Baltimore Innovation Week 2017

Aleberry, Managing Partner Gira Wieczorek is a founder at Aleberry, a design & strategy firm focused on helping startups navigate the fundraising process with deck strategy & design. She has helped clients raise over $150M in funding. Aleberry works alongside startups, advisors, venture capitalists, and accelerators for demo days, pitch sessions, and investor meetings.

Ronan Perry is a sophomore at the Johns Hopkins University, double majoring in Biomedical Engineering and Applied Math, and originally from Ithaca, NY.

Michelle Menard is an award wining game designer, published author (Game Development with Unity), and 10-year veteran of the industry. She has previously worked in both the mobile and AAA market, and as a consultant under Artemic Games, LLC, partnering with other companies to provide core system design, itemization, auditing, and documentation. Once she was invited to the White House to blabber about game design and crowd-sourcing for big data. Michelle is currently the lead designer at Oxide Games, and is also a co-founder of Fishwizard Games, a small boardgame company exploring strategy games set in the Gateway universe. Gateway: Uprising, their first title, is due out in stores Q3 of this year.

Michelle also serves as an adjunct professor at UMBC and SCAD, teaching game design, theory, and game history, and has taught intro C# game development courses for the local non-profit Code in the Schools. She holds a double BA in Applied Mathematics and Music Theory from Brown University, and an MFA in Game and Interactive Design from SCAD.

Darius Irani is a sophomore at Johns Hopkins, currently studying Computer Science and Applied Mathematics & Statistics. Originally from Upstate New York, Darius has found his home in Baltimore through involvement in his social start-up Project Charmify that does community development, educational programming, and vacant space activation in neighborhoods across Baltimore. Darius would like to combine his passion for social justice issues and technical interests and skills in STEM, by using Big Data and Machine Learning to have social impact in cities and influence social policy.

Deepak Jain is the founder of AiNET. His career of 30 years has produced dozens of patents in computer science and electrical engineering, as well as innovative technologies to solve the world’s most challenging problems. AiNET helps businesses secure their data, streamline their information technology systems, and modernize their systems to drive business goals: to mitigate risks, to drive efficiencies, to create value, to comply with complex regulations, and to compete more effectively.

Natalie D. Eddington, PhD, FAAPS, FCP, is dean of the University of Maryland School of Pharmacy (UMSOP) and a professor of pharmaceutical sciences. She is also executive director of University Regional Partnerships for the University of Maryland, Baltimore (UMB).

Dr. Eddington is a nationally known expert in drug delivery and pharmacokinetics. Her research focuses on various medications used in the treatment of cancer, epilepsy, arthritis, and drugs of abuse and on understanding the role of biopharmaceutics and pharmacokinetics in elucidating the underlying mechanisms important in optimizing drug therapy. 

Under Dr. Eddington’s leadership, the School of Pharmacy has established a number of centers and programs including the FDA-supported Maryland Center of Excellence in Regulatory Science and Innovation (M-CERSI), which is a collaborative agreement with the FDA to promote innovation in support of the development and evaluation of safe and effective products. Dr. Eddington has designed numerous international regulatory courses for clinicians and scientists from South Korea, Argentina, Brazil, the United States, and Japan on the United States’ drug development process and the FDA regulatory infrastructure surrounding medication and device development. Most recently, under Dr. Eddington’s leadership, the School has launched a transformational pharmapreneurism initiative, which seeks to position the School’s world class faculty, its wonderful students, and exceptional staff to achieve their career aspirations and address our nation’s health care, research, policy, and societal needs.

Le`Rhone is part of the technology leadership at The Archer Group and oversees the front end development and animation disciplines. He also oversees emerging technology research via the Archer Innovations program. This team is currently exploring Virtual Reality, Machine Learning, and Artificial Intelligence, and uses this research to educate internal teams and find new opportunities to create meaningful experiences for Archer's clients.

Le’Rhone’s decade of experience in both design and business helps Archer’s work achieve the right balance between meeting the client’s business goals and creating a digital experience worth talking about. He has applied this knowledge to projects for clients such as Wawa Foods, Morgan Stanley, J.P. Morgan Chase, DuPont, March of Dimes, and BarclayCard US.

Founder, Ravi created the messaging platform that would become Sunrise Health after watching a close friend go through depression and seeing her suffer from loneliness between therapy sessions. Ravi has previous experience engineering AI products in multiple settings, from patient-doctor matching at a startup in India, to building out and selling a robotic vertical at a British multinational corporation. While a masters student at Johns Hopkins, he also helped found the VC firm A-Level Capital, raising its first fund and making multiple investments.