Workshop

2015 Summer Workshop

The annual summer workshop took place at the beautiful seaside Asilomar Conference Grounds in Pacific Grove, California.

Date:
Jul 9, 2015 - Jul 13, 2015
Location:
Asilomar Conference Grounds, Pacific Grove, CA
Materials:

Summary

The atmosphere of the beach location as well as the distinguished series of speakers contributed to a workshop that was simultaneously relaxing but very intellectually stimulating.  We were happy to have the opportunity to welcome Hertz Foundation President Robbee Kosak to her first summer workshop.

The fellows, speakers, and friends heard great advice from the entrepreneurial panel of Hertz Fellows: Derek Lidow, global CEO, innovator and start up coach, and Chris Loose, executive director of the Yale University’s Center for Biomedical and Interventional Technology (CBIT) and co-founder of Semprus Biosciences. Guest speaker Joseph M. DeSimone, Chancellor’s Eminent Professor of Chemistry at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, presented an inspiring and fascinating talk about the science and entrepreneurship behind Carbon3D Inc.

We also learned about the wide range of approaches at Google[x] Life Sciences from Vikram Bajaj, lead scientist, and Vicky Demas, chemical engineer, followed by a Hertz hallmark of a truly engaging and challenging Q&A session. From Ilan Gur, founding director at Cyclotron Road, we learned about the hardware start-up incubator Cyclotron Road and its inspiration from Thomas Edison. Randy Garrett, senior vice president of technology at IronNet Cybersecurity shared great career advice and proposal funding insights.

We were lucky to hear about President Obama's signature "grin" and the inside-scoop on what it is like to meet with President Obama from Hertz Fellow William Press, a member of the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST) and Raymer Professor in Computer Science and Integrative Biology at the University of Texas at Austin. Further, we heard from Congressman Eric Swalwell, representing California’s Fifteenth Congressional District, about his initiatives as a member of the Committee on Science, Space and Technology. Jay Davis, Hertz President Emeritus, shared lessons learned from his career during a fireside chat with Fellows and guests.

The fellows, speakers, and guests competed in the annual engineering challenge. This year’s theme, "Aerial Reconnaissance," required teams to take a digital picture from the highest altitude possible. Hertz Fellow Tony Miller and his team successfully sent their digital camera flying over 33 feet in the air! Fellows and guests also enjoyed touring the Monterey Bay Aquarium, and kayaking with the otters and seals in Monterey Bay. This year also featured a speed discussions event, intended to foster more conversations and collaborations among the Fellows interested in similar big problems, although they may be working in disparate technical areas.

Thank you to Ray Sidney for his sponsorship of this event that gives the fellows, speakers, and friends this unique opportunity to engage with each other and with the Hertz Community. A big thank you also is due to the workshop committee for planning this event: Nick Cizek, Ruby Lai, Andrea Moffitt, Jane Wang, Christian Wentz, Robbee Kosak, Jay Davis, Amanda O'Connor, Diann Callaghan, and Ray Sidney. There were over 130 attendees at the workshop, the highest workshop attendance ever, which also included the greatest number of alumni in attendance over prior years.

Distinguished Speakers

Joseph M. DeSimone is a prolific inventor, serial entrepreneur and eminent scholar. DeSimone is the Chancellor's Eminent Professor of Chemistry at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and William R. Kenan, Jr. Distinguished Professor of Chemical Engineering at North Carolina State University and of Chemistry at UNC. DeSimone is also an adjunct member at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center. Currently DeSimone is on leave from the university and has assumed the CEO role at Carbon3D in Silicon Valley. DeSimone has published over 300 scientific articles and has over 150 issued patents in his name with over 80 patents pending.

DeSimone is one of less than twenty individuals who have been elected to all three branches of the National Academies: Institute of Medicine (2014), National Academy of Sciences (2012) and the National Academy of Engineering (2005). He is also a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (2005). DeSimone has received over 50 major awards and recognitions including the 2015 Dickson Prize from Carnegie Mellon University; 2014 Industrial Research Institute Medal; 2014 Kathryn C. Hach Award for Entrepreneurial Success from the ACS; 2013 Fellow of the National Academy of Inventors; 2012 Walston Chubb Award for Innovation by Sigma Xi; the 2010 AAAS Mentor Award in recognition of his efforts to advance diversity in the chemistry PhD workforce; the 2009 NIH Director’s Pioneer Award; the 2009 North Carolina Award; the 2008 $500,000 Lemelson-MIT Prize for Invention and Innovation; the 2007 Collaboration Success Award from the Council for Chemical Research; the 2005 ACS Award for Creative Invention; the 2002 John Scott Award presented by the City Trusts, Philadelphia, given to "the most deserving" men and women whose inventions have contributed in some outstanding way to the "comfort, welfare and happiness" of mankind; the 2002 Engineering Excellence Award by DuPont; and the 2002 Wallace H. Carothers Award from the Delaware Section of the ACS.

