Baltimore Innovation Week 2017

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.

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.

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

Dr. Jennifer Reynolds is an experienced and entrepreneurial executive with more than twenty years of experience growing companies in start - up/early stage biotechnology and high technology environments. She is currently overseeing the University of Maryland, Baltimore County’s 60+ company incubation/acceleration program in life sciences, cybersecurity and clean technology and has a deep passion and interest in advancing the commercialization of new technologies within diverse high-technology sectors. Previously, she served in a COO capacity at a molecular diagnostics platform company in MD, growing the company from the ground up. She has also served as a DNA Forensics Expert and Crime Laboratory Director at one of the nation’s most prestigious private forensics testing laboratories. Jennifer has a B.S. degree in Biology from Virginia Tech, a PhD in Human Genetics from the Medical College of Virginia (VCU), and an MBA degree from the Executive MBA program at Robert H. Smith School of Business, University of Maryland College Park.

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.

Tom Kraak is a JavaScript developer at Oath, a subsidiary of Verizon, which houses 50+ media and technology brands including AOL, Yahoo, and HuffPost. He is passionate about learning, teaching, and the web platform. Tom combines these passions in frequent contributions to his favorite open source projects on GitHub. Besides the long-standing Academy course at Betamore, he teaches and mentors at Thinkful, Baltimore NodeSchool and various local meetups for junior web developers.

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.

Stephen Auvil is the senior vice president for technology transfer and commercialization at the Maryland Technology Development Corporation (TEDCO). In this role, he is responsible for overseeing TEDCO’s funding programs. He is also responsible for other programs that foster the transfer of technologies from universities and federal laboratories into the commercial sector. From 2008 - 2010, Mr. Auvil served as the assistant vice president for research at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC) where he assisted UMBC’s vice president for research in his effort to build and support UMBC’s research enterprise. He was also responsible for supporting UMBC’s economic development mission as it relates to research, technology transfer, and new venture creation. Mr. Auvil, who was one of the architects of UMBC’s ACTiVATE® and INNoVATE™ programs, served as a co-principal investigator on the National Science Foundation grants that supported these programs. From 2000 - 2008, Mr. Auvil served as the director of UMBC's Office of Technology Development (OTD). During his tenure, he oversaw significant growth in OTD’s active license agreements, intellectual property portfolio, and licensing revenues. He actively promoted UMBC’s research capabilities and helped to build ties with Maryland companies. Before arriving at UMBC, he worked as an assistant director in the Office of Technology Licensing at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine where he evaluated inventions and negotiated license agreements for a variety of technologies. He has successfully negotiated dozens of license agreements including many agreements involving equity and faculty initiated start-up companies. Prior to working at Johns Hopkins, Mr. Auvil worked for two small medical device companies where he had a variety of responsibilities ranging from rebuilding medical devices under GMP to setting-up and networking computerized accounting systems. He began his career as a laboratory technician studying ion channels in membranes. Mr. Auvil graduated with a Bachelor of Science degree in Biology and Engineering Science from Loyola College in Maryland, and went on to earn a Masters of Business Administration from the University of Baltimore and a Masters of Science in Biotechnology from the Johns Hopkins University.