The first of our confirmed speakers is Professor Robert S. Langer, the David H. Koch Institute Professor (there are 14 Institute Professors at MIT; being an Institute Professor is the highest honor that can be awarded to a faculty member). Dr. Langer has written more than 1,140 articles. He also has approximately 800 issued and pending patents worldwide. Dr. Langer’s patents have been licensed or sublicensed to over 220 pharmaceutical, chemical, biotechnology and medical device companies. He is the most cited engineer in history.
He served as a member of the United States Food and Drug Administration’s SCIENCE Board, the FDA’s highest advisory board, from 1995 — 2002 and as its Chairman from 1999-2002.
Dr. Langer has received over 200 major awards including the 2006 United States National Medal of Science; the Charles Stark Draper Prize, considered the equivalent of the Nobel Prize for engineers, the 2008 Millennium Prize, the world’s largest technology prize and the 2012 Priestley Medal, the highest award of the American Chemical Society. He is the also the only engineer to receive the Gairdner Foundation International Award; 72 recipients of this award have subsequently received a Nobel Prize. Among numerous other awards Langer has received are the Dickson Prize for Science (2002), Heinz Award for Technology, Economy and Employment (2003), the Harvey Prize (2003), the John Fritz Award (2003) (given previously to inventors such as Thomas Edison and Orville Wright), the General Motors Kettering Prize for Cancer Research (2004), the Dan David Prize in Materials Science (2005), the Albany Medical Center Prize in Medicine and Biomedical Research (2005), the largest prize in the U.S. for medical research, induction into the National Inventors Hall of Fame (2006), the Max Planck Research Award (2008) and the Prince of Asturias Award for Technical and Scientific Research (2008). In 1998, he received the Lemelson-MIT prize, the world’s largest prize for invention for being “one of history’s most prolific inventors in medicine.” In 1989 Dr. Langer was elected to the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences, and in 1992 he was elected to both the National Academy of Engineering and to the National Academy of Sciences. He is one of very few people ever elected to all three United States National Academies and the youngest in history (at age 43) to ever receive this distinction.
Forbes Magazine (1999) and Bio World (1990) have named Dr. Langer as one of the 25 most important individuals in biotechnology in the world. Discover Magazine (2002) named him as one of the 20 most important people in this area. Forbes Magazine (2002) selected Dr. Langer as one of the 15 innovators world wide who will reinvent our future. Time Magazine and CNN (2001) named Dr. Langer as one of the 100 most important people in America and one of the 18 top people in science or medicine in America (America’s Best). Parade Magazine (2004) selected Dr. Langer as one of 6 “Heroes whose research may save your life.” Dr. Langer has received honorary doctorates from Harvard University, the Mt. Sinai School of Medicine, Yale University, the ETH (Switzerland), the Technion (Israel), the Hebrew University of Jerusalem (Israel), the Universite Catholique de Louvain (Belgium), Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Willamette University, the University of Liverpool (England), Bates College, the University of Nottingham (England), Albany Medical College, Pennsylvania State University, Northwestern University, Uppsala University (Sweden) and the University of California – San Francisco Medal. He received his Bachelor’s Degree from Cornell University in 1970 and his Sc.D. from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1974, both in Chemical Engineering.
Our second confirmed speaker is Julie Meyer, well known as founder & CEO of Ariadne Capital, co-founder and Managing Partner of the Ariadne Capital Entrepreneurs (ACE) Fund, founder of Entrepreneur Country and co- founder of First Tuesday. Julie founded Ariadne Capital in 2000; Ariadne backs entrepreneurs in the digital health, mobile money, broadcast media and entertainment, and smart cities ecosystems. Ariadne pioneered the model of "Entrepreneurs Backing Entrepreneurs" as the new model of the financing of entrepreneurship, and Ariadne's investment framework is "Ecosystem Economics". Most recently Julie founded Entrepreneur Country, a community for leading and emerging entrepreneurs, investors, the media and corporate partners who service the start-up industry. She sits on the Boards of INSEAD, Medikidz, Vestergaard Frandsen and Jellybook.
And confirmed for our CleanTech panel interview session is Martin Chilcott, founder of 2Degrees Network – a network for sustainable companies to share information and attend évents organised both by the network and their peers. Our second interviewée is Felix von Schubert, who co-founded Zouk in 1999 and is a Partner. He has over 15 years of private equity investment experience. Felix has been investing in the Cleantech space for over 10 years with a particular focus on water and energy efficiency technologies. He sits on the boards of Triton Water AG, Soltecture GmbH, Nanotron Technologies Ltd and The Carbon Neutral Company Inc. He was also chairman of Zooplus AG, a publically listed company for over 10 years.
Prior to founding Zouk, Felix was at JPMorgan in the M&A and private equity teams, with a focus on energy and technology sectors. He also worked with the French Ministry of Finance in Paris and the German Chamber of Commerce in Russia.