DeSimone, an innovative polymer chemist, has made breakthrough contributions in fluoropolymer synthesis, colloid science, nano-biomaterials, green chemistry and most recently 3D printing. DeSimone is the co-founder of several companies including Micell Technologies, Bioabsorbable Vascular Solutions, Liquidia Technologies and Carbon3D. DeSimone received his BS in Chemistry in 1986 from Ursinus College in Collegeville, PA and his Ph.D. in Chemistry in 1990 from Virginia Tech.


Derek Lidow, Hertz Fellow, is a longtime global CEO, innovator and startup coach. He is widely-known as one of the world’s top experts on the electronics industry; his contributions range from patents to value chain applications that have forever improved companies as diverse as Sony, Samsung, Philips, Goldman Sachs and IBM. Among his many accomplishments, Derek a successful entrepreneur who built iSuppli, a leading market research firm. In 2010 he sold his company for $100 million to global information leader IHS.

Today, Derek is giving back by teaching; Entrepreneurial Leadership and CreativityInnovation and Design at Princeton and by working with young companies and aspiring entrepreneurs. He is a media commentator; Lidow’s coverage to date includes The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, BusinessWeek, Forbes, Bloomberg, The Economist, Nikkei, Reuters, and Taipei Times as well as many top bloggers.

Derek’s degrees come from Princeton and Stanford where he earned a PhD in applied physics. He is based in New York City and Princeton, NJ.


Christopher Loose, Hertz Fellow, serves as Executive Director of Yale University’s Center for Biomedical and Interventional Technology (CBIT). He holds an appointment as Assistant Professor Adjunct of Urology in the Yale School of Medicine. He is also a Lecturer in Entrepreneurship in the School of Management and Lecturer in Biomedical Engineering. Additionally, Dr. Loose is an Accelerator Executive at the Center for Integration of Medicine and Innovative Technology (CIMIT).

Previously, Dr. Loose co-founded Semprus BioSciences with Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Institute Professor Robert Langer and David Lucchino, and served as Chief Technology Officer until the company was acquired by Teleflex Incorporated in 2012 (TFX: $80M). Semprus Technology was published in Science Translational Medicine and received a Frost and Sullivan Breakthrough Technology Award in 2010. Semprus’ first product, a vascular catheter with a surface modification designed to have reduced thrombus (clot) formation, was FDA-cleared in 2012.

Dr. Loose received the prestigious Hertz Foundation Fellowship and was selected by MIT’s Technology Review as a member of the “TR35,” naming the world's top 35 innovators under the age of 35. He was awarded the inaugural Peter Strauss Entrepreneurial Award from the Hertz Foundation in 2011 and was also named to Boston Business Journal's 40 emerging business leaders under 40.

While earning his PhD in Chemical Engineering at MIT, Dr. Loose co-authored the Semprus Biosciences business plan which won entrepreneurial competitions at MIT, Harvard University and Oxford University. Prior to his graduate work, Dr. Loose was a chemical engineer at Merck Research Labs after graduating summa cum laude with a B.S.E in Chemical Engineering from Princeton University.


William Press, Hertz Fellow, is a computer scientist and computational biologist with broad interests in the physical and biological sciences. An experienced manager in both university and national laboratory settings, he is widely recognized for his academic and research accomplishments.

Press holds the Warren J. and Viola M. Raymer Chair in Computer Sciences and Integrative Biology at the University of Texas at Austin. At UT, his affiliations include membership in the Institute for Computational Engineering and Sciences and in the Institute for Cellular and Molecular Biology. Press is also a Senior Fellow (emeritus) at the Los Alamos National Laboratory. In 2009, President Obama named Press as a member of his President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST). In 2011, he was elected president of the American Association for the Advancement of Science for a term beginning in February, 2012.

In his research career, Press has published more than 150 papers in areas of computational biology, theoretical astrophysics, cosmology, and computational algorithms. He is senior author of the Numerical Recipes textbooks on scientific computing, with more than 400,000 hardcover copies in print. Elected to the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) in 1994, he in 2000 became a founding member of NAS's new Computer and Information Sciences section. His current research is in bioinformatics and whole-genome genetics.