2019 MIT Startup Ecosystem Conference

Karl F. Koster is the Executive Director of the MIT Office of Corporate Relations. The Office of Corporate Relations includes the MIT Industrial Liaison Program, which celebrated 67 years of service to the Institute and its corporate partners in 2015.

In that capacity, Mr. Koster and his staff work with the leadership of MIT and senior corporate executives to design and implement strategies for fostering corporate partnerships with the Institute. Mr. Koster and his team have also worked to identify and design a number of major international programs for MIT, which have been characterized by the establishment of strong, programmatic linkages among universities, industry, and governments. Most recently these efforts have been extended to engage the surrounding innovation eco-system, including its vibrant startup and small company community, into MIT's global corporate and university networks.

Mr. Koster also serves as the Chairman of the University-Industry Demonstration Partnership (UIDP), an organization that seeks to enhance the value of collaborative partnerships between universities and corporations.

Mr. Koster graduated from Brown University with a B.A. in geology and economics in 1974, and received a M.S. from the MIT Sloan School of Management in 1980. At the Sloan School he concentrated in international business management and the management of technological innovation. Prior to returning to MIT, Mr. Koster worked as a management consultant in Europe, Latin America, and the United States on projects for private and public sector organizations.

Ariadna Rodenstein is a Program Manager at MIT Startup Exchange. She joined MIT Corporate Relations as an Events Leader in September 2019 and is responsible for designing and executing startup events, including content development, coaching and hosting, and logistics. Ms. Rodenstein works closely with the Industrial Liaison Program (ILP) in promoting collaboration and partnerships between MIT-connected startups and industry, as well as with other areas around the MIT innovation ecosystem and beyond.

Prior to working for MIT Corporate Relations, she worked for over a decade at Credit Suisse Group in New York and London, in a few different roles in event management and as Director of Client Strategy. Ms. Rodenstein has combined her experience in the private sector with work at non-profits as a Consultant and Development Director at New York Immigration Coalition, Immigrant Defense Project, and Americas Society/Council of the Americas. She also served as an Officer on the Board of Directors of the Riverside Clay Tennis Association in New York for several years. Additionally, she earned her B.A. in Political Science and Communications from New York University, with coursework at the Instituto Tecnológico y de Estudios Superiores de Monterrey in Mexico City, and her M.A. in Sociology from the City University of New York.

Dr. Rebecca Xiong joined Corporate Relations as Program Director, Startup Exchange in October 2018.

Dr. Xiong comes to Corporate Relations with more than 15 years of experience in the MIT Startup Ecosystem, having co-founded and worked at multiple MIT startups. Most recently, as Co-founder and Chief Scientist at SocMetrics, she leads product management, data science, and machine learning for SocMetric’s personalization and marketing campaign products. Before SocMetrics, Xiong co-founded Going.com. Going.com connected people via local events to enhance their offline social life, and through Rebecca’s leadership grew to 1M members, tens of millions of monthly pageviews, and finally its acquisition by AOL. Before these two entrepreneurial endeavors, Xiong held positions as Product Marketing Manager (DataPower, acquired by IBM), Senior Program Manager (Performaworks, acquired by Workscape), and Team Lead (Akamai Technologies). She also has research experience at Microsoft, Silicon Graphics, and Xerox Palo Alto Research Center.

Dr. Xiong earned her B.S. in Computer Science at the University of California at Berkeley, and her Ph.D. in Computer Science at the Media Lab at MIT with her thesis “Visualizing Information Spaces to Enhance Social Interaction." She was a National Science Foundation (NSF) Fellowship Recipient. She holds multiple patents and is very involved in the community, as the Lead Organizer of the Cambridge Parent Summit.

Gururaj “Desh” Deshpande is a Trustee of the Deshpande Foundation along with his wife Jaishree. He is also the President and Chairman of Sparta Group LLC, a family investment office and is also the Chairman of Tejas Networks.

Dr. Deshpande has pursued an entrepreneurial career for the last three decades. He is involved either as the founder, a founding investor or chairman of several companies including Cascade Communications, Sycamore Networks, Coral Networks, Tejas Networks, Cimaron, Webdialogs, Airvana, Sandstone Capital, A123 Systems and Curata.

Dr. Deshpande lives in Boston and serves as a life-member of the MIT Corporation, and his support has made possible MIT's Deshpande Center for Technological Innovation.

The Deshpande Foundation strengthens ecosystems that create significant social and economic impact through entrepreneurship and innovation. Leveraging the experience gained at the MIT Center, the Deshpande Foundation has facilitated the setup of five other centers; Deshpande Center for Social Entrepreneurship in India, EforAll (formerly known as the Merrimack Valley Sandbox) in Lowell/Lawrence Massachusetts, the Pond-Deshpande Center at the University of New Brunswick in Canada, the Dunin Deshpande Queens Innovation Center at Queens University in Kingston, Ontario and the Gopalakrishnan Deshpande Center for Innovation and Entrepreneurship at the Indian Institute of Technology, Madras, India. Deshpande Foundation also provided the founding grant for MassChallenge in Boston, National Science Foundation Innovation Corps (I-Corps™), Public Health Foundation of India (PHFI) and the UPOP program at MIT.

Dr. Deshpande holds a B. Tech. in Electrical Engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology - Madras, an M.E. from the University of New Brunswick in Canada, and Ph.D. from Queens University in Canada.

Deshpande co-chaired the National Council to support President Obama's innovation and entrepreneurship strategy from 2010 to 2015.

