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Mr. Hossein Akbari is partner and managing director of Aryana Industrial Research Group. He holds M.A.Sc. in Industrial Engineering from Tehran University and B.Sc. in the same field from Sharif University. He has more than 12 years of experience in providing training and consulting services in topics of strategic management, quality management, and performance management to many private companies and governmental organizations. Mr. Akbari has published several refereed papers and conference presentation related to practical challenges in business and operation management of Iranian industry. He has translated a few books to Farsi among them are “Dance of Change”, “Strategy Maps” and “Privatization Management”. He is also a founding and ex-board member of “Iranian Association of Industrial Engineering”.
Homayoun Hatami is a Principal in the Paris office of McKinsey & Company. He is a leader in McKinsey’s High Tech, and Marketing and Sales practices. Prior to joining McKinsey, Mr. Hatami worked as a business development manager for 3Com in London. Mr. Hatami received his Master of Science in Computer Science from Ecole Centrale Paris and his M.B.A. from the MIT Sloan School of Management, where he received the Seley Scholarship, Sloan’s highest merit award. Mr. Hatami was a member of the MIT Corporation – the Board of Trustees of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology from 2001 to 2006.
Dr. Ali N. Mashayekhi is a Professor of Management at Sharif University of Technology in Tehran. He has a BSc. in Mechanical Engineering from Sharif University and a PhD in Management from Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in the US. Ali has a wide range of experiences in teaching, research and management consulting in Iran and the US. His areas of interest are Systems Thinking and System Dynamics, strategic planning, and learning organizations. He is a member and a past President of the International System Dynamics Society
Dr. Hossein Nivi is the Dean of University of Detroit Mercy's College of Business Administration, effective July 24, after a national search. Nivi is an internationally accomplished executive, engineer and academic with expertise in leadership development, lean thinking and applied systems thinking. Dr. Nivi was formerly the dean of the Ford Design Institute (FDI), responsible for development and delivery of all technical education and training at Ford. He was also the Director of Global Product Development and Manufacturing Leadership Programs at Ford Motor Company, and serves on the Industrrial Standards Board at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and Stanford University. Nivi has also taught business courses such as Systems Thinking, Systems Dynamic at the university level including the executive MBA program at UDM's business school. He received a Ph.D. in mechanical engineering from Queen Mary College of the University of London, an M.S. degree in Mechanical Engineering from Tehran Polytechnique and M.S. degrees in Electronics and Computer Control Systems from Wayne State University.
Dr. Seena Rejal is Chairman and founder of Cambridge Entrepreneurship Associates (CEA) Ltd., an organisation dedicated to the development of business plan competitions and the wider entrepreneurship infrastructure in universities, regional economies and corporations. He holds a PhD in Manufacturing Management, Economics and Policy from the University of Cambridge. Seena was one of the early leaders of the Cambridge University Entrepreneurs, the body organising the £50K Competition at the University of Cambridge, and has worked closely with the MIT $100K competition and MIT E-Center. He has extensive experience in establishing business plan competitions, judging, training and large-scale entrepreneurship event management as well as in technology commercialisation and policy consulting.
Mostafa Ronaghi is a principal investigator at Stanford Genome Technology Center. He has developed several molecular tools, which are widely being used. He has co-founded four companies and helped several companies in the start-up process. In June 1997 he co-founded Pyrosequencing AB (Changed the name to Biotage in 2003), a genomics company that develops and markets Pyrosequencing machine and its chemicals. Pyrosequencing AB had IPO in June 2000 in Stockholm Stock Exchange after three round of financing and since then has acquired three other companies. Dr. Ronaghi co-founded ParAllele BioScience in November 2001. ParAllele BioScience developed and marketed a highly multiplexed technology for genetic testing. ParAllele BioScience was acquired by Affymetrix in May 2005 after two rounds of financing. Dr. Ronaghi co-founded NextBio in 2004. NextBio is a specialized search engine for life science data. NextBio is a venture-backed company with thousands of users shortly after product release. Dr. Ronaghi started Avantome, a DNA sequencing company. Avantome will develop products enabling DNA sequencing at any lab performing biological research. He earned his Ph.D. from The Royal Institute of Technology. Dr. Ronaghi holds more than 20 pending and issued patents and has written more than 50 peer-reviewed publications.
Dr. Zahed Sheikholeslami is the Director of the Project Based Learning Institute at the California Polytechnic University in San Luis Obispo (Cal Poly). Prior to joining Cal Poly, he has served VP for buisness development for Mikros Technologies, the President and Founder of CoolingZone LLC, the President for Flomerics Inc., and the Director of Marketing for Creare.x. Dr. Sheikholeslami holds a Ph.D and a Master of Science in Computational Fluid Dynamics from the University of Iowa and a Bachelor of Science in Mechanical Engineering from Sharif University of Technology. He was the President of the Sharif University of Technology Association (SUTA) from 2004 to 2006.