Patrick Ambron

Patrick, a 2009 Syracuse University Graduate, is a partner at BrandYourself.com, the easiest way to improve your online reputation. BrandYourself has been recognized by Entrepreneur Magazine as one of the top 5 innovative young companies in the nation and honored as one the top 50 most innovative young start-ups by the Kairos Society. Brand-Yourself is also recognized as the leading web-based online reputation management platform for individuals–the one place you go to manage and grow your entire online reputation. Patrick has helped BrandYourself secure over 1 Million dollars in venture capital and his innovative branding strategies have earned him and his company coverage in the Huffington Post, Mashable, US News & World, MSNBC, ABC, NPR and more. He is recognized as a thought leader in the new media landscape and co-developed the new media curriculum at the #1 school of information studies in the U.S. at Syracuse University.

Don Carr

  • Position: Professor
  • Company: Syracuse University
  • Email: dwcarr@syr.edu

Don Carr is the program coordinator for the Industrial and Interaction Design program at Syracuse University. He is also a founding member of iBox, the innovation Sandbox of the Center of Excellence and principle of Carr&Lamb Design. Recent clients include companies such as Crate and Barrel, DesignTex, Fisher-Price, Nike, K2 Skis, Motorola, and Target. His work has been recognized by the IDSA, the Cooper Hewitt National Design Museum, MoMA, and International Design Magazine. He holds numerous patents for his innovative product concepts and he’s lectured at multiple venues.

Shay Colson

Bio: Shay Colson is a 2010 graduate of the M.S. in Information Management program at the Syracuse iSchool. He is currently working in San Francisco, California as the iSchool’s Director of West Coast relationships. He is the former co-founder and managing partner of Sandbox startup Capesquared, and spends considerable time working with consumer internet startups and innovators in Silicon Valley. Shay is currently seeking his next entrepreneurial opportunity, and is always happy to chat about ideas, startups, food, beer, and Seattle sports.

Mike D’Eredita

“High performers” both fascinate and influence societies around the world. These are individuals, teams/groups, or organizations that tend to set themselves apart through the application of specific skills and expertise. Examples of high performers include a world-champion athlete, an expert team of medical personnel, or an organization capable of maintaining the position of market leader. Their expertise is acquired through experience, often involving countless hours of deliberate practice and an inherently recursive relationship among individuals, groups, organizations and their respective social networks. Information Technology (IT) enables individuals with specific skills and expertise to influence more people in a timely manner than ever before and allows collective expertise to be applied within synchronous or asynchronous distributed environments. The potential of IT is realized when its function is aligned with these seemingly natural learning and social processes. My research is focused on gaining insight into these processes in a manner that can be applied to the development and use of information-based technologies.

David C. DiMaggio

  • Position: Program Manager
  • Company: Syracuse University
  • Email: ddimaggi@syr.edu

David DiMaggio is Program Manager of the Syracuse University CASE Center Industry Co-Op program. His extensive background includes experience with employers and college career centers to develop recruiting strategies to facilitate the connection between college students and local employers. He is active with professional trade organizations and various economic development agencies in the promotion of college internship programs. Upon his retirement from GE in October 2004 after 25 years of service, David has served in various roles to assist college students in their career preparation. He served as Interim Director of the Clarkson University Career Center during the 2005 Fall Semester and is a frequent panelist on college and high school career forums.

He was Manager of Education and Development at GE Supply, a division of the General Electric Company. His responsibilities included the development and implementation of training and professional leadership programs for the 2500+ employees of GE Supply. He was responsible for recruiting and university relations at several colleges and universities across the US. In addition, David was s the Program Manager for the Distribution and Sales Program, an entry-level leadership development program at GE Supply.David, a native of Rome NY, attended Clarkson University and Utica College where he majored in Mathematics.

Andrew Farah

Andrew is a Co-Founder of a design firm called Rounded and a technical officer at AppFury LLC. When he is not feeding his addiction to Ping-Pong, Andrew can be found working on the following projects:

http://rounded.co
http://appfury.com
http://wearemobile.co
http://doingnotplanning.com
http://syracusestudentsandbox.com

Andrew holds a master’s degree in information management from Syracuse University’s iSchool and separate degrees in writing and speech.