Pioneer of Emotion AI, Rana el Kaliouby is Affectiva’s co-founder and CEO. She invented Affectiva’s emotion recognition technology and is leading innovations in Emotion AI. An Inc. magazine columnist and recipient of numerous awards, el Kaliouby is frequently covered in leading publications and is a sought after speaker on topics of AI, ethics, and workforce. She is a passionate advocate for women in STEM and has a PhD from Cambridge University.

Luca Marighetti has nearly 30 years of professional experience in a large variety of industries, in geopolitical matters, and in tech. He held a number of roles first in Academia, then at Procter & Gamble (European Brand Manager), SC Johnson (Commercial Director Central Europe), McKinsey & Company (Assembly, R&D, Chemicals, Banking), Deutsche Bank (global head of on-line trading, investment products), Allianz Group (market management across all banking segments and first hand management during the financial crisis), Zurich Insurance (Group Head of Strategy and Tech), and now Swiss Re, where he developed the tech strategy for the Group and is now leading its implementation.

Ariadna Rodenstein is a Program Manager at MIT Startup Exchange. She joined MIT Corporate Relations as an Events Leader in September 2019 and is responsible for designing and executing startup events, including content development, coaching and hosting, and logistics. Ms. Rodenstein works closely with the Industrial Liaison Program (ILP) in promoting collaboration and partnerships between MIT-connected startups and industry, as well as with other areas around the MIT innovation ecosystem and beyond.

Prior to working for MIT Corporate Relations, she worked for over a decade at Credit Suisse Group in New York and London, in a few different roles in event management and as Director of Client Strategy. Ms. Rodenstein has combined her experience in the private sector with work at non-profits as a Consultant and Development Director at New York Immigration Coalition, Immigrant Defense Project, and Americas Society/Council of the Americas. She also served as an Officer on the Board of Directors of the Riverside Clay Tennis Association in New York for several years. Additionally, she earned her B.A. in Political Science and Communications from New York University, with coursework at the Instituto Tecnológico y de Estudios Superiores de Monterrey in Mexico City, and her M.A. in Sociology from the City University of New York.

Ali Azarbayejani is CTO at Cogito. He has 18 years of commercial experience as a scientist, entrepreneur, and designer of world-class computational technologies. Azarbayejani’s pioneering doctoral research at the MIT Media Lab in probabilistic modeling for 3-D vision was the basis for his first startup company, Alchemy 3D Technology, which created the market in the film and video post-production industry for camera match-moving software. He also has consulted in software development and business strategy and has been on the research staff at Mitsubishi Electric Research Labs.

Israel Ruiz is the Executive Vice President and Treasurer (EVPT) of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). Mr. Ruiz is the Institute’s chief financial officer and, as a trustee of the MIT Corporation and a member of its Executive Committee, is the chief steward of $21.5 billion of MIT's financial assets, $3.6 billion in operating revenues and is responsible for administering the Institute's $5 billion capital plan through 2030.

He is responsible for financial and debt strategy development, budget and capital planning, and the integrity of financial information. Other administrative areas of responsibility include human resources, information systems, campus facilities, security and safety, compliance, government relations, international support, sustainability, and medical.

Prior to becoming Executive Vice President and Treasurer in 2011, Mr. Ruiz held several roles of increasing responsibility at MIT, most recently serving as Vice President of Finance. He previously held management and engineering roles at Hewlett-Packard and Nissan Automotive.

He was instrumental in leading the re-zoning efforts of Kendall Square and the Volpe Center in Cambridge, to enable mixed-use development and accelerate the process of moving ideas from lab to market. He continues to actively co-lead the development of the process through its complex execution phase, expected to last beyond 2020.

Mr. Ruiz serves on the Board of Directors of edX (an MIT and Harvard online learning initiative), MIT Endicott House, and MIT Technology Review. He chairs the board of The Engine, a new MIT initiative aimed to accelerate breakthrough innovations. He is a director of Fortive (NYSE: FTV) and Moderna Therapeutics. He is also a director of the Governing Board of the Eliot Innovation School and is very active in the Boston Public Schools.

His educational background includes a master’s degree from the MIT Sloan School of Management and a six-year degree in industrial and mechanical engineering from the Polytechnic University of Catalonia, in his native Barcelona.

Scott Kirsner is a journalist who writes about innovation and entrepreneurship. His “Innovation Economy” column appears Sundays in the Boston Globe, and he is also editor of the site Innovation Leader (www.innovationleader.com), , which focuses on R&D, product development, corporate venturing, and new initiatives within large companies. Scott has been a regular contributor to Fast Company, BusinessWeek, Variety, and Wired. His books include Fans, Friends & Followers: Building an Audience and a Creative Career in the Digital Age, a technological history of Hollywood. He can be reached at scott@innovationleader.com and his Twitter handle is @ScottKirsner.

Helen Greiner is known for both innovation and business strategy in the field of robotics. Co-founding iRobot in 1990, Greiner served as President until 2004, and Chairman until 2008. During her tenure, Greiner guided iRobot into its position as a global leader with the release of the Roomba™, the PackBot™, and SUGV Military Robots. She built a culture of practical innovation and delivery that led to the deployment of over 6,000 tactical robots with our troops and over 15M home robots worldwide. In addition, Greiner led iRobot’s financing efforts, raising $35M in venture capital for a $75M initial public offering. Helen Greiner is also the Founder of CyPhy Works, a drone company that delivered aerial platforms to defense and commercial markets. Greiner holds a bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering and a master’s degree in computer science, both from MIT. She also holds honorary degrees from Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI) and Clarkson University.