Concurrent 1C: At the Cutting Edge: A Series of Start-ups

Jan is Co-Founder and President of Mendeley (www.mendeley.com), a London- and New York-based technology startup. Since its launch in 2009, Mendeley has grown into the world’s largest research collaboration platform (1.5m users) and crowdsourced research database (150m documents). Jan was also a lecturer in Electronic Business and Information Management at the University of Cologne and served as an advisor to SAP’s supervisory board. Besides this, hes totally fascinated with Latin-American dances (such as Salsa), regularly attending (very non-academic) dance congresses.

Nicko Goncharoff is Head of Text Mining and oversees the development and deployment of Digital Science text mining technologies within Macmillan as well as the operation of SureChem, a scientific patent database business acquired by Macmillan in late 2009. Nicko co-founded SureChem, and prior to that Reel Two, which developed and sold text mining solutions for the life sciences and was sold in 2007. Nicko’s previous career was in financial journalism and travel writing (the former helping fund the latter). His interests include Chinese language, bluegrass guitar and faster-than-light travel, along with the more accessible, earthbound variety.

Kathleen is Scribd’s Senior Content Partnership Manager and currently leads the effort for universities, working to connect academic publishers and university administrators with the Scribd platform. Prior to Scribd, she led communications for YouTube’s television and film partnerships. In addition, Kathleen is currently studying comedy writing at The Second City in Chicago and hopes to make you laugh at least one time in this presentation.

William “Bill” Park joined DeepDyve as chief executive officer in 2008. Prior to DeepDyve, Mr. Park served at Acxiom Corporation, a global leader in customer information management, where he led the company’s 3D organization, a $225 million business providing data, digital and direct marketing solutions to Fortune 1000 and mid-tier companies. In this position, he oversaw all aspects of sales, services, development, and operations domestically and internationally, generating record revenues and profits. Prior to Acxiom, Mr. Park founded and served as chairman and CEO of Digital Impact, a leader in online direct marketing solutions for the Fortune 1000. Acxiom acquired Digital Impact in 2005. Prior to founding Digital Impact in 1997, Mr. Park held numerous management positions at technology and enterprise software companies. He graduated from the University of Pennsylvania and earned an MBA degree from the Stanford University Graduate School of Business.

Nathan Watson is BioRAFT’s founder and CEO. Previously, he conducted molecular neuro-oncology and tumor metabolism research at UCSF and Dartmouth Medical School, and also managed labs and worked extensively on shared resource projects. Nathan is a firm believer that with properly designed software, effective research administration and productive lab research no longer need to be competing goals.

Dr. Bill Ladd is Chief Analytic Officer at Recorded Future and holds a PhD in Statistics from the University of Wisconsin. Before joining Recorded Future in 2010, he managed analytic strategy for Genstruct (now Selventa), Spotfire (now TIBCO) and GeneLogic.