Keisuke Inoue

  • Position: PhD Candiate and Adjunct Professor, School of Information Studies
  • Company: Syracuse University
  • Email: kinoue@syr.edu

Keisuke’s interests include Natural Language Processing, Information Retrieval, Social Web Technologies, and Mobile Programming. He taught an introductory level game programming course in the Spring 2010, and will be teaching how to build a social web system in the Fall 2010. Keisuke is also a co-founder and the former president of the Northeast
Collegiate Triathlon Conference, a student-run non-profit organization to facilitate the first collegiate triathlon league in the northeast region.

Elizabeth Liddy

  • Position: Dean & Trustee Professor, School of Information Studies
  • Company: Syracuse University
  • Email: liddy@syr.edu

Elizabeth D. Liddy is dean and Trustee Professor in the School of Information Studies at Syracuse University. In 1999, she was appointed director of the schools Center for Natural Language Processing, which advances the development of human-like language understanding software capabilities for government, commercial and consumer applications. Liddy is also an adjunct professor at Upstate Medical University, where she conducts research on medical informatics.

Liddy has led 65 research projects, with the support of numerous government agencies and commercial enterprises and all based on the use of NLP for improved information access and analytics. She has authored more than 110 research papers and given hundreds of conference presentations on her work. Her curriculum vitae provides a listing of these works. In addition, she is a co-inventor on five patents in the area of natural language processing.

Among her many honors, Liddy is a recipient of the Tibbetts Award from the SBIR Program of the U.S. Small Business Administration (1998), the Enterprise Award for Technology from the Upstate New York Technology Business Foum (1998), the Outstanding Alumni Award from SU (2000), the Post-Standard and Syracuse-Federation of Women’s Clubs Achievement Award (2005), and the 12th Annual Search Engine Conference Best Paper Award (2007).

In addition, she was elected chair of the Association for Computing Machinery Special Interest Group of Information Retrieval for 2007-09. She is a member of Beta Phi Mu, the library and information studies honor society, and Sigma Xi, the international honor society of scientific and engineering research.

Liddy teaches graduate courses in information retrieval, natural language processing, and data mining. She is also the faculty advisor of Women in Information Technology, a student group that supports and mentors female IT students.

She holds a bachelors degree in English language and literature from Daemen College (1966) and an M.L.S. in information studies (1977) and a Ph.D. in information transfer (1988), both from SU.

Michael R. Murphy

An experienced web developer with over a decade of experience working with small business to multinationals. Specializing in E-Commerce and web applications using ASP, PHP, Javascript and AJAX, XHTML, CSS, MySQL, SQL Server.

Ulf Oesterle

Ulf is an assistant professor in the Bandier Program for Music and the Entertainment Industries. Before arriving at VPA, Oesterle was a visiting professor in the advertising department at SU and adjunct professor in communications at LeMoyne College. Ulf earned his Ph.D. from the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications at SU in 2007 with a dissertation that focused on creative control in the independent sector of the music industry. His continuing research interests focus on independent record labels and the use of social media and emerging technology within the music business. Outside of the classroom, Oesterle owns an independent record label and artist management company, has spent time on the air as a radio programmer and host at KRock and has experience managing live music events in Central New York.

Chris McCracy

Chris McCray is the Mad Scientist and Executive Director of COLAB at Syracuse University. Chris believes that the future lies in collaboration. His focus is on bringing people of differing backgrounds and skill sets together, making connections, and facilitating dialogue in order to solve wicked problems and create sustainability at all levels. In the words of Albert Einstein: “The significant problems we have cannot be solved at the same level of thinking with which we created them.”

Prior to joining COLAB, Chris was the founder and principal of Chris McCray Designs, a multifaceted design firm based in Richmond, Virginia, with projects ranging from high-end interior design to branding, furniture design, systems and experience design. After over a decade of watching (and facilitating) the problems of overconsumption, Chris decided to close his business and become part of the solution. He received a Master’s degree in Industrial Design from the Rhode Island School of Design in 2008, and it was during his tenure there that he realized his passion for collaboration. He worked as part of a multidisciplinary team on a one-year research and development project with Target Corporation, and he discovered over the course of the project (and through his academic studies) that he learned just as much from his peers as from his professors. Chris believes that collaboration is the new model for academic study—and that is the heart of COLAB.

