NOTE: If you are planning to attend, please note that parking is very limited around Stamps Auditorium so either arrive early or park in the Fuller parking lots and walk or take the blue buses (Northwood Commuter, Bursley Baits, or Northwood buses all would work) up to Pierpont Commons.

[ Please click here for a map of North Campus ]

All seminars are located inside the Stamps Auditorium in the Walgreen Drama Center on North Campus.

For past semester seminar videos - please click here.

Date	Speaker and Topic	Video (if available)
September 18, 2009, 3 - 4 p.m.	Rick Snyder of Ardesta, "Igniting an Era of Innovation" Rick Snyder is Chair of the Board, CEO and a co-founder of Ardesta. After a successful capital raise of $103 million, Rick co-founded Ardesta in 2000, becoming Chairman and CEO of one of the nation's largest investment firms focused on micro and nanotechnology. Ardesta has eight companies spread across Michigan and the United States developing small technology products in fields ranging from life-science to clean tech. and communications.
September 25, 2009, 3:30 - 4:30 p.m. ***special time***	Dr. Usama Fayyad, "A Michigan Data Mining Story - from Academia to Entrepreneurial Ventures" This talk will cover a set of lessons learned over the years as I progressed from my early research at Michigan on General Motors data sets, through NASA-JPL work on data analysis over massive scientific data sets, followed by work on data mining in database systems at Microsoft and through the transition into entrepreneurships and venture capital funded efforts through two data mining startups, ending with my experience at Yahoo! where we had to deal with the challenges posed by the massive data sets produced by the largest Internet site on the web. This leads us into one of the two focus areas of the talk. The first is a high level survey of the new research areas introduced by the Internet, including Search, Social Networking, Advertising, and the new economics of the web. The rise of the interactive on-line media have created an ability to understand user intent at the individual level (enabling ad targeting and personalization at unprecedented levels) and at the group and audience levels (enabling us to benefit from the "wisdom of the crowds" and the growing area of "crowd-sourcing"). The second focus of the talk are the big entrepreneurial opportunities available in data mining as a new frontier of information technology as well as with the Internet area as a whole. We conclude by highlighting the need to build up new sciences underlying the Internet and social media to help us better understand the new powerful dimensions of this poorly-understood novel terrain and new areas of its applications.
October 2, 2009, 3 - 4 p.m.	Aaron Dworkin of Sphinx Organization "The Sphinx Organization and Classical Music" Aaron P. Dworkin is the Founder and President of the Sphinx Organization, the leading arts organization based in the United States that focuses on youth development and diversity in classical music. An accomplished electric and acoustic violinist, Aaron received his Bachelors and Masters of Music in Violin Performance from the University of Michigan School of Music, graduating with high honors. He previously attended the Peabody Institute, the Philadelphia New School and the Interlochen Arts Academy and has studied with Vladimir Graffman, Berl Senofsky, Jascha Brodsky, John Eaken, Renata Knific, Donald Hopkins and Stephen Shipps. Additionally, Aaron studied piano with Robert Alexander Bohnke in Tubingen, Germany. Dworkin will also share a brief video on the organization that includes clips of several of its ensembles, featuring the Sphinx Symphony, Sphinx Chamber Orchestra and the Harlem Quartet.
October 9, 2009, 3 - 4 p.m.	Furqan Nazeeri of Viridus, Inc., "Everything I really need to know about entrepreneurship I learned at the University of Michigan." Furqan Nazeeri is a serial entrepreneur and angel investor. He grew up on a farm in rural Oregon and came to the University of Michigan in 1988 following in the footsteps of his older brother. While at Michigan, he studied aerospace engineering and was leader of the national champion 1993 University of Michigan solar car team. After graduation, he joined a fledgling startup building plug-in electric vehicles which became REVA, the world's largest manufacturer of on-road plug-in electric vehicles globally. After graduating from Harvard University with a MBA in 1999, Furqan set upon an 8 year entrepreneurial career building companies that sell technology solutions to Wall Street. In 2004 he founded Pivot one of the fastest growing networks of professional traders backed by DFJ Gotham, Softbank Capital and others. In 2007 he joined Softbank as an Entrepreneur-in-Residence and his work there evolved into his latest company, Viridus, which is a network of corporate professionals with the mission to create sustainable companies globally.
October 16, 2009, 3 - 4 p.m.	John W. Barfield of the Bartech Group, "My Life as an African American Entrepreneur 1949-2009" John W. Barfield is the Founder and Chairman Emeritus of The Bartech Group. The Bartech Group is a full service provider of professional staffing support and outsourced vendor administrative services. Bartech recruits and employs technical/engineering and information technology professionals and office/ administrative clerical support personnel on behalf of its fortune 500 clients. Mr. Barfield incorporated John Barfield & Associates, later renamed The Bartech Group, in 1977. He supports many humanitarian causes from eradicating polio in the third worlds, to saving a youth community center locally, to building wells that provide safe drinking water in developing countries such as Haiti and in Africa.
October 23, 2009, 3 - 4 p.m.	Margaret Boryczka of Apex CoVantage, "Apex CoVantage--Values Driven Entrepreneurship" Margaret Boryczka is the Co-Founder and Chief Operating Officer (COO) of Apex CoVantage. She manages the company's global operations which today employ over 2,500 staff in the US and India. Apex celebrated 20 years in business last year. Throughout its history, Apex has steadfastly maintained focus on shareholder value balancing revenue growth with sustained profitability. As COO, Ms. Boryczka has had primary responsibility for operational excellence which has been achieved through process optimization and workflow efficiency, made possible through an approach to technology which "balances the processing power of the computer with the cognitive power of the human mind". Prior to founding Apex, Ms. Boryczka worked at Battelle Memorial Institute as a research consultant on federal nuclear and hazardous waste management programs.
October 30, 2009, 3 - 4 p.m.	Michelle and Aaron Crumm from Adaptive Materials Aaron and Michelle Crumm of Adaptive Materials. Adaptive Materials was borne from Aaron Crumm's PhD work at the University of Michigan to become the de facto standard within the alternative energy market. Crumm's simple, yet radical, business proposition was to develop a fuel cell system that ran off of real fuel. As co-founder and chief business officer of Adaptive Materials, Inc., Michelle Crumm's leadership has been instrumental in helping the fuel cell company transition from start-up to second stage, fast-growing manufacturing company. In her role, Crumm is focused on leading Adaptive Materials to achieve continued high double-digit growth in revenue and profitability, as well as supporting innovation and commercialization of the company's solid oxide fuel cells.
November 6, 2009, 3 - 4 p.m.	Art Fry, Inventor of the "Post-it" Sticky note. Dr. Spencer Silver in 3M Central Research Labs, created small, sticky spheres. Art Fry, in a Product Development Lab for tape products, attended a seminar where he heard of the sticky microspheres. In 1974 he first thought to use them in bookmarks to mark his music in the church choir. Once made, the bookmarks found even wider use as sticky notes. Fry was able to spearhead the development of Post-it Notes® because of 3M's officially sanctioned policy that permitted bootlegging. Test sales in 1974 had small success because customers walked by the store shelves without trying them. A year later, 3M issued free samples to residents in Boise, Idaho. Over 90% who tried them said they would buy them and they did! By 1980, Post-it Notes® were sold in the United States and Canada, and launched into Europe in 1981. As the business grew, a series of products were added to the Post-it® line, with Super Sticky Notes added in 2003 for better adhesion to non-smooth surfaces. The products are easy to use, but technically complex. Patent protection expired in the 1990's and other companies now produce sticky notes, but most of the world's sticky notes are produced in 3M's technology/capital intensive plant in Cynthiana, Kentucky.
November 13, 2009, 3 - 4 p.m.	David Green, MacArthur Fellow, Ashoka Fellow and social entrepreneur, "Humanizing Capitalism to Make Medical Products and Services Affordable to Low Income People" David Green is a UM grad who has worked with many organizations to make medical technology and health care services sustainable, affordable and accessible to all. David is a MacArthur Fellow, Ashoka Fellow and is recognized by Schwab Foundation as a leading social entrepreneur. David helped establish Aurolab (India), to produce affordable intraocular lenses (now has 8% of the global market share) and helped develop high-volume, quality eye care programs that are affordable to the poor and self-sustaining from user fees (Aravind Eye Hospital in India) which performs 300,000 surgeries per year - 70 percent of the care is provided free of charge or below - cost, yet the hospital is able to generate substantial surplus revenue. Within this paradigm of "humanizing capitalism" he now works to create social investing instruments to support sustainable social enterprises (in eye care and solar energy); and is developing affordable hearing devices with a novel fitting system.
November 20, 2009, 3 - 4 p.m.	Nick Yang, Founder and Vice Chairman, KongZhong Corporation, CEO of Wukong, and CEO and founder of Monkey King, "Recognizing and Capturing Entrepreneurial Opportunities, My Experiences Building a Company from Zero to IPO in 2 Years and 2 Months" Nick Yang is currently the CEO and founder of Monkey King Search Company in Beijing China. He graduated from the University of Michigan with a BSEE degree in 1997 and from Stanford University with MSEE degree in 1999. After graduation, he co-founded ChinaRen.com, with Stanford classmates, Yunfan Zhou and Joe Chen. By mid-2000, ChinaRen.com had became the fourth largest website in China and was sold to Sohu.com. He became the CTO of Sohu and stayed in Sohu for one and half years. In May 2002, he co-founded KongZhong Inc. with Yunfan Zhou, focusing on wireless value added services In July, 2009, he quit the position as president of KongZhong and founded Monkey King Search Company focusing on mobile search.
December 4, 2009, 3 - 4 p.m.	Robert Wolfe, Co-Founder of Moosejaw, "No One Knows What They're Doing Including Me." The presentation will be all question-answer focusing on anything from Michigan football, general trivia, the growth of Moosejaw, Robert's secret new venture and why haven't those wigs the Founding Fathers wore come back into fashion. Robert Wolf, Co-Founder of Moosejaw. A couple months after graduating from Michigan, Robert founded Moosejaw in 1992. Moosejaw is known for reinventing the outdoor industry through branding, notable marketing and embracing social networking before there was a such thing as social networking. Starting with a single hole-in-the-wall outdoor store, Robert turned Moosejaw into a $40 million a year multi-channel retailer with seven shops, six mail order catalogs per year, two mobile websites and five online websites. Moosejaw was named an Internet Retailer Top 100 Website (2008 and 2007) and an Ad Age Top 50 Marketer (2008). Moosejaw has been recognized by Forrester Research, IBM, Bizrate, Ad Age, Internet Retailer, New York Times, New York Times Magazine, and Entrepreneur Magazine as innovators in social-networking, e-commerce, personalized marketing, emerging technologies and other nice sounding things.