Husky Social/CoMotion Innovation Chat

Moderator Vikram Jandhyala is Vice Provost for Innovation at the University of Washington. He is Executive Director of CoMotion, UW’s collaborative innovation hub, and the UW co-CEO of the Global Innovation Exchange (GIX). He is a Professor and former Chair in the Department of Electrical Engineering, and an Adjunct Professor in the Information School. Vikram Jandhyala received his PhD degree in electrical engineering from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 1998. He founded, along with his students in 2006, Nimbic, a venture-backed simulation company which was acquired by Mentor Graphics in 2014. His current interests are in innovation, entrepreneurial and design thinking, social and organizational networks, and computational and data science.

Tom Simpson has over 25 years of experience as an investment banker, venture capitalist, angel investor and entrepreneur.  He is co-founder and Chairman of etailz, a rapidly growing eCommerce company, and co-founder of the Toolbox, a manufacturing incubator and accelerator.  He also manages three angel funds focused on emerging companies and is President of the Spokane Angel Alliance, a 100 + member organization which invests in early stage companies.  Tom has abachelor’s degree in business administration from the University of Washington and an MBA from The Wharton School.

Leen Kawas is CEO and President of M3 Biotechnology Inc., an emerging company that is targeting neurodegenerative diseases like Parkinson and Alzheimer’s. Kawas—trained as a molecular pharmacologist—started her career as a clinical and retail pharmacist in Amman, Jordan. She subsequently trained in the Neuroventure Executive Training program at the Foster Business School, which gave her a broad perspective on the drug-development process. As a woman entrepreneur with a scientific background, Kawas is committed to mentoring women in science and business; she has been selected for programs to inspire women to go into those fields, and was featured a role model for women in a profile recently in a Spokane business magazine and most recently was selected as a women to watch by the Washington Biotechnology and Biomedical Association.