Mitchell Patterson

As the Director of Business Retention & Expansion Mitchell provides services focused on business expansion and retention; advancing emerging industry sectors; and maximizing the region’s innovation and technology assets. Mitchell provides support for a multi-county regional growth strategy with a network of business leaders, public officials, economic development organizations, and high education administration. Aggressively seeking to bridge the gap between the downstate capital groups and the upstate business community. Member of the Onondaga County business retention team. 

As the managing director for the emerging business portfolio Mitchell coordinates planning, outreach, fundraising, for the New York’s Creative Core $250,000 Emerging Business Competition. Manage a $3.6 million dollar IP commercialization grant program aimed at fostering industry – academic partnerships. Developing a network of early state and series A funders in the north east.”

Emad Rahim

Dr. Emad Rahim is an Assistant Professor at Morrisville State College (MSC). He is the administrator of MSC’s Venture Connect, an Executive Entrepreneurship BBA degree program sponsored by the Kauffman Foundation and Syracuse University. He earned a Doctorate Degree in Management and Organizational Development from the Institute for Advance Studies at Colorado Technical University. He is also the Principal Consultant at Global i365, where he specializes in diversity management and executive leadership training. He was the previous President of the Human Service Association of CNY and Co-Founder of Innovative Development Inc. He is a member of Leadership of Greater Syracuse, 40 Below and the Project Management Institute of Syracuse NY. He has an extensive list of publications and proceedings in national and international conferences and peer review journals.

Anthony Rotolo

  • Position: Social Media Professor
  • Company: Syracuse University
  • Email: anrotolo@syr.edu

Anthony Rotolo is an Assistant Professor of Practice at the Syracuse University School of Information Studies (iSchool), where he teaches graduate and undergraduate courses on Social Media. He was appointed Syracuse University’s first-ever social media strategist in 2009. In this position, Rotolo is working to expand the use of social media to build relationships with students, alumni and the community. He is also focused on the use of social media as a way to enhance traditional instruction.

Tom Schryver

Tom Schryver is co-founder and President of PI Experiential Learning (PIXL). PIXL provides cutting-edge experiential training for businesspeople on issues of leadership and teamwork using business simulation and exercises. The company is a National Science Foundation grantee. Previously, he was Director of Finance for the Triad Foundation, where he was responsible for overseeing all financial operations of the Foundation, including accounting, audit, and investing the Foundation’s $250mm portfolio. Tom has an AB from Cornell University and an MBA from Cornell’s Johnson Graduate School of Management, where he was a recipient of the Albert J. Fried Fellowship for Leadership and Academic Excellence. He is a Chartered Financial Analyst (CFA).

Zach Shulman

Zach joined CVF in 2004 and also teaches at the Johnson School at Cornell University. He currently serves as a Director of Primet Precision Materials, Advion BioSciences, e2e Materials, Instinctiv and CherryPharm. Prior to joining CVF, Zach was General Counsel at a technology startup that raised considerable venture capital, but ultimately suffered when the tech bubble burst. Prior to that he practiced corporate law at Ropes & Gray in Boston and Harris Beach in Ithaca. Zach serves on a number of advisory boards affiliated with Cornell programs. He earned both his BS in Industrial and Labor Relations and his JD degrees at Cornell University.

Brad Treat

Brad is the co-founder and CEO of Mezmeriz, an innovative MEMS company making projectors to embed into mobile phones. Previously, he was the Entrepreneur-In-Residence at Cornell University. Brad was also the co-founder and CEO of SightSpeed, an innovative video and voice communications company. Together with co-founders Aron Rosenberg and Cornell University Professor Toby Berger, Treat grew SightSpeed from a university research project at Cornell into the world’s premier video calling software. SightSpeed was acquired by Logitech for $30MM. He holds a degree in Mechanical Engineering from North Carolina State University and an MBA from the Johnson School at Cornell.

Tom Uva

Mr. Uva is the Chief Information Officer (CIO) for Sensis Corporation. In this role, he is responsible for the company’s information technology strategy, deployment and management; systems applications and development; and IT infrastructure and protection. Mr. Uva is also currently an adjunct professor at Syracuse University in the Center for Science and Technology in the School of Information Studies. Mr. Uva holds a MBA and a BS in Information Systems from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.

TWITTER

  • Twitter