The iBridgeSM Network Strategic Advisory Board provides guidance and input on the strategic mission and goals of the project. Comprised of industry experts, university professionals and entrepreneurs, the decades of expertise they provide is invaluable. With backgrounds that combine university, non-profit and corporate leadership as well as deep knowledge of technology and innovation, their feedback is used to decide next steps and pushes the Network to push the boundaries of technology transfer, collaboration among researchers, and creating a community that supports, influences, and furthers innovation.
Members of the Strategic Advisory Board include:
Erik Antonsson, Ph. D.
Director of Research, Northrop Grumman Space
Erik K. Antonsson is currently the director of research for the Aerospace Systems of Northrop Grumman Corporation and established the Space Technology Research Laboratories (STRL).
Dr. Antonsson is on leave from his position on the faculty of Mechanical Engineering at Caltech, where he organized the university’s Engineering Design Research Laboratory and conducted research and taught since 1984. He previously served as the executive officer (Chair) of Caltech’s Mechanical Engineering Department.
From September 2002 through January 2006, Dr. Antonsson was on leave from Caltech and served as the chief technologist for NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. In this role, Dr. Antonsson provided intellectual leadership for JPL in the strategic planning of advanced technology and guidance for approximately 550 technology researchers. He was the co-chair of JPL's Science and Technology Management Council and also served as a member of JPL's Executive Council, Strategic Management Council, Project & Engineering Management Council, and as the senior representative to NASA Headquarters and other NASA centers and government agencies for JPL’s basic technology research.
Dr. Antonsson earned a bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering from Cornell University and a doctorate in mechanical engineering from MIT. He is a Fellow of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers and currently is on the editorial board of the International Journal: Research in Engineering Design. He has published more than 120 scholarly papers in the engineering design research literature, has edited three books, and holds eight U.S. patents.
Patricia Anderson Cotton
Director, Business Development and IP Management, University of California
Patricia Anderson Cotton is Director of Business Development and Intellectual Property Management at the system-wide Office of Technology Transfer in the Office of the President at the University of California. Her responsibilities include the marketing and licensing of a broad range of technologies, including licensing to start-up companies, dispute resolution and the settlement of litigation. She also is responsible for strategic outreach to the economic development, angel, venture and business communities for the office. Prior to joining the University of California, Ms. Cotton worked in the areas of sponsored research and technology transfer at Brookhaven National Laboratory, a Department of Energy research laboratory located on Long Island and at the University of Texas Medical Branch. Ms. Cotton’s background is varied, including experience in higher education, state government, and private industry. She obtained her doctoral degree from Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee before beginning her professional career as an assistant professor at Defiance College in Ohio. Patricia is active in the Association of University Technology Managers (AUTM) and is the Assistant Vice President for Scholar Interaction (2007-2009) reporting to the Vice President for Metrics and Surveys.
Bo Fishback
Vice President of Entrepreneurship, Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation
Bo Fishback is vice president of entrepreneurship for the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation. His responsibilities include developing and advancing transformative programs that strengthen entrepreneurial engagement in the economy and help entrepreneurs succeed. Mr. Fishback joined the Kauffman Foundation in 2006 as a director in the advancing innovation area. In 2007, he joined Kansas City, Mo.-based BioMed Valley Discoveries, a translational research and development organization affiliated with the Stowers Institute whose mission is to translate basic biomedical research into applications that improve human health.
Mr. Fishback's involvement in a range of entrepreneurial initiatives, includes being a founding team member of Orbis Biosciences (a drug delivery and particle fabrication company whose core intellectual property was developed from research conducted at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign), co-founder of Lightspeed Genomics (a next-generation genome sequencing company that was spun out of a research program at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology), and development of the Equity Simulation Tool, OwnYourVenture.com. He also has worked with a variety of life sciences and high-tech startup companies in varying capacities and, currently, is on the board of directors for Orbis Biosciences, LightSpeed Genomics, and Infegy, the developer of SocialRadar.
Previously, he was a consultant with Puretech Ventures in Boston and director at IQHealth for Cerner Corporation.
Mr. Fishback received his Bachelor of Science degree in biomedical engineering from Southern Methodist University and earned an MBA from the Harvard Business School.
Tim Honaker
Chief Operating Officer - UChicagoTech, University of Chicago
Tim Honaker is the Chief Operating Officer of UChicagoTech, the University of Chicago Office of Technology and Intellectual Property, which commercializes new technologies and intellectual property generated through faculty research. He joined UChicagoTech in September 2003 and his responsibilities include managing all aspects of the office’s financial, technology, and administrative support infrastructure.
Prior to joining the University, Mr. Honaker spent most of his career with for-profit businesses, where he focused on improving operational efficiency by applying information technology to simplify and streamline business processes. Most recently, he was the Vice-President and General Manager of a 1997 start-up division for Menasha Corporation, a $1 billion global manufacturing and services company. That start-up revolutionized the use of reverse logistics technologies and processes as supply chain productivity tools. Having grown to a $60 million third-party logistics business today, the business operates as National Consolidation Services.
Earlier in his career, Mr. Honaker was Senior Vice-President of Operations for a management team that in 1989 purchased and took private a U.S.-based financial publishing and training subsidiary of Pearson Inc, a $5 billion global media company. After substantially improving the business’s operational performance over the next few years, it was then sold to the Washington Post in 1997 for a 30-fold return to the original investors. Beyond these ventures, Mr. Honaker spent several years working for large, global law firms. He was the Controller of Mayer Brown and the Director of Process Improvement for Kirkland and Ellis.
Mr. Honaker received his Bachelor of Arts in Mathematics and MBA in Finance from Indiana University and is a Registered Certified Public Accountant in the State of Illinois. He has been an active member of the Association of University Technology Managers (AUTM), Counsel of Logistics Management, American Association of Publishers, Direct Marketing Association, and Illinois CPA Society.
Wayne Johnson
Former Vice President, Hewlett-Packard Company
Wayne C. Johnson most recently was the Vice President for Hewlett-Packard Company’s University Relations Worldwide, located at HP Laboratories in Palo Alto, California. Responsible for higher education programs in research, marketing and sales, recruitment, continuing education, government affairs and philanthropy, Mr. Johnson managed a worldwide organization of 28 Program Managers and administrative staff working across 94 universities worldwide.
Widely recognized as a thought leader and global influencer, Mr. Johnson was a delegate to the Clinton Global Initiative, September 2007. He also has been quoted as a subject matter expert on the topic of innovation ecosystems, engineering education reform and global capacity building in the press. Johnson was one of five members of an expert panel that provided Congressional Testimony to the U.S. House of Representatives (Subcommittee on Technology and Innovation, Committee on Science and Technology) on July 17, 2007, regarding “Bayh-Dole – the Next 25 Years,” significant legislation that seeks to address issues of Intellectual Property (IP).
Mr. Johnson joined HP in 2001 from Microsoft’s University Relations department where he managed Program Managers and administrative staff across a customer base of 50 tier-one universities. From 1967 to 2000, he held a variety of positions at the Raytheon Company in Waltham, Massachusetts, including National Sales Manager for Wireless Solutions, Manager of International Financing and Business Development, Manager of Administration and Strategic Planning for Raytheon’s Research Division, and Manager of Program Development and Operations for Technical Services.
Mr. Johnson received his B.A. from Colgate University, Hamilton, NY and his MBA from Boston College’s Carroll School, Boston, MA. He was an Adjunct Professor of Management at Boston University from 1977 to 1999. Johnson was recognized during this period, as one of BU Metropolitan College’s most outstanding adjunct faculty members of the year. Johnson’s work was also acknowledged in 2005 through a Harvard Business School Case Study - “HP Nanotech: Partnership with CNSI”, which illustrates the challenges of managing industrial – university collaborations and examines issues of US national competitiveness.
Gerald E. Lepone, Ph.D.
Manager, Collaborative Research & Licensing, DuPont Crop Protection Research & Development
Gerald Lepone has been the Manager, Collaborative Research & Licensing for DuPont Crop Protection Research & Development since 2003. Prior to this position, Dr. Lepone held several other positions within the company, including Senior Research Associate, Research Supervisor, Patent Liaison, and Research Chemist.
Dr. Lepone is recognized as the inventor of DuPont
Dr. Lepone is affiliated with the Association of University Technology Managers (AUTM), the Licensing Executive Society (LES), and the American Chemical Society. He received his Bachelor of Science from Pennsylvania State University and his Ph.D. from the University of California, Los Angeles.
Steve ONeil, Ph.D.
Special Projects & Outreach Services, University of Arizona
Stephen ONeil is Manager of Special Projects and Outreach Services at the University of Arizona Office of Technology Transfer. He holds a Ph.D. in physical chemistry from the University of California Berkeley, and a MBA from the University of Colorado, and has special interest in facilitating the research-based links between universities and technology-intensive companies.
After completing his doctorate, Dr. ONeil took a brief fellowship at Harvard University before joining the research faculty at JILA, an interdisciplinary research and graduate training institute in the physical sciences, jointly managed by the University of Colorado at Boulder and the U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology. At JILA, Steve continued research in computational chemistry and managed the institute’s computing and electronics services before founding and directing the Boulder campus Office of Technology Transfer and Industry Outreach in 1994. In 1998, he helped establish the Optical Science and Engineering Program at CU-Boulder and, as the deputy director, introduced industry-related training into the graduate curriculum. At Boulder, he later founded and directed the campus Office of Industry Agreements.
Dr. ONeil joined the technology transfer team at the University of Arizona in 2003. As Manager of Special Projects, he helps the University forge links with local angel investors and community business groups, mentors students in the highly ranked McGuire Center for Entrepreneurship, adapts information technology and web services to the marketing and licensing of innovations, and manages invention disclosures in the physical sciences and computer software. Steve continues to enjoy helping creative individuals take a few steps closer to their research and entrepreneurial goals.
Joe Smith, M.D., Ph.D.
Vice President, Emerging Technologies, Johnson & Johnson
Joe Smith is currently Vice President, Emerging Technologies for Johnson & Johnson in the Corporate Office of Science and Technology. From 1991 through 2000, he held academic positions at the School of Medicine (Cardiology) and the Department of Biomedical Engineering at Washington University in St. Louis and served as Associate Director of Cardiac Electrophysiology at Barnes Hospital. From there, Dr. Smith went on to found the Arrhythmia Institute in Fairfax Virginia, a center of excellence in clinical cardiac electrophysiology and clinical research. Previous to this postion, from January 2003 through December of 2006, Dr. Smith served as Senior VP and Chief Medical Officer of Guidant /Boston Scientific – Cardiac Rhythm Management, where he provided senior scientific and medical leadership in research and development, new product planning, clinical trial design and conduct, healthcare and reimbursement policy, and medical education. He joined Johnson & Johnson in 2007 as Vice President, Microelectronic Technologies for Cordis Corporation, a Johnson & Johnson company.
Dr. Smith has published in the areas of cardiac electrophysiology with special interest in ICD technology, catheter ablation, atrial fibrillation, and quantitative analytical techniques in biomedical signal processing, has been a consultant to many companies involved in the advancement of innovative medical technologies, and holds a number of patents in the area of signal processing and catheter and defibrillator design.
Dr. Smith received his undergraduate degree in Electrical Engineering (EE) from Johns Hopkins University, his Master’s degree in EE from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), his Ph.D. in Medical Engineering and Medical Physics from the Harvard-MIT Division of Health Sciences and Technology, and his M.D. from Harvard Medical School. He completed his medical internship and residency at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, and completed his cardiology and clinical electrophysiology training at Brigham and Women’s hospital, the Krannert Institute of Cardiology in Indianapolis, and Washington University in St. Louis.
John Wilbanks
Executive Director, Science Commons
As Vice-President of Science, John Wilbanks runs the Science Commons project at Creative Commons. He came to Creative Commons from a Fellowship at the World Wide Web Consortium in Semantic Web for Life Sciences. Previously, he founded and led to acquisition Incellico, a bioinformatics company that built semantic graph networks for use in pharmaceutical research & development. Previously, Mr. Wilbanks was the first Assistant Director at the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard Law School and also worked in US politics as a legislative aide to U.S. Representative Fortney (Pete) Stark.
Mr. Wilbanks holds a Bachelor of Arts in Philosophy from Tulane University and studied modern letters at the Universite de Paris IV (La Sorbonne). He is a research affiliate at the MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory in the project on Mathematics and Computation. He also serves on the Advisory Boards of the U.S. National Library of Medicine’s PubMed Central, the Open Knowledge Foundation, the Open Knowledge Definition, and the International Advisory Board of the Prix Ars Electronica’s Digital Communities awards. Mr. Wilbanks also serves on the Board of Directors of the Fedora Commons digital repository organization.
