Speakers

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  Dawn Bonnell

  Dawn Bonnell is the Vice Provost for Research at the University of Pennsylvania. In this capacity Dr. Bonnell shapes policy and advances administrative initiatives for the University’s $800+ million per year research enterprise. Dr. Bonnell is the Henry Robinson Towne Professor of Engineering and Applied Science. She was the founding director of the Nano/Bio Interface Center that direcetd $30M to research at the intersections of technology and biology at the nanoscale or molecular level. An editor of seven books and an author of more than 200 papers, Dr. Bonnell was elected in 2013 to the National Academy of Engineering, one of the highest honors in the engineering profession, is one of only seven awardees of the Staudinger-Durrer Medal from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, and has served as President of the American Vacuum Society and Vice President of the American Ceramics Society. As Vice Provost for Research she is leading Penn’s initiative on innovation and commercialization which includes the establishment of the Penn Center for Innovation.

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  Darlene Cavalier

  Darlene Cavalier is an advocate for science literacy, a writer, and an entrepreneur. She is the founder of Science Cheerleader, a blog that promotes science in popular culture and plays on her former position as a cheerleader for the Philadelphia 76ers basketball team. She is also the co-founder of Science for Citizens, an online portal that aggregates Citizen science projects and enlists the help of volunteers to work on the projects.

  @scicheer
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  Donna Harris

  Donna Harris is an active angel investor and a founding member of the K Street Capital angel network in Washington D.C. She also is co-founder of 1776, which convenes and accelerates startups from around the world by connecting them to the political, intellectual, social and financial leaders in Washington.

  @dharrisindc
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  Josh Kopelman

  Josh founded Half.com in July of 1999, and led it to become one of the largest sellers of used books, movies and music in the world. Half.com was acquired by eBay in July 2000 — and Josh remained with eBay for three years, running the Half.com business unit and growing eBay’s Media marketplace to almost half a billion dollars in annual gross merchandise sales. Josh founded First Round Capital in 2004 to reinvent seed-stage investing. And since that time the firm has invested in over 200 emerging technology startups – becoming one of the most active venture capital firms in the country. Josh was ranked 12th on Forbes 2013 “Midas List” of the top 100 tech investors.

  @joshk
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  Paul R. Levy

  Paul is the founding chief executive of the Center City District, serving in that capacity since January 1991. The CCD is a $19.4 million downtown management district, which provides security, cleaning, place marketing, promotion, and planning services for the central business district of Philadelphia.

  @ccdphila