Val Livada

Dr. Val Livada has been an active member of the MIT/Boston innovation ecosystem for over 35 years. He has consulted on issues of technology and strategy with Global 300 companies, and on entrepreneurship with startups, universities and regional entities around the world.

Dr. Livada is the founder of the Corporate Entrepreneurship Network and sits on the Board of Directors of the AutoHarvest Foundation, the Built Environment Coalition, Aphios Corporation and Polynva Composites. He participated on the Board of Advisers of United Technologies Innovation Council, the Building Global Innovators accelerator in Portugal, Greentown Labs, MassRobotics Accelerator,  ENRICH East Coast Centre and numerous startups Dr. Livada has been a Visiting Lecturer, Research Associate and Senior Lecturer at MIT and has taught the “Corporate Entrepreneurship” course at MIT Sloan School of Management. He has participated in grant/award selection committees for the Massachusetts’ Technology Transfer Center, Harvard University, Northeastern University, the US Dept of State’s Global Innovation through Science and Technology initiative and National Science Foundation.

Harrison Roberts

Harrison Roberts has been part of the Massachusetts technology ecosystem for over 20 years, focused on enterprise technology, innovation, and bringing new products and breakthrough technologies to market.

Harrison works at Aspen Technologies as Director of Product Management focused on AI and Machine Learning. 

Prior Harrison worked at MathWorks focused on product management and marketing for parallel computing, applied to compute and data intensive applications, such as simulation, machine learning, AI, and deep learning.

Previously Harrison worked on strategy, business development, and product management roles at Dell EMC.This included several internal startup products in elastic cloud storage, and software defined data center initiatives. Harrison also worked on M&A strategy for the Dell EMC emerging technologies division focused on disruptive cloud technology.

Harrison has been part of several entrepreneurial startups, including  Corvis, an Optical Networking startup, acquired by Broadwing/Level3. He also helped ramp up the machine vision startup Perceptron, focused on industrial process automation.

Before this, Harrison worked at Lucent Technologies, MIT Lincoln Laboratory, Brookhaven National Laboratory, and the Laboratory for Laser Energetics.

Harrison has a BS in engineering from the University of Rochester and an MBA from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Sloan School.

Sven Harmsen

Sven Harmsen, PhD, joined Saint-Gobain in April 2019 as Director External Ventures.
Previously, Sven (as Investment Director) had started the Performance Materials investment team as part of M Ventures (the corporate venture arm of Merck KGaA, Darmstadt, Germany). In 2012 Sven had relocated to the greater Boston area to work as Investment Principal at BASF Venture Capital (BVC), where he established BVC’s East Coast office in Cambridge, MA to coordinate investment activities in the eastern half of North America. Sven served as a Board Director for Advanced Bionutrition (ABN) and as a Board Observer for Aspen Aerogels and SLIPS Technologies. Originally he was hired by BASF as Head of Global New Business Development for its agrochemical division.

Before joining BASF SE, Sven was responsible for business development after heading the medicinal chemistry department of a VC backed (now publicly listed) biotech company called 4SC near Munich.
Following a postdoc at Stanford University Sven started his career in R&D at companies like Hoechst Pharma/HMR (today: Sanofi), and AgrEvo/Aventis CropScience (today: Bayer).
Sven studied chemistry at the Julius Maximilians University Würzburg, Germany, and was awarded a Doctorate in Science.

Dr. Makarand “Chips” Chipalkatti

Dr. Makarand “Chips” Chipalkatti is recognized as one of the pioneers in LED lighting and as an industry leader in  lighting, smart cities, sustainability and energy policy. Dr. Chips specializes in taking technology to business and commercialization. He leads a consulting practice focusing on corporate innovation and entrepreneurship with special emphasis on the commercialization of innovation in the new lighting ecosystem and in industries undergoing disruptive transformation. He serves globally as an industry consultant for product, service, and market strategy. His clients range from early seed stage companies seeking scale, to large global companies launching new businesses. Dr. Chips is a regular speaker at workshops and seminars on innovation, ideation and design thinking in diverse settings including executive training, academic institutions and international conferences. 

Previously, Dr Chips was the Senior Director, Solid State Lighting and Emerging Market Initiatives for OSRAM in North America where his primary role was as a corporate entrepreneur and founder of OSRAM’s LED Lighting business. He has been responsible for a series of successful new business and technology initiatives during his corporate career and beyond. His early work included research on advanced materials and organic light sources (OLEDs). Chips received a Ph.D. in Polymer Science & Eng. from Univ. of Massachusetts and a B.Tech Chem. Eng. from IIT Bombay.

Mark Shu

Since late 2018, Mark has served as Innovation Director to launch The Danfoss Innovation Accelerator and establish the corporation’s presence in Cambridge, MA. Mark joined the greater Boston innovation community in 2012 directing development and commercialization strategy for clean energy start-ups. Prior to Boston, Mark led technology strategy at GE Renewable Energy where he established corporate innovation practices and directed internal R&D, equity investments and acquisitions. His tenure includes venture development in Asia, investment management and aerospace R&D.

Mark holds doctorate and master’s degrees in mechanical engineering from Washington University in St. Louis, is a recipient of The McDonnell Douglas Advanced Research Fellowship and with much encouragement and grim determination earned a bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering from Missouri University of Science and Technology. He is currently a contributor to corporate innovation practices at MIT’s Materials Research Laboratory and serves as a mentor at MIT’s Deshpande Center for Technological Innovation.

Michel Nasilowski

Michel Nasilowski holds a doctorate and master’s degrees from the Ecole supérieure de physique et de chimie industrielles de la Ville de Paris (ESPCI Paris). He joined the MIT Chemistry Department for a post-doc in 2016, and later became a Research Scientist. In 2018, he joined the Innovation Team at DSM, and since 2021, is an Innovation Scientist at Covestro Additive Manufacturing focusing on partnerships with start-ups.