Designed by famed technology futurist, George Gilder, COSM features the titans who created the tech world we’re in … and will lead us into tomorrow. COSM 2022 year will feature two winners of the internationally prestigious Kyoto Prize (Carver Mead and Federico Faggin), a Nobel Prize nominee (Keith Krach), leading venture capitalists and technologists.
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 ›
Joseph Lubin is a Canadian-American entrepreneur. He has founded and co-founded several companies including the Swiss-based EthSuisse, contributing heavily to Ethereum, the decentralized cryptocurrency platform. Lubin is founder of ConsenSys, a Brooklyn-based software-production studio.
Co-Founder, Schmidt Futures and Former CEO & Chairman, Google
Editor
August 4, 2022
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Eric Emerson Schmidt is an American businessman and software engineer known for being the CEO of Google from 2001 to 2011, executive chairman of Google from 2011 to 2015, executive chairman of Alphabet Inc. from 2015 to 2017, and Technical Advisor at Alphabet from 2017 to 2020.
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 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 ›
Federico Faggin is an Italian physicist, engineer, inventor and entrepreneur. He is best known for designing the first commercial microprocessor, the Intel 4004. He led the 4004 project and the design group during the first five years of Intel’s microprocessor effort
GBBC Board Member and Cofounder, InterWork Alliance
Editor
August 3, 2022
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John deVadoss is a co-founder of the InterWork Alliance; he serves on the board of the Global Blockchain Business Council and he also serves as co-chair of IEEE Blockchain. John builds blockchain developer tools based in Seattle; he was previously a GM at Microsoft, where he built and scaled the .NET Architecture capability and team, Visual Studio .NET tools and frameworks, patterns & practices, and the Microsoft Digital business unit et al. He has authored a number of books on software architecture, cloud computing and on management practices; he also writes regularly on blockchain related topics. He did his Phd work in Machine Learning, long before it was even remotely fashionable. John believes that economic platforms (ala blockchains/ledgers) are key Read More ›
Paul G. Allen School for Computer Science and Engineering at the University of Washington
Editor
August 2, 2022
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Georg Seelig is a professor of Electrical & Computer Engineering and at the Paul G. Allen School for Computer Science & Engineering at the University of Washington. He is an adjunct professor in Bioengineering. Seelig is interested in understanding how biological organisms process information using complex biochemical networks and how such networks can be engineered to program cellular behavior. His approach combines synthetic biology, machine learning and the development of novel tools for genomics. Seelig holds a PhD in physics from the University of Geneva in Switzerland and did postdoctoral work in synthetic biology and DNA nanotechnology at Caltech. He received a Burroughs Wellcome Foundation Career Award at the Scientific Interface, an NSF Career Award, a Sloan Research Fellowship, a DARPA Read More ›
Former CEO of Docusign and U.S. Under Secretary of State
Editor
August 1, 2022
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Unanimously confirmed as U.S. Under Secretary of State for Economic Growth, Energy and the Environment on June 20, 2019, Keith Krach plans to achieve the goals of economic diplomacy and prosperity by leveraging private sector resources and innovation and strengthening the country’s partnerships with its allies. Throughout the course of his career prior to this position, Keith Krach spearheaded business transformations at DocuSign, Ariba, and Rasna Corporation, among other organizations. Keith Krach served as president, CEO, and chairman of the board of DocuSign from 2009 to 2019. He led the Silicon Valley digital transaction management company from a startup to a global leader with services used by more than 450,000 companies in 188 countries. For his success at DocuSign, he was Read More ›
Editor of Human Progress and Senior Fellow at Center for Global Liberty and Prosperity
Editor
July 22, 2022
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Marian L. Tupy is the editor of HumanProgress.org, a senior fellow at the Center for Global Liberty and Prosperity, and coauthor of The Simon Abundance Index. He specializes in globalization and global well‐being and politics and economics of Europe and Southern Africa. Tupy is the coauthor of Superabundance: The Story of Population Growth, Innovation, and Human Flourishing on an Infinitely Bountiful Planet (2022) and Ten Global Trends Every Smart Person Should Know: And Many Others You Will Find Interesting (2020). His articles have been published in the Financial Times, the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, the Wall Street Journal, The Atlantic, Newsweek, the U.K. Spectator, Foreign Policy, and various other outlets both in the United States and overseas. He has appeared on BBC, CNN, CNBC, MSNBC, Fox News, Fox Business, and other channels. Tupy received Read More ›
Jeff Funk’s 40-year career has focused on how new technologies emerge and diffuse as a professor and consultant. He was one of the first to recognize the potential for smart phones during late 1990s and early 2000s in Japan. He received the NTT DoCoMo mobile science award in 2004.
Kate Mitselmakher is the CEO, Founder & General Partner of Bloccelerate VC. Prior to founding Bloccelerate VC, Kate spent ~ 10 years at the world’s largest technology research firm, Gartner (NYSE: IT). She started investing into the Web 3.0 space in 2015. While at Gartner, Kate supported CIOs and senior IT leaders of global public and private enterprises across the full spectrum of their technology strategy & implementation. In the past three years, as a part of Gartner Invest group, Kate has advised numerous venture-based companies and accelerators, such as Alchemist Accelerator. She also worked alongside some of the top investors in Silicon Valley. Kate completed her Masters Degree at Harvard University.
Maria Teresa Cometto is an Italian-American journalist and author based in New York City since 2000. She has been working for almost 30 years for the leading Italian daily “Corriere della Sera”. She also has written several books including “La Marchesa Colombi. Life, Novels and Passions of the First Woman Journalist of Corriere della