Speakers

John Pavley

John is currently the Chief Technology Officer of The Huffington Post. John has led technology teams at numerous companies, including Spotify, Lime Wire, and Yahoo!. He also has extensive experience with the technology needs of start-ups, having worked at advertising and search engine optimization firms ContextWeb and Conductor, as well as several Silicon Valley firms, including BitLocker and Apple. John regularly blogs about all aspects of the tech industry. John has a BA in Visual Art from Rutgers University, and a Masters from Pratt Institute.

Steven Silberstang

Steven is a Cooper Union Alumnus (CE `70) who is currently the owner of Foolhardy Investors, a New York based investment firm. Steven was the founder, chairman, president and CTO of Amarex Technology, Inc for a number of years. He is considered a leader in the development of automated technologies. His work includes Cititran, a self-contained retail branch banking system, Citicorp's merchant credit card switch, and Con Edison's RMCC reads usage data from various recording devices and prepares data for billing. Amarex developed "intelligent network" products and systems for call handling and media processing within the telephone network. These systems were used to automate facilities for national and international networks. Following the 1999 acquisition of Amarex by Comverse Technology, Silberstang served as president and CTO of the Voice Services Platform Division until his retirement.

Owen Davis

Owen is currently Managing Director of NYC Seed, a seed stage venture capital fund in New York City. Owen has worked in all aspects of the online world, including work with early versions of AOL and MSN. He created one of the first 200 web sites on-line and founded Thinking Media in the summer of 1995, an online marketing firm which pioneered client-side tracking of pages and advertisements, which has become the standard method for online measurement. He co-founded Sonata in 1999, a wireless company that provided location-based services and marketing to cell phones. Owen was named various times as one of the 100 Top Internet Executives in New York by The Silicon Alley Reporter and most recently was named one of the 100 most influential people in Silicon Alley for 2008. He received his bachelor's degree from Brown University and an MBA from Columbia Business School.

David Kalow

David is a founding partner of Kalow & Springut, LLP. He represents clients in patent, trade secret, copyright and trademark matters arising in the course of transactions, trials, appeals, licensing, and strategic counseling. David has prosecuted and litigated pioneering patents on DNA synthesis, pharmacogenomics, antisense, RNAi and bar codes; expedited vindication of trademark, copyright and misappropriation rights; developed creative licensing programs; acted as special IP counsel in transactions and pharmaceutical antitrust litigations; and created and implemented strategies to maximize returns on intellectual property assets. He is particularly experienced in innovative litigation strategies, portfolio analysis, IP audit design and implementation and patent validity and infringement opinions.

Barry Negrin

Barry is a Cooper Union Alumnus (ME `89) and registered patent attourney, practicing with Kane Kessler, P.C. and currently serving as counsel to the firm. Throughout his career, Barry has drafted patent applications and infringement/non-infringement opinions, has litigated patent infringement issues, and has conducted patent reexamination proceedings, all in a wide variety of technologies, including X-ray optical systems, rapid blood clotting treatments, social media monitoring and interaction, video software codec systems, software for developing and executing distributed applications, ultraviolet water purification systems, internet search functionality, and many others. Prior to joining Kane Kessler, Barry was the co-founder of the patent group at a New York based 125-attorney general practice firm.

Chaitanya Kanojia

Chaitanya "Chet" Kanojia is the founder and CEO of Aereo, Inc., a groundbreaking online TV platform. Backed by a group of premiere investors and powered by a stellar engineering team, Aereo has developed proprietary cloud-based antenna and DVR technology that allows consumers to watch live or recorded HD broadcast television on virtually any type of Internet-connected device, including smart TVs, smartphones, tablets and computers. Previously, Chet was the founder and CEO of Navic Networks. Under Chet’s direction, Navic Networks grew to be the undisputed industry leader in advanced television advertising. Navic Networks was subsequently acquired by Microsoft in 2008. Chet, who holds more than 14 patents in fields ranging from robotics to data communications systems, is an innovative leader known for pushing beyond the conventional and developing breakthrough solutions. He was recognized as a young executive making a lasting impact on his company and the cable and telecommunications industries in Multichannel News' "40 under 40." He holds a master's degree in Computer Systems Engineering from Northeastern University and a bachelor's degree in Mechanical Engineering from the National Institute of Technology in Bhopal, India.

Alyssa Davis

Alyssa Davis is a sophomore in the Albert Nerken School of Engineering. She works with her sister, Hannah, and her grandfather, Stephen Mecca, under the Ghana Sustainable Aid Project (GSAP). GSAP received a $100,000 Grand Challenges Explorations (GCE) grant from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation in 2011. They attended the Reinvent the Toilet Fair in Seattle in August to showcase the toilet prototypes that were built using the GCE grant. Alyssa's sister, Hannah, founded GSAP while she was an undergraduate at New York University in 2007, originally focusing on literacy and female empowerment in Pokuase, Ghana. Alyssa, Hannah, and their grandfather have helped build an organization that promotes healthy and sustainable development in rural areas in Ghana. Alyssa has had the chance to help the organization through various stages of social entrepreneurship, including designing the GSAP center in Pokuase, Ghana, securing funding from various sources, and developing partnerships. Alyssa graduated from Parsons the New School for Design in 2010.