Jose Estabil is co-founder of ADN Genomix, and leads the team in building a unique biotech portfolio through the acquisition of undervalued but unique compounds developed outside of traditional biopharma channels. He has over 20 years of experience in translating technology from industry or academia into high growth businesses with a cumulative $1B+ market impact. 

With over 20 years of experience in translating technology from industry or academia into high growth businesses, Jose is a Founding Venture Partner at AccelHUB Venture Partners.

In his previous role as Director of Entrepreneurship and Innovation at MIT, Jose worked with faculty/student innovations where he advised the launch, scale, and exit of Arctic Sand, Incorporated (Acq: Murata 2017). He also led international “business” development, innovation, and entrepreneurship at MIT. Specifically, he co-greenlighted funding of 20+ early stage translation projects (oncology to AI), transacted multiple licensing deals and helped establish university innovation centers in Moscow, Lisbon, and Miami

José invests his spare time in helping young entrepreneurs achieve their dream of effecting change through his volunteer roles at the MIT Deshpande Center, MIT IMES LinQ program, MIT Innovation Teams, and Harvard Business School’s FieldX.

Leonie Marinovich is an outstanding multimedia journalist of global repute. She is currently working on a documentary project about long-term survivors of HIV from both the United States of America and Africa. Over the last two decades, she has focused on highlighting critical issues pertaining to social justice and public health through various mediums.

Leonie commenced her professional journey in still photography after moving on from an information technology career. Thereafter, she returned to South Africa and established herself documenting lives both ordinary and extraordinary. And incorporated shooting and producing documentary films into her work.

She produced pathbreaking films in the documentary world and collaborated with marquee clients such as the Financial Times and GEO. Some of her multimedia projects that created global significance in terms of scope and impact include 1.5 million and Me (2019-2020); A Journey of Motherhood(2013-2015); and The Story of Water in the Orange–Senqu River Basin (2021-2013). She has also captured video and still photographs for international organizations such as the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) the Joint United Nations Programme on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS), the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), and Bechtel, to name a few.

Since 2017 she has been a Senior Lecturer, Guest Lecturer, and Teaching Fellow of Digital Photography at Harvard Extension School. As a Senior Lecturer at Harvard Summer School, she has designed and continues to teach ‘Introduction to Digital Photography’. She has served as a Substitute Lecturer at Boston University. As a Guest Lecturer and Trip Leader at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, MIT D-lab , she collaborated with engineering students to design low-cost solutions for marginalized communities. And, accompanied the student team to Botswana for fieldwork.

Leonie is an avid storyteller and in the last two decades, she has founded multiple digital platforms to capture her creative discoveries. Marinovich Photography Workshops, Hekaya Digital Storytelling, and Nala Trust are some of the ventures through which she was able to create a significant impact. 

Regarded by some as among the most talented visual artists of her generation, Leonie has secured a growing international reputation for her work. From 1996-2000, she was the Global Account Manager at NewsEdge. Here, she was accountable for the implementation and roll-out of global content solutions for Fortune 500 companies. She served as a Strategist and Web Designer at Thestandglobal.com; a consultant for The Daily Maverick where she designed and implemented a Digital Asset Management system for the newsroom. She was invited to serve as an Artist-in-Residence by Rhode Island School of Design (RISD) where she was in charge of curating narratives, processes, and experiences based on architectonics and data visualization.

Leonie Marinovich holds a BA in Urbanology from the University of the Free State, South Africa.

Dr. Arjendu Pattanayak is a Professor of Physics at Carleton University and a former Department Chair of Physics and Astronomy at Carleton. He is also a visiting scholar at the University of Perugia in Italy. Dr. Pattanayak is fascinated by dynamical systems, quantum entanglement, and complex systems. He collaborates with diverse undergraduate, graduate, and post-doc students, junior and senior faculty teams (remotely with visits) to solve interesting problems that are either useful to someone or provides value and advances knowledge on a fundamental issue. 

Dr. Pattanayak is committed to advancing sustainability, civic engagement, and cross-cultural connections as a way of actualizing lessons from physics. Under his supervision, students have twice traveled on hands-on net-zero carbon solar installation trips to India, and onto careers in sustainability. 

He was a postdoctoral fellow at theUniversity of Toronto and holds a Ph.D. in Theoretical and Mathematical Physics from the University of Texas, Houston. He has a Masters in Physics from Brown University.

Over the years, Dr. Pattanayk has held the position of a visitor scholar across coveted academic institutes such as the University of Insubria, Italy; National University of Singapore, and Max Planck Institute for Dynamics of Complex Systems, Germany. He has also been associated as a scholar at Kavli Institute for Theoretical Physics in  California. Dr. Pattanayak was a Visiting Professor at Rice Institute, Houston, and a former visiting faculty member at the Masters level for Ashoka University in Bengaluru for the Young India Fellowship on Sustainable Energy and applications to India. 

Aniruddha Kannal is the founder and CEO of Xcelerator, a collaborative learning platform focused on empowering professors and students to secure better learning outcomes. He holds over a decade of experience in implementing large-scale business transformations. 

With a passion for turning raw data into creative analytics solutions, he has helped strengthen business operations for several organizations through data-backed strategic decisions. He has also spearheaded several technological strategies for clients across verticals like healthcare, pharmaceutical, and financial services. Prior to founding Xcelerator, Aniruddha served as the Vice President, Engineering at Deloitte where he oversaw the Life Sciences and Health care solutions portfolio. 

Anirudha enjoys nurturing the next-gen in data science and machine learning. And has been actively involved in various mentorship programs for data science aspirants.

He holds a Masters in Computer Science from State University of New York (SUNY), Binghamton, and is a Bachelors in Engineering from  Maharaja Sayajirao University, Baroda.

Dr. Dwight Jaggard brings in decades of transcontinental expertise in leadership development, decision-making, influence, persuasion, team dynamics, and communications. As a management consultant and executive coach, he has enhanced work performances for over 1000 individuals (high-potentials, emerging leaders, students, and professionals) and teams across industries. 

Dr. Jaggard is currently a Professor at UPenn, where he founded the Executive Masters of Technology Management (EMTM) Program at UPenn, co-sponsored by the Wharton School. He has also served as the Chair of the Penn Faculty Senate enhancing self-governance for 4500 faculty members.

He has received numerous prestigious recognitions for his research including Fellow of the Institute of Electronics and Electrical Engineers (IEEE ), Fellow of the Optical Society of America ( OSA), among others. He is also the recipient of several teaching awards like Penn’s highest teaching honor, the Lindback Award for Distinguished Teaching. 

Greg Marinovich is a Pulitzer Prize-winning photographer and co-author of The Bang Bang Club (Basic Books, 2001) – a compelling record of South Africa’s transition to democracy. He has also authored, Murder at Small Koppie (Penguin, 2016) which was based on his investigations into the Marikana massacre of miners by police. Greg was awarded the Alan Paton prize for non-fiction in 2017 for this piece. He has spent twenty-five years doing conflict, documentary, and news photography around the globe. And has received several accolades such as the Nat Nakasa award for courageous journalism.

Greg is the Associate Editor at The Daily Maverick and the co-founder and editor of a global documentary and photojournalism agency, The Stand Global. He is currently a Lecturer at Harvard Extension School where he teaches photojournalism, Documentary, & Art Photography to students. He is also teaching a graduate course in advanced photography at Harvard University. And is associated with  Boston University as a Master Lecturer at the College of Communication.

Greg served as one of the coveted jury members of the World Press Photo in 1994 and 2005. His photographs have been featured across global media platforms such as Time, Newsweek, The New York Times, The Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, and The Guardian, to name a few.  He has worked on a wide gamut of documentary films. And has contributed as a freelance journalist to reputed media platforms such as Bloomberg, Geo Magazine, and Associated Press. He was the editor-in-chief of the Twenty Ten Project, he managed over 100 journalists and trainers across a bevy of media platforms. Leading up to the coverage of the first African FIFA World Cup in 2010.

Greg holds a Nieman Fellow from Harvard University. He is currently appointed as the Director of Hekaya Digital Storytelling – a network that connects storytellers across various disciplines to work together in documenting stories from Africa. He also co-owns Story Taxi and Silver Halide Publishing – a pan African agency for media professionals, and a platform for independent publishers of photographic content, respectively.

Greg has played an instrumental role in designing a signature course on The Fundamentals of Digital Photography. Through the course, he looks forward to introducing students to digital photography through a wide gamut of photographic genres. Enabling them to strengthen their visual acumen and broaden their STEM experience. 

Dr. Alok Kumar is the Department Chair and Gabelli Asset Management Professor of Finance at the University of Miami Herbert Business School. He is also a Warwick Business School (WBS) Distinguished Research Environment – visiting faculty member at the WBS. And, a visiting Professorial Research Fellow at the Deakin University in Australia.

Previously, he was an Associate Professor of Finance at the McCombs School of Business, University of Texas at Austin; and an Assistant Professor of Finance at the Mendoza College of Business, University of Notre Dame. Dr. Alok was also one of the Founding Principal and Chief Investment Officers of Coral Gables Asset Management.

Professor Kumar’s research interests lie at the intersection of finance and psychology. He is an expert in Behavioral Finance, and his work has appeared in top Finance, Accounting, Economics, and Management journals across the world. His research has also been covered in the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Montreal Gazette, Forbes, and SmartMoney. Dr. Alok Kumar has served as a consultant for several firms, including the Commonfund, Postnieks Capital Management, Validea, and Bluecrest Capital.

He received his undergraduate degree in Mechanical Engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology at Kharagpur and a Ph.D. in Economics from Cornell University. He also holds advanced degrees in Robotics and Management from Dartmouth College and Yale University, respectively.

Dr. Geetha Ramaswami is the Program Manager for SeasonWatch, a pan India citizen science program that tracks the effect of climate and season on plants. At SeasonWatch, Dr. Ramaswami is involved in rigorous outreach programs, citizen scientist collaborations, and content creation on trees, botany, ecology, and the environment for public use. 

Dr. Ramaswami is a coveted recipient of the Young Scientist Fellowship. This award has been extended to her by the Science and Engineering Research Board, Government of India. She has authored several scientific papers on the impact of a rapidly-growing invasive plant amid native plants. She also holds a keen interest in observing tipping points, and the impacts of humans on ecological processes. 

She is passionate about creating awareness around human intervention and safekeeping of the global environment. And has been working tirelessly to find direct applications that support human life and sustainable coexistence with the plant world. During the course of her academic career, she has been associated with reputed institutes in various capacities. She was associated with Azim Premji University as a Course Instructor. And has served as a guest lecturer at the National Institute of Science Education and Research(NISER), Indian Institute of Horticulture, and Indian Institute of Science Education and Research (IISER Tirupati). She has also served as a faculty member of the M.Sc., Department of Environmental Biology in Delhi University. And as a visiting faculty at IISER.

Her research interests include tracking invasive plant ecology and plant-animal interactions, and how plant communities are affected by these processes. As a post-doctoral research associate with the Nature Conservation Foundation, she has worked extensively on an invasive plant – Lantana Camara; trying to understand how and where the environment affects this particular species, how it spreads, and how native species respond to the presence of this invasive plant. She was also granted a research fellowship by the Ministry of Human Resources and Development at the Centre for Ecological Sciences, Indian Institute of Science. Here, she was responsible for assessing the role of ecological processes, especially dispersal, and in the effectiveness of invasive plant management.

Dr. Santanu Chakraborty brings in a decade of research and expertise in the Biological Sciences.
As a biologist, he has extensive experience across multiple organismal model systems,
experimental, and computational methods.

Dr. Chakraborty has a strong interest in the interdisciplinary nature of knowledge. He has
worked in multiple areas of human inquiry: on mechanisms of short-term memory in neural
circuits (at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory (CSHL), NY, USA), on the genomics of autism
spectrum disorders and epigenetic imprinting in the brain (at CSHL) and on the neural
mechanisms of short term memory (at CSHL and Princeton University, USA) and on the
mechanisms of earthquake resistance in Himalayan structures (at IIT Roorkee), on nature
of Himalayan pilgrimages and changing notions of the divine. He has often used a combination
of both experimental and computational methods for his work, believing in the importance and
power of an interdisciplinary approach to knowledge.

His diverse interests from before he was an undergraduate have come full circle in manners
that aid him in the design of a 21st-century educational program combining the sciences,
mathematics, and the arts. As an undergraduate, he worked on modern methods of earthquake
resistance at IIT Bombay, an experience that came alive many years later in his more recent
work on the indigenous earthquake resistant vernacular architecture of the Himalayas; in
particular the traditional architecture of Uttarakhand. As a consultant to the Center for
Himalayan Studies, IIT Roorkee, he uncovered innovative methods, modern in spirit, of
earthquake-resistant construction in use for centuries in the Himalayan structures of
Uttarakhand. Yet the ideas behind this work came to him on a trip document photographically a
traditional neighborhood in Kumaon; their art, woodwork, and architecture. Embedded in that
one project, that he continues work on, are ideas from a diversity of areas ranging from
mathematics to history.

Dr. Chakraborty has been associated with media houses such as the Bangalore Mirror and The
Hindu – Business Line, where he wrote popular articles on science and its close connections to
art. Bringing important concepts, as well as, new developments to readers in an accessible
Manner.

He has a strong interest in art, its role in human life, and educational potential; including the
overlap of art and science as it flourished in the Renaissance and the various renascences in
human history. His photographic works have been shown at the Karnataka Chitrakala Parishath,
the Jehangir Art Gallery, and the Piramal Art Gallery (National Center For Performing Arts).

Dr. Sriram Kalyanaraman is the co-founder of VR for the Social Good Initiative at the University of Florida where virtual stories are told for real social change. And, a professor at the University of Florida College of Journalism and Communications. He is also the founding director of the Media Effects and Technology Lab (METL), where he conducts experimental research on how new technologies can inform persuasion and attitude change in online environments. 

Dr. Kalyanaraman is especially interested in using immersive media platforms to create, test, and disseminate messages to improve the human spirit and condition. And, his research has been widely published, funded by both government and industry, and his scholarship has attracted press coverage in print and broadcast media. Accordingly, his recent program of research takes its cues for operationalization from the United Nations’ Sustainable Goals Program and focuses on such issues as climate science, healthy eating, and so on. 

He is the recipient of the 2011 Hillier-Krieghbaum Award conferred by the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication (AEJMC). He holds a certificate as a “master mentor” at the University of Florida, and was awarded the prestigious William R. Jones Outstanding Doctoral Mentor Award for 2017 by the Florida Education Foundation. He has also supervised numerous undergraduate students in his lab as part of the University Scholars Program.  

A former head of the Communication Technology division of the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication, Dr. Kalyanaraman serves or has served on multiple editorial boards including Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, Journal of Communication, Human Communication Research, Journal of Broadcasting and Electronic Media, Asian Journal of Communication, Journalism and Mass Communication Educator, Journal of Communication and Technology, among others, and was a co-editor of the interdisciplinary journal, Media Psychology (2011-2014). 

At the University of North Carolina’s School of Media and Journalism, Dr. Kalyanaraman had an adjunct appointment at the School of Information and Library Science, was affiliated with the Interaction Design Lab, and was also a founding member of UNC’s Interdisciplinary Health Communication (IHC) certificate program. Dr. Kalyanaraman’s educational background includes a bachelor’s degree in engineering and an interdisciplinary Ph.D. in mass communication, with a focus on media effects, technology, psychology, and statistics.

Dr. Raj Acharya is the Associate Vice President of Research for AI Innovation at Indiana University. He has also served as the Dean & Rudy Professor of Engineering, Computer Science and Informatics at the University. Prior to his tenure at IU, he was Founding Director, School of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (containing the Departments of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science & Engineering respectively) and Head at Penn State for 15 years. He also held an appointment at Penn State’s Applied Research Laboratory for conducting classified research. 

Dr. Raj was previously a Research Scientist at General Electric (Thomson) CSF Laboratory, Paris, France, and has been a Research Fellow at NASA Johnson Space Center, US Air Force Wright Labs, and US Army Center for Night Vision and Electro-Optics. He is on the board of Video mining, Indiana Ventures, and Techpoint. 

Dr. Raj Acharya is also a Fellow at IEEE and AIMBE,  and an Associate Editor of IEEE/ACM Transactions on Computational Biology and Bioinformatics. He is the Founding Chair of the IAPR Technical Committee on Pattern Recognition in Bioinformatics. And, is also on the steering committee of the International Conference on Pattern Recognition in Bioinformatics. 

Over the years, his primary area of research has spanned across Big Data Mining, Network Sciences & Engineering, and Genomics. And, the systems he has developed during this tenure are routinely being used in industry and academia today.