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Victoria Matthew is Senior Program Officer for Faculty Development at VentureWell, where she plays a lead role in the Pathways to Innovation Program, Epicenter’s faculty development and engagement strategy. She designs in-person and online convenings, engages experts, and curates content that fosters the Pathways faculty goals of integrating entrepreneurship and innovation into undergraduate engineering. Prior to joining VentureWell, Victoria worked for over a decade in higher education. She has designed, developed and managed degree, and certificate programs, and has experience as an online instructor, and mentor and trainer of other online instructors.

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Dr. Jeffrey E. Froyd is a TEES Research Professor in the Office of Engineering Academic and Student Affairs at Texas A&M University, College Station. He received the B.S. degree in mathematics from Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology and the M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in electrical engineering from the University of Minnesota, Minneapolis. He was an Assistant Professor, Associate Professor, and Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology. At Rose-Hulman, he co-created the Integrated, First-Year Curriculum in Science, Engineering and Mathematics, which was recognized in 1997 with a Hesburgh Award Certificate of Excellence. He served as Project Director a National Science Foundation (NSF) Engineering Education Coalition in which six institutions systematically renewed, assessed, and institutionalized innovative undergraduate engineering curricula. He has authored over 70 papers and offered over 30 workshops on faculty development, curricular change processes, curriculum redesign, and assessment. He has served as a program co-chair for three Frontiers in Education Conferences and the general chair for the 2009 conference. Prof. Froyd is a Fellow of the IEEE, a Fellow of the American Society for Engineering Education (ASEE), an ABET Program Evaluator, the Editor-in-Chief for the IEEE Transactions on Education, a Senior Associate Editor for the Journal of Engineering Education, and an Associate Editor for the International Journal of STEM Education.

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Raina is currently a graduate research assistant pursuing a PhD in Science Education: Physics at Western Michigan University. She holds bachelors degrees in Physics and English from Hope College and a masters degree in Physics from Western Michigan University. She has worked as an assistant editor for the online magazine Physics to Go and interned at the American Physical Society and the Center for History of Physics, and her doctoral work is centered on the sustained adoption of educational innovations.

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Thomas Katona is an Assistant Professor of Innovation and Entrepreneurship at the California Polytechnic State University in San Luis Obispo (Cal Poly). He works in the BioMedical Engineering Department and has a joint appointment in the Orfalea College of Business. Before joining Cal Poly, he worked in startup companies in the LED and LED lighting industry. His roles in industry included leading product development teams, business development, and marketing.

He received a Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering from UC Santa Barbara, studying with the inventor of the blue and white LED, and an MBA from the University of South Carolina, Moore School of Business.

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Dr. Robby Sanders is an Assistant Professor at Tennessee Technological University (TTU) in the Department of Chemical Engineering. He obtained his Bachelors of Science in Mechanical Engineering from TTU in 1995, and he obtained his Master’s degree and his PhD in Biomedical Engineering from Vanderbilt University in 1998 and 2001, respectively. His research efforts address 1) innovation-driven learning with a focus on student learning at disciplinary interfaces, 2) clinical diagnostics and therapeutics for diseases of the lungs, 3) wound healing, and 4) performance of soft gel materials. Recent courses taught by Dr. Sanders include Clinical Immersion at Disciplinary Interfaces, Transport in Biochemical and Biological Processes, Hemodynamics and Microrheology of Blood Suspensions and Other Biofluids, and Transport Science I: Heat Transfer.

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Bonnie Bachman is a Professor of Economics at the Missouri University of Science and Technology, Rolla, MO. Her areas of research are innovation and entrepreneurship education, impact of innovation on economic development, and sustainability-driven innovation. She is a Faculty Fellow for Innovation and Director of the Missouri NSF/S&T I-Corps Site Program. Bonnie co-leads the Pathways to Innovation initiative with colleague and Entrepreneur in Residence, John Lovitt. She is an adjunct professor in the Executive MBA program at the University of Missouri-Columbia and Visiting Professor at the Beijing Institute of Technology in the International MBA program.

Prior to this position she was Sr. Director, Strategic Technology Deployment and Mechanical Technology for Flextronics International and managed design and development teams in Italy, China and the US. She also had profit-loss responsibility for a 600-person tool making operation in South China. Bonnie was previously employed by Motorola, where she was Director of Emerging Technologies. Her team was involved in wireless product design and engineering, discovery of new technologies for bio-monitoring, and exploring the arena of wearable computer systems. During her 10 years at AT&T Bell Labs, Bonnie was involved with polymer research and development, materials characterization and testing, and plastics processing.

Bonnie has 4 patents, 1 provisional patent, and over 125 publications and presentations.

Bonnie received a BS in Physics from Benedictine University (Lisle, IL), a MS in Mechanics and Materials Science, and a PhD in Materials Science and Engineering (both from Rutgers University, College of Engineering - New Brunswick, NJ). Bonnie holds Distinguished, Fellow, and Honored Service memberships in Society of Plastics Engineering (SPE). She was also President of SPE in 1994. She is a senior member of IEEE and a life member of the Creative Education Foundation. She holds membership in Tau Beta Pi engineering honor society and Phi Sigma Pi honor fraternity.

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Dr. Renée Cole is an Associate Professor of Chemistry at the University of Iowa. Dr. Cole earned a B.A. in chemistry from Hendrix College, and M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in physical chemistry from the University of Oklahoma. Her research focuses on issues related to how students learn chemistry and how that guides the design of instructional materials and teaching strategies as well on efforts related to faculty development and the connection between chemistry education research and the practice of teaching. She is a PI for the Increase the Impact Project, which is developing resources for PIs to improve the propagation of their innovations, as well as a PI for the ELIPSS Project, which is developing resources for STEM instructors to assess professional skills in the classroom. Dr. Cole is also an associate editor for the Journal of Chemical Education.

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Retired Tech Industry Executive developing people with the skills and wisdom to apply technology for economic and social benefit

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Dr. Melissa Geist is a Professor of Nursing as well as a nationally board certified Family and Pediatric Nurse Practitioner. Dr. Geist received her doctorate at Peabody College of Vanderbilt University. She completed a Post-Doctoral Fellowship with the NSF funded VaNTH Engineering Research Center (a collaboration between Vanderbilt, Northwestern, The University of Texas and Harvard Universities) where she developed and implemented Legacy Cycles as part of curricular reformation in Biomedical Engineering aimed at increasing flexible knowledge and adaptive expertise of students. In her classes, nursing students engage in critical reasoning and clinical decision making via Legacy Cycle modules on complex topics such as management of anticoagulants, and interpreting arterial blood gas values. She has received the Outstanding Faculty award and the Award for Innovative Instruction as part of the university Quality Enhancement Program. Dr. Geist serves on the strategic committee for the newly designed Innovation and Entrepreneurship (I&E) Certificate offered at Tennessee Technological University. The focus of the I&E program is to provide students the opportunity to develop entrepreneurship and innovation skills through problem solving, creativity, working with a team and practicing effective strategies for meeting needs within the increasingly competitive global marketplace. Dr. Geist serves as the faculty mentor for two nursing students who are University Innovation Fellows by the National Science Foundation Epicenter at Stanford University.

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Charles Henderson, PhD, a Professor at Western Michigan University (WMU), with a joint appointment between the Physics Department and the WMU Mallinson Institute for Science Education. He is the co-founder and co-director of the WMU Center for Research on Instructional Change in Postsecondary Education (CRICPE). His research program focuses on understanding and promoting instructional change in higher education, with an emphasis on improving undergraduate STEM instruction. Dr. Henderson’s work has been supported by over $7M in external grants and has resulted in a many publications (see http://homepages.wmich.edu/~chenders). He is a Fulbright Scholar and a Fellow of the American Physical Society. Dr. Henderson is the senior editor for the journal "Physical Review Physics Education Research" and has served on two National Academy of Sciences Committees: Undergraduate Physics Education Research and Implementation, and Developing Indicators for Undergraduate STEM Education.

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Dr. Debra Friedrichsen has an M.BA, an M.S, Ph.D. and several years of industrial experience including a position in sensor development. Sensor development is also an area in which she holds a patent. She has engineering education research focused on 1) feedback and 2) the propagation of educational innovations.

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Phil Weilerstein is the President and CEO of VentureWell (formerly NCIIA). Phil began his career as an entrepreneur as a student at the University of Massachusetts. He and a team including his advisor launched a startup biotech company which ultimately went public. This experience, coupled with a lifelong passion for entrepreneurship, led to his work with VentureWell. Phil’s tenure at the VentureWell is marked by his skill for network-building and expert leverage of resources. He has a special talent for seeking out gifted educators and other important contributors and putting them to work for the betterment of invention, innovation, and entrepreneurship education in the U.S. and worldwide. As an entrepreneur in a non-profit organization, he has grown the VentureWell from a grassroots group of enthusiastic faculty to a nationally known and in-demand knowledge base and resource center. Phil is a founder and past chair of the Entrepreneurship Division of the American Society of Engineering Education and serves as the Deputy Director of the Engineering Pathways to Innovation Center based at Stanford University.

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