific Advisor and executives for VC portfolio companies. She worked for Raychem Corporation (now TYCO) as both a Recruiting Manager supporting Corporate R&D and also as a Plant Manager running a Polymer Coating facility. Raychem's technologies ranged from shape memory metals (Nitinol) to semi-conductive polymers, and Claudia successfully recruited PhDs across all technology sectors. After Raychem, Claudia managed operations for Siltec Corporation, a silicon wafer manufacturer. She has a solid understanding of thin films, substrates, process scale up as well as the test and measurement requirements to create sub-micron devices. As a result, her search assignments have ranged from PhD Lab directors to CEOs. Her search work includes: Hardware - Computers & peripherals, instruments, mechanisms, robotics, digital & analog systems; Software - Applications, diagnostics, systems, bioinformatics; Development - Devices, systems, optics, semiconductors, tools; Communications - Internet, Telecommunications, Local Area Networking, E-Commerce; Production - Engineering, QA and reliability, tooling, packaging, testing; Biomedical - Materials, devices, instruments, pharmaceuticals, QA/GMP/Regulatory; Industrial - Chemistry, chemical engineering, materials engineering, composites, metallurgy and physics; Processing - Thin films, semiconductor, exotic materials.