Jason Heikenfeld received the B.S. and Ph.D. degrees from the University of Cincinnati in 1998 and 2001, respectively. During 2001-2005 Dr. Heikenfeld co-founded and served as principal scientist at Extreme Photonix Corp. In 2005 he returned to the University of Cincinnati as a Professor in the Dept. of Electrical & Computer Engineering.

Dr. Heikenfeld’s university laboratory, The Novel Devices Laboratory www.ece.uc.edu/devices, is currently engaged in electrofluidic device research for beam steering, displays, and electronic paper. He has greater than 100 publications, has presented numerous invited talks, and his inventions have resulted in over a dozen pending or granted patents. He is an NSF CAREER and AFOSR Young Investigator. Dr. Heikenfeld has now launched his second company, Gamma Dynamics, which is pursuing commercialization of color e-Readers that look as good as conventional printed media.Dr. Heikenfeld is a Senior member of the Institute for Electrical and Electronics Engineers, and a member of SPIE, MRS, and the Society for Information Display. Dr. Heikenfeld has served on the Board of Governors for the IEEE Lasers and Electro-Optics Society, is an associate editor of IEEE Journal of Display Technology, and in the past served as technical chair for Displays at the annual IEEE Photonics meeting.

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THE PITFALLS, CHALLENGES, AND REWARDS OF ENGINEERING ENTREPRENEURSHIP

Many engineers who become entrepreneurs will find it to be a highly rewarding and challenging endeavor. Engineers are 'built' with problem solving skills that allow them to flourish in the complex activity of launching a successful new business. However, as an entrepreneur, the picture is much more complex than creating a technology that is 'faster, brighter, smaller, cheaper, etc...'. This talk presents the key elements in creating a successful new business venture. In addition, once your new business is up and running, it should be sustainable for the long term, or as said by Jim Collins 'Built to Last'. Some elements of this talk may surprise you, inspire you, and hopefully motivate you to seek out some of the rich sources of information that will be cited. This talk draws content from personal experience of starting two technology companies, and from the insight of industry giants such as Andrew Grove (Intel).

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