COSM A Technology Summit

Virtual Ticket: 14 Sessions for $499

AI, Blockchain, Crypto, and Life After Google

COSM is an exclusive national summit on the converging technologies remaking the world as we know it. For decades, George Gilder has written presciently about the technological revolutions shaping our world, from the microchip in Microcosm, broadband in Telecosm, and now the cryptocosm in Life After Google. What a world: artificial intelligence, blockchain, 5G, crypto-currency, autonomous vehicles, cloud computing, the biotech revolution, and internet commerce — all are converging in Seattle, and at COSM. The mission of the conference is to stimulate debate and deliberation amongst industry leaders on the unities animating these apparently divergent technology areas. The future meets here.

Sponsors

Speakers

Peter Thiel

Technology entrepreneur, investor, philanthropist
Peter Thiel is an entrepreneur and investor. He cofounded PayPal, led it as CEO, and took it public; he made the first outside investment in Facebook, where he serves as a director; and he cofounded Palantir Technologies, where he serves as chairman. He has provided early funding for LinkedIn, Yelp, and dozens of startups, many run by former colleagues who have been dubbed the “PayPal Mafia.” He is a partner at Founders Fund, a Silicon Valley venture capital firm that has funded companies including SpaceX and Airbnb. He started the Thiel Fellowship, which funds young entrepreneurs, and he leads the Thiel Foundation, which works to advance technological progress and long-term thinking. He is also the #1 New York Times bestselling Read More ›

Steve Forbes

Chairman and Editor-in-Chief of Forbes Media
Steve’s newest project is the podcast “What’s Ahead,” where he engages the world’s top newsmakers, politicians and pioneers in business and economics in honest conversations meant to challenge traditional conventions as well as featuring Steve’s signature views on the intersection of society, economic and policy. Steve helped create the recently released and highly acclaimed public television documentary, In Money We Trust?, which was produced under the auspices of Maryland Public television. The film was inspired by the book he co-authored, Money: How the Destruction of the Dollar Threatens the Global Economy – and What We Can Do About It. Steve’s latest book is Reviving America: How Repealing Obamacare, Replacing the Tax Code and Reforming The Fed will Restore Hope and Read More ›

Babak Parviz

Vice President at Amazon Inc.
He received his graduate degrees from the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. From 2000 to 2001 he was with Nanovation Technologies as a designer and product manager for photonic devices. From 2001 to 2003 he was a postdoctoral fellow in chemistry and chemical biology at Harvard University working on self-assembly, biomedical devices (he co-invented the method resulting in the founding of Claros Diagnostics Inc. (acquired by OPKO Health)), and organic devices. He has been an assistant professor (2003-2008), an associate professor (2008-2012), and an affiliate professor (2012-present) in the Electrical Engineering Department at the University of Washington. He was with Google from 2010 to 2014 where he was a Google Distinguished Engineer and a Director at Google [x]. He Read More ›

Matt McIlwain

Managing Director, Madrona Venture Group
Matt invests in a broad range of software and data driven companies with a focus on cloud computing, dataware, intelligent applications and the intersections of innovation (where life science and data science intersect). He believes in the Learning Loop for entrepreneurs who journey from curiosity to triangulation and decision making. This leads to positive outcomes and ongoing learnings. Before joining Madrona in 2000, Matt was vice president of business process for the Genuine Parts Company (NYSE:GPC). He also was an engagement manager at McKinsey & Company, concentrating on strategy and marketing in technology-driven sectors and prior to that worked in investment banking at Credit Suisse. For more about Matt and lessons learned from 20 years of VC investing, traits of top entrepreneurs, Read More ›

Dr. Jay Richards

Senior Fellow, Discovery Institute
Jay Richards is a Senior Fellow at the Discovery Institute, Research Assistant Professor in the Busch School of Business at The Catholic University of America, and executive editor of The Stream. The author of numerous books including the New York Times bestsellers Infiltrated and Indivisible, as well as award-winning Money, Greed, and God, and most recently, The Human Advantage.  His articles and essays have been published in a wide variety of national publications, including The Harvard Business Review, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, Forbes, and Investor’s Business Daily on topics ranging from culture, economics, and public policy to natural science, technology, and the environment. The creator and executive producer of several documentaries, he is also a sought-after speaker and lecturer who has appeared on campuses across the country as well Larry King Read More ›

Andre Fuetsch

President AT&T Labs and Chief Technology Officer at AT&T
Andre oversees the global technology direction for AT&T. This includes network planning, the company’s innovation road map, AT&T Labs, AT&T Foundry, and the intellectual property organization. His responsibilities include spearheading the design of the company’s next-generation 5G wireless infrastructure and software-defined networking (SDN) initiative. He’s also heavily involved in AT&T’s push into open source software and other open standards, and engagement and collaboration with the broader developer community. Since joining AT&T in 1995, Andre has supported and led several organizations responsible for software, systems and network architecture, planning and engineering, where he holds six patents in the field of network traffic optimization and database design. He earned his bachelor’s degree in Industrial Engineering and Operations Research at U.C. Berkeley and Read More ›

Bill Dembski

Mathematician and Philosopher
Trained as a mathematician and philosopher, Dr. Bill Dembski is a writer, editor, and researcher whose books and articles range over mathematics, engineering, philosophy, theology, and education. A board member and founding Senior Fellow at Discovery Institute, Bill’s current work focuses on the connections linking freedom, technology, and education. To that end, Bill has become an entrepreneur who builds educational software and websites. Dr. Dembski has taught at Northwestern University, the University of Notre Dame, and the University of Dallas. He has done postdoctoral work in mathematics at MIT, in physics at the University of Chicago, and in computer science at Princeton University. Dr. Dembski is a graduate of the University of Illinois at Chicago, where he earned a B.A. Read More ›

Giuseppe Gori

CEO, Gorbyte Inc.
Giuseppe Gori is the CEO of Gorbyte (gorbyte.com), a blockchain research, development and innovation company. Gorbyte started researching distributed consensus models a few years ago and is currently developing GNodes, a new crypto-network that uses the first blockchain-based, distributed consensus protocol, called MARPLE. When MARPLE is used as a consensus protocol, all nodes participate in assembling the block, and in verification and security functions, without the need of intermediaries or monetary reward. Consequently, the GNodes crypto-network does not include incentives that push towards centralization.

Gary Rieschel

Founding Managing Partner, Qiming Venture Partners
Gary Rieschel has had a successful career as a senior executive, entrepreneur, investor, and global business strategist in high technology. He has been a member of the LP Amina’s board since 2008. Prior to joining LP Amina, Mr. Rieschel was a senior executive at Intel, Sequent Computer, Cisco Systems, and Softbank Corporation. Mr. Rieschel created or helped structure several of the most successful joint ventures in the history of the technology industry. These included Cisco Systems’ Japanese JV (with Fujitsu, NEC, Toshiba, Hitachi, NTT, and Softbank, among others), Sequent Japan (with Panasonic), Yahoo Japan (with Softbank) and ETrade Japan (with SBI). Mr. Rieschel holds a BA in Biology from Reed College in Portland, OR, and an MBA from the Harvard Read More ›

Eben Frankenberg

President and CEO, Echodyne
Eben Frankenberg has over 20 years of experience starting and growing technology companies. Prior to founding Echodyne, he spent 9 years at Intellectual Ventures – 4 years creating and overseeing IV’s spin-outs: TerraPower, Kymeta and Evolv Technologies as well as IV’s Lab and Global Good, and 5 years as the COO. Prior to IV, Eben spent 10 years at Onyx Software leading Sales, Marketing, Business Development, and the Americas as Onyx went from basement start-up to IPO in 4 years, and grew from 7 to 800 employees. He started his career as a geophysicist in oil exploration and has an AB from Dartmouth College and a MS in Geophysics from Stanford University.

Yorke Rhodes III

Cofounder of Blockchain at Microsoft and Principal Program Manager, Azure Blockchain Engineering
Yorke E. Rhodes III is Cofounder of Blockchain @Microsoft and Principal Program Manager Azure Blockchain Engineering.  He is a passionate technologist with broad interests, always drawn to the next shiny object.   He earned a BS in Computer Science from NYU’s Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences.  He has worked in industry for over 20 years, in enterprises such as Microsoft & IBM and startups in wireless, mobile, digital marketing & ecommerce.  At Goldman Sachs Investment Bank he built their first wireless internet ingress and advised bankers in wireless, telecom and media.   As a young developer he saw the beginnings of client server databases, obscure languages like ada, lisp & paradox and the birth of the internet. Blockchain piqued his interest in Read More ›

Lindy Fishburne

Managing Partner of Breakout Ventures, Founder of Breakout Labs
Lindy Fishburne is the Founder of Breakout Labs, the seed-stage program for hard science at the Thiel Foundation, and Managing Partner at Breakout Ventures. Lindy joined the foundation ten years ago as SVP Investments, after a career in management consulting, advising Fortune 500 companies on profitable growth strategies. Lindy has a deep understanding of what it takes to make it through the early days in business, having managed two start-up companies through rapid growth and eventual sale. She created Breakout Labs’ novel, revolving fund model toaccelerate innovation and re-define how early-stage hard science companies are funded. In2016, she and her partners, Hemai Parthasarathy and Julia Moore, launched Breakout Ventures a $50M fund to invest primarily in the Breakout Labs companies Read More ›

Carver Mead

Gordon and Betty Moore Professor Emeritus of Engineering and Applied Science at the California Institute of Technology
Carver Andress Mead (born 1 May 1934) is an American scientist and engineer. He currently holds the position of Gordon and Betty Moore Professor Emeritus of Engineering and Applied Science at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech), having taught there for over 40 years. Mead is an enthusiastic instructor, and he advised the first female electrical engineering student at Caltech, Louise Kirkbride. His contributions as a teacher include the classic textbook Introduction to VLSI Systems (1980), which he coauthored with Lynn Conway. A pioneer of modern microelectronics, he has made contributions to the development and design of semiconductors, digital chips, and silicon compilers, technologies which form the foundations of modern very-large-scale integration chip design. In the 1980s, he focused on Read More ›

Craig Mundie

President of Mundie & Associates
Craig J. Mundie is President of Mundie & Associates. He joined Microsoft in 1992 and retired in 2014 as Chief Research and Strategy Officer (since 2007) and the Principal Technology-Policy Executive (since 1998). Previously he was the CEO and co-Founder of Alliant Computer Systems. He was co-Executive Chairman of Bridgewater Associates (2015-2016). He is a Director of the Institute for Systems Biology. He advises Microsoft, Exicure, Ironnet Cybersecurity, SomaLogic, OpenAI, and the Cleveland Clinic. Craig Mundie served Presidents Clinton, Bush and Obama on the NSTAC and was on Obama’s PCAST.

Michael Kratsios

Chief Technology Officer of the United States, The White House
As President Trump’s top technology advisor, Michael has led the development and execution of the Administration’s national technology policy agenda since inauguration.Under his leadership, the White House launched National initiatives for artificial intelligence, quantum computing, 5G and broadband communications, autonomous vehicles, commercial drones, STEM education, and advanced manufacturing. Michael has represented the United States as the Head of Delegation at multiple international fora, including G7 Technology Ministerials in Italy, Canada, and France; G20 Digital Economy Ministerials in Argentina and Japan; and the OECD Ministerial Council Meeting in Paris. Prior to joining the White House, Michael invested in and advised technology companies in San Francisco. A South Carolina native, Michael graduated from Princeton University and served as a Visiting Scholar at Read More ›

Matthew Scholz

CEO, OSIN Biotechnologies
Matthew Scholz is Immusoft’s founder and served as the company’s Chief Executive Officer from 2009 through 2017.  Immusoft’s inflection point as a company came when Matthew conceived how a research system developed by Nobel Laureate and former President of Caltech, David Baltimore, could be modified for a practical application: programming resting B cells to secrete therapeutic proteins. He negotiated an exclusive license to the system, then developed and patented a way to improve its efficiency to the point it was clinically viable. This modified system remains the core of Immusoft’s technology platform today. After Immusoft, Matthew co-founded Oisín Biotechnologies. He serves as Oisín’s Chief Executive Officer and its oncology-focused spin-out OncoSenX, two biotech firms commercializing a breakthrough platform technology for Read More ›