Baltimore Innovation Week 2017

Baltimore, Maryland born and raised, Dr. Jayfus Tucker Doswell, is an African American Ph.D. in Information Technology and a high-tech entrepreneur. Dr. Doswell earned a Bachelor of Arts (BA) from Oberlin College with degrees in Cognitive Neuro-Psychology and Computer Science; a Masters degree in Systems and Computer Science from Howard University; and a Ph.D. degree in Information Technology from George Mason University. His Dissertation, defended in 2005, created the world’s first culturally adaptive artificial intelligent virtual instructor platform that delivers instruction in mixed reality (e.g.,augmented reality and virtual reality) environments. Dr. Doswell is the founder, president, and chief executive officer (CEO) of Juxtopia, LLC, (www.juxtopia.com) a privately held for-profit biomedical and information technology company with a mission for improving human performance®. Prior to starting Juxtopia, Dr. Doswell lead several commercial engineering teams at fortune 500 companies ranging from Lockheed Martin and SAIC to BearingPoint as their senior software engineer. Dr. Doswell has also successfully lead Juxtopia to secure research and development funding for the development of Juxtopia innovative wearable technology products. The Juxtopia® Augmented Reality platform is one wearable technology platform from which various wearable augmented reality products may be created for improving human performance®. Dr. Doswell lead Juxtopia to secure a contract to outfit all U.S. Army combat medics with wearable augmented reality to improve their performance during tactical combat casualty care. Dr. Doswell also invented the Juxtopia® Imhotep platform for creating wearable telehealth products. Doswell ascertains that a significant number of underrepresented minorities in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) are provided apprenticeships at Juxtopia. In addition to his for profit company, Dr. Doswell created The Juxtopia Group, Inc. (www.juxtopia.org) to address the shortage of underrepresented minority populations in engineering and technology careers in year, 2000. Dr. Doswell, observing the painful-problems that prevent high-tech minority companies to achieve $1B markets, created the Juxtopia® Urban Innovation and Cooperative Entrepreneurship (JUICE) Network. The JUICE Network guides high-tech minority companies, colleges, and universities, and federal labs to transition their inventions or innovative concepts to commercial products. From the JUICE Network, Dr. Doswell helped to create Phezu Space, the first African American commercial space company in the United States focused on satellite servicing. From the JUICE Network, Dr. Doswell and two of his entrepreneurship apprentices created the 1 st Morgan State University company, iCrystal, in, at that time, Morgan’s 148 year history.

Varghese has worked for multiple agencies with the City of Baltimore since 2011 including the Comptroller’s Office, Mayor’s Office of Information Technology and most recently the Department of General Services as a Project Manager in the Business Process Improvement Office (BPIO). Previously, he managed projects for Oracle| Micros Hospitality, Agilysys Hospitality Software and Maryland Marketing Source. Several notable projects Varghese has managed include Free Public Wi-Fi at the Harbor, Historic Markets and Penn Station, Paperless Financial Disclosures and eFirstView a mobile floorplan system for registered pre-planned building with the Baltimore City Fire Department. Varghese’s role in the BPIO is to take the department totally paperless in 5 years!

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.

Dr. Greg Walsh is an assistant professor at the University of Baltimore where he is the graduate program director for the MS in Interaction Design and Information Architecture as well as the UX Design program. He is an interaction design researcher who focuses on user-centered design. In his almost 20 years of Baltimore City residency, Dr. Walsh has worked at a number of Baltimore-based interaction design firms and continues to focus on innovation through mentoring start-ups in the art of user-centered design. He is ruggedly handsome and a recipient of a Google Faculty Research Award.

Martijn Nuijten is Attaché for Innovation, Science and Technology at the Netherlands Embassy in Washington, D.C. As of 2016 he is also Sr. Advisor for cybersecurity at the embassy on behalf of the Ministry of Security and Justice. His work focuses on developing strategic partnerships between US and Dutch industry, academia and government related to research, innovation and policy. His areas of expertise are high-tech systems and IT, cybersecurity, smart cities and mobility, advanced manufacturing and blockchain tech. Martijn has a BA and MSc degree in astrophysics from the Technical University of Delft and Leiden University in The Netherlands. Before joining the embassy in 2012 he worked at the Ministry of Economic Affairs in The Hague where he was responsible for managing innovation programs and developing innovation policy, public-private partnerships and international cooperation. Martijn started his career as management consultant at Accenture in Amsterdam working on (IT) strategy and development for multinational companies and government agencies.

Param first experienced the inefficiencies of today’s manufacturing when setting up fabrication pipelines for orthopedic devices in rural India. Through his nonprofit, he provided orthopedic treatment to children with muscular disorders to change the stigma against disability. He turned his experiences there into FactoryFour, a software company creating the Internet of Manufacturing to enable manufacturers to take advantage of the future’s digital technologies.

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.

Gary is a Data Engineer at Arena.io. He dabbles in UI and knows way too much Clojure. He has applied FP languages (currently OCaml) and approaches to problems for over 6 years in Baltimore.