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Innovation in Greece
Innovation in Greece
A Free Online Webinar Series for
U.S. Venture Investors Investing Abroad,
Corporate Technology Scouts, University Officials,
Government Officials, Entrepreneurs
and other Innovation Professionals
Tuesday, September 29, 2009, 1:00-2:30pm ET (10:00-11:30am PT)
SPEAKERS:
Dimitris Niarchos
Vassilios Tsakalos
Chris Velissaris
Anagnostis Zachariades
John Strouboulis
Moderated by Randy Mitchell
(International Trade Strategist for Venture Capital, Senior Adviser for Entrepreneurship, U.S. Department of Commerce)
____________________________________
Sponsored by the National Venture Capital Association
____________________________________
____________________________________
For free registration: Click Here
____________________________________
A Free Online Webinar Series for
U.S. Venture Investors Investing Abroad,
Corporate Technology Scouts, University Officials,
Government Officials, Entrepreneurs
and other Innovation Professionals
Tuesday, September 29, 2009, 1:00-2:30pm ET (10:00-11:30am PT)
SPEAKERS:
Dimitris Niarchos
Vassilios Tsakalos
Chris Velissaris
Anagnostis Zachariades
John Strouboulis
Moderated by Randy Mitchell
(International Trade Strategist for Venture Capital, Senior Adviser for Entrepreneurship, U.S. Department of Commerce)
____________________________________
Sponsored by the National Venture Capital Association
____________________________________
____________________________________
For free registration: Click Here
____________________________________
This series on Investing in International Innovation will be moderated by Randy Mitchell, International Trade Strategist for Private Equity at the U.S. Department of Commerce. We will look at a different market of interest to U.S. investors and innovation professionals.
This month, experts will address the trends in the Greek innovation economy.
Among the topics to be covered:
_______________________
Dimitris Niarchos
Bio
Dr. D. Niarchos, is an internationally recognized materials scientist and has assumed the leadership of the NCSR “Demokritos” as of May 9th 2005. He received his B.Sc (1972) and PhD (1978) from the Department of Physics of the University of Athens, Greece. He became a Post-Doctoral Fellow of the University of Chicago in 1979 and in 1981 was appointed as Assistant Professor at the Physics Department of the Illinois Institute of Technology, Chicago Illinois until 1985, then returned to Greece as a scientist at the Institute of Materials Science of the NCSR “Demokritos”. In 1994 he was elected as Director of the Institute of Materials Science and from 1996-1999 as V. President of the Center. He also has been Associate Professor of the University Joseph Fourier- CNRS-Lab Lois Neel, Grenoble France in 1989. His scientific activities cover a wide span of the materials science, such as: Nanostructured Magnetic Materials, Superconducting Materials, Magnetic MEMS, Left-Handed Magnetic Materials, Combinatorial Magnetic Materials synthesis, Energy.
He managed his own portfolio of research grants in excess of €8 M and has co-authored more than 350 publications in refereed journals, with more than 3000 citations and more than 150 publications in domestic and foreign workshops and summer schools. He has supervised 19 PhD students and 11 Master’s Theses.
Niarchos’ many scientific services include current positions, as member of the committee for the new law of Science and Technology in Greece, coordinator of the committee for the Large Scale Facilities National Roadmap, member of the ESFRI EU project, National representative to the JRC –Center of EU from 1996-1998 and National Representative to the NMP program of the EU from 2004-2006, external advisor and evaluator of the EU and National Research programs. He also was among the starting members of the EU funded project CEAM, president of the Greek Foresight Exercise group on Materials and advisor to a number of start-up companies in USA and Greece.
As head of the NCSR “Demokritos”, Dr Niarchos is an opinion leader on several subjects including Nanoscience and Magnetic Materials, Energy and Metamaterials development, health and application of radiopharmaceuticals and accelerator and reactor science. He plays a key role in developing mechanisms and the environment for technology transfer. His interviews have appeared in daily journals, magazines and on television.
_______________________
Vassilios Tsakalos
Bio
Dr. Vassilios Tsakalos is the Co-ordinator of HELP-FORWARD Network (“Diktyo PRAXI” in Greek) since 1999. HELP-FORWARD Network is an organisation of 18 highly qualified people all over Greece providing technology transfer, research cooperation and networking services to small companies and researchers. It participates in all major European networks of technology transfer and research cooperation and its operation is mainly financed by European Commission grants. In 2002, it was elected “Best IRC in Europe” among the 71 European members of the technology transfer network “Innovation Relay Centres network”. HELP-FORWARD (H-F) belongs to the most competitive and one of the largest research Centres in Greece, the Foundation for Research and Technology –Hellas (FORTH) for which it also runs the Industry Liaison Office. H-F is also affiliated with the two main industrial associations of the country based on a strategic cooperation agreement between them and FORTH.
Dr. Tsakalos responsibilities span from the co-ordination of the day-to-day running of H-F Network and the project management of several National and European projects to the design and implementation of the HELP-FORWARD strategy. Moreover, he has been personally involved in a considerable number of cases of creation of hi-tech start-up companies from the academia.
Before joining the H-F team, Dr. Tsakalos was a researcher on polymer rheology in Centre de Mise en Forme des Matériaux of Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Mines de Paris (Sophia Antipolis). Vassilis Tsakalos is a graduate in Chemical Engineering from the National Technical University of Athens. He holds a DEA and a PhD degree from Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Mines de Paris in Materials Science.
_______________________
Chris Velissaris
Bio
Chris Velissaris is the C.F.O. of Glocal Systems Management, S.A. in Greece and Vice President of Glocal Venture Capital in the United States. The former company manages the GIVE-TANEO Fund, a Euro 20 million venture capital fund that focuses on S.M.E. investments specific to Greece. Chris is responsible for the finance and control functions of these organizations, and general support and evaluation of their investment and development functions. His prior experience includes financial planning, negotiation, and management at the Treasury Departments of GATX Corporation and United Airlines, and includes engineering research and management at Amoco Corporation (now British Petroleum), in Chicago.Chris holds a Doctorate of Research in Materials Science from the University of Naples, Italy and an MBA from The Amos Tuck School of Business Administration at Dartmouth.
_______________________
Anagnostis Zachariades
Bio
Dr A.E. Zachariades is Director of the Science and Technology Park of Crete (STEPC). He received his B.Sc. in Chemistry at the Aston University In Birmingham, England and his PhD in Polymer Chemistry at the SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry in Syracuse, New York ,USA.
He joined the Polymer Science and Engineering Department of the University of Massachusetts, and subsequently he worked at the IBM Corporation’s Research Center in San Jose, California. In 1985, he established Polteco Inc. in California, a research and development company which developed extensive intellectual property and patented technology in relation to novel biomedical and industrial products which were licensed to major companies. He expanded Polteco’s activities in 1999 with the establishment of two companies in Canada to manufacture Polteco Inc.’s developed fibber and tape products.
He is the editor of two books, author of more than 70 technical reports and patents, and lecturer to several universities in the USA (California, Santa Clara, Connecticut) and Science University of Tokyo.
_______________________
John Strouboulis
Bio
John Strouboulis obtained a Bachelors in Biochemistry at UMIST in Manchester UK, a Masters in Molecular Genetics at Leicester University also in the UK and a PhD in Molecular Biology (gene regulation) at the MRC’s National Institute for Medical Research in London, UK.
He spent four years as a postdoc at the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Maryland and in 1998 he joined as a postdoc the Department of Cell Biology at Erasmus University Medical School in Rotterdam, the Netherlands, where he became an assistant professor in 2002. In 2006, John was appointed Research Associate Professor at the “Alexander Fleming” Biomedical Sciences Research Center (BSRC Fleming) in Athens, Greece. His research interests include gene regulation and haematopoiesis. He has been the recipient of several competitive fellowships and research grants from European organizations, including the EU. John oversaw the founding of the Technology Transfer Office at BSRC Fleming in 2005 and he remains its Scientific Officer, at the same time maintaining an active research group. He has also been one of the founders of BioMedCode SA, BSRC Fleming’s first spin-off company which is active in the area of preclinical drug testing.
_______________________
Randy Mitchell
(International Trade Strategist for Venture Capital, Senior Adviser for Entrepreneurship, U.S. Department of Commerce)
Bio
Randy Mitchell joined the International Trade Administration of the U.S. Department of Commerce in 2001, from the private sector where he had a history of entrepreneurial development in Russia, Japan, and the United States. From 1997-2001 he was founder of a start-up e-commerce company exporting U.S. consumer goods to the Japanese. In that position he built a management team that included former Fortune 500 executives including the former Chairman, CEO and President of Avon Japan. Along with his team he raised $3.5 million in angel and venture capital financing and built strategic partnerships with some of the largest companies in Japan and the United States.
Mr. Mitchell resided in Russia from 1992 through 1996, where he built distribution networks in Moscow and St. Petersburg for U.S. and Scandinavian food and beverage brands such as Nestle (Findus), Sara Lee, Anheuser-Busch, Tyson, Subway, Campbell Soup, and others. This included working with Russian entrepreneurs in distribution, retail, and food service.
Mr. Mitchell is currently the U.S. government official responsible for venture capital and is the United States Representative to the OECD for Entrepreneurship where he actively works to promote global entrepreneurship. He is an alumnus of the Venture Capital Institute and has represented the International Trade Administration on the Board of Advisors to the Latin American Venture Capital Association (LAVCA). Mr. Mitchell has also served as organizer and U.S. Secretary on bilateral venture capital working groups with the governments of Australia, Brazil, and the European Union. Mr. Mitchell, a speaker of Russian, has traveled to 38 countries.
At the International Trade Administration, Mr. Mitchell is responsible for: Enhancing the competitiveness of the U.S. venture capital sector Supporting foreign investments of U.S. venture capital firms Increasing the exports of U.S. venture capital
Mr. Mitchell is a frequent speaker on entrepreneurship and venture capital, including the following for 2009:
This month, experts will address the trends in the Greek innovation economy.
Among the topics to be covered:
- what is the Greek innovation strategy as it relates to R&D labs at the federal and university level?
- how can US venture investors invest in Greek innovation?
- what is the state of deal-flow?
- are entrepreneurs emerging with viable business models based on university research?
- what are the opportunities for early stage venture funding?
- what role do universities play in commercialization of R&D?
- and is there an equivalent of Bayh-Dole for Greece?
_______________________
Dimitris Niarchos
Bio
Dr. D. Niarchos, is an internationally recognized materials scientist and has assumed the leadership of the NCSR “Demokritos” as of May 9th 2005. He received his B.Sc (1972) and PhD (1978) from the Department of Physics of the University of Athens, Greece. He became a Post-Doctoral Fellow of the University of Chicago in 1979 and in 1981 was appointed as Assistant Professor at the Physics Department of the Illinois Institute of Technology, Chicago Illinois until 1985, then returned to Greece as a scientist at the Institute of Materials Science of the NCSR “Demokritos”. In 1994 he was elected as Director of the Institute of Materials Science and from 1996-1999 as V. President of the Center. He also has been Associate Professor of the University Joseph Fourier- CNRS-Lab Lois Neel, Grenoble France in 1989. His scientific activities cover a wide span of the materials science, such as: Nanostructured Magnetic Materials, Superconducting Materials, Magnetic MEMS, Left-Handed Magnetic Materials, Combinatorial Magnetic Materials synthesis, Energy.
He managed his own portfolio of research grants in excess of €8 M and has co-authored more than 350 publications in refereed journals, with more than 3000 citations and more than 150 publications in domestic and foreign workshops and summer schools. He has supervised 19 PhD students and 11 Master’s Theses.
Niarchos’ many scientific services include current positions, as member of the committee for the new law of Science and Technology in Greece, coordinator of the committee for the Large Scale Facilities National Roadmap, member of the ESFRI EU project, National representative to the JRC –Center of EU from 1996-1998 and National Representative to the NMP program of the EU from 2004-2006, external advisor and evaluator of the EU and National Research programs. He also was among the starting members of the EU funded project CEAM, president of the Greek Foresight Exercise group on Materials and advisor to a number of start-up companies in USA and Greece.
As head of the NCSR “Demokritos”, Dr Niarchos is an opinion leader on several subjects including Nanoscience and Magnetic Materials, Energy and Metamaterials development, health and application of radiopharmaceuticals and accelerator and reactor science. He plays a key role in developing mechanisms and the environment for technology transfer. His interviews have appeared in daily journals, magazines and on television.
_______________________
Vassilios Tsakalos
Bio
Dr. Vassilios Tsakalos is the Co-ordinator of HELP-FORWARD Network (“Diktyo PRAXI” in Greek) since 1999. HELP-FORWARD Network is an organisation of 18 highly qualified people all over Greece providing technology transfer, research cooperation and networking services to small companies and researchers. It participates in all major European networks of technology transfer and research cooperation and its operation is mainly financed by European Commission grants. In 2002, it was elected “Best IRC in Europe” among the 71 European members of the technology transfer network “Innovation Relay Centres network”. HELP-FORWARD (H-F) belongs to the most competitive and one of the largest research Centres in Greece, the Foundation for Research and Technology –Hellas (FORTH) for which it also runs the Industry Liaison Office. H-F is also affiliated with the two main industrial associations of the country based on a strategic cooperation agreement between them and FORTH.
Dr. Tsakalos responsibilities span from the co-ordination of the day-to-day running of H-F Network and the project management of several National and European projects to the design and implementation of the HELP-FORWARD strategy. Moreover, he has been personally involved in a considerable number of cases of creation of hi-tech start-up companies from the academia.
Before joining the H-F team, Dr. Tsakalos was a researcher on polymer rheology in Centre de Mise en Forme des Matériaux of Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Mines de Paris (Sophia Antipolis). Vassilis Tsakalos is a graduate in Chemical Engineering from the National Technical University of Athens. He holds a DEA and a PhD degree from Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Mines de Paris in Materials Science.
_______________________
Chris Velissaris
Bio
Chris Velissaris is the C.F.O. of Glocal Systems Management, S.A. in Greece and Vice President of Glocal Venture Capital in the United States. The former company manages the GIVE-TANEO Fund, a Euro 20 million venture capital fund that focuses on S.M.E. investments specific to Greece. Chris is responsible for the finance and control functions of these organizations, and general support and evaluation of their investment and development functions. His prior experience includes financial planning, negotiation, and management at the Treasury Departments of GATX Corporation and United Airlines, and includes engineering research and management at Amoco Corporation (now British Petroleum), in Chicago.Chris holds a Doctorate of Research in Materials Science from the University of Naples, Italy and an MBA from The Amos Tuck School of Business Administration at Dartmouth.
_______________________
Anagnostis Zachariades
Bio
Dr A.E. Zachariades is Director of the Science and Technology Park of Crete (STEPC). He received his B.Sc. in Chemistry at the Aston University In Birmingham, England and his PhD in Polymer Chemistry at the SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry in Syracuse, New York ,USA.
He joined the Polymer Science and Engineering Department of the University of Massachusetts, and subsequently he worked at the IBM Corporation’s Research Center in San Jose, California. In 1985, he established Polteco Inc. in California, a research and development company which developed extensive intellectual property and patented technology in relation to novel biomedical and industrial products which were licensed to major companies. He expanded Polteco’s activities in 1999 with the establishment of two companies in Canada to manufacture Polteco Inc.’s developed fibber and tape products.
He is the editor of two books, author of more than 70 technical reports and patents, and lecturer to several universities in the USA (California, Santa Clara, Connecticut) and Science University of Tokyo.
_______________________
John Strouboulis
Bio
John Strouboulis obtained a Bachelors in Biochemistry at UMIST in Manchester UK, a Masters in Molecular Genetics at Leicester University also in the UK and a PhD in Molecular Biology (gene regulation) at the MRC’s National Institute for Medical Research in London, UK.
He spent four years as a postdoc at the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Maryland and in 1998 he joined as a postdoc the Department of Cell Biology at Erasmus University Medical School in Rotterdam, the Netherlands, where he became an assistant professor in 2002. In 2006, John was appointed Research Associate Professor at the “Alexander Fleming” Biomedical Sciences Research Center (BSRC Fleming) in Athens, Greece. His research interests include gene regulation and haematopoiesis. He has been the recipient of several competitive fellowships and research grants from European organizations, including the EU. John oversaw the founding of the Technology Transfer Office at BSRC Fleming in 2005 and he remains its Scientific Officer, at the same time maintaining an active research group. He has also been one of the founders of BioMedCode SA, BSRC Fleming’s first spin-off company which is active in the area of preclinical drug testing.
_______________________
Randy Mitchell
(International Trade Strategist for Venture Capital, Senior Adviser for Entrepreneurship, U.S. Department of Commerce)
Bio
Randy Mitchell joined the International Trade Administration of the U.S. Department of Commerce in 2001, from the private sector where he had a history of entrepreneurial development in Russia, Japan, and the United States. From 1997-2001 he was founder of a start-up e-commerce company exporting U.S. consumer goods to the Japanese. In that position he built a management team that included former Fortune 500 executives including the former Chairman, CEO and President of Avon Japan. Along with his team he raised $3.5 million in angel and venture capital financing and built strategic partnerships with some of the largest companies in Japan and the United States.
Mr. Mitchell resided in Russia from 1992 through 1996, where he built distribution networks in Moscow and St. Petersburg for U.S. and Scandinavian food and beverage brands such as Nestle (Findus), Sara Lee, Anheuser-Busch, Tyson, Subway, Campbell Soup, and others. This included working with Russian entrepreneurs in distribution, retail, and food service.
Mr. Mitchell is currently the U.S. government official responsible for venture capital and is the United States Representative to the OECD for Entrepreneurship where he actively works to promote global entrepreneurship. He is an alumnus of the Venture Capital Institute and has represented the International Trade Administration on the Board of Advisors to the Latin American Venture Capital Association (LAVCA). Mr. Mitchell has also served as organizer and U.S. Secretary on bilateral venture capital working groups with the governments of Australia, Brazil, and the European Union. Mr. Mitchell, a speaker of Russian, has traveled to 38 countries.
At the International Trade Administration, Mr. Mitchell is responsible for: Enhancing the competitiveness of the U.S. venture capital sector Supporting foreign investments of U.S. venture capital firms Increasing the exports of U.S. venture capital
Mr. Mitchell is a frequent speaker on entrepreneurship and venture capital, including the following for 2009:
- Washington, DC: National Council Entrepreneurial Tech Transfer Conference (Scheduled 3 December)
- Stockholm, Sweden: 6th US-Sweden Venture & Entrepreneurship Forum (Scheduled 15 September)
- Sao Paulo, Brazil: Getulio Vargas Center for Private Equity & Venture Capital (August)
- Chicago, Illinois: Dealmakers Summit of The Marathon Club (July)
- Chicago, Illinois: Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago Center for Private Equity (June)
- Ottawa, Canada: Re$earch Money—International Trends in Venture Capital (March)
- Miami, Florida: University of Miami—Global Business Forum on Entrepreneurship (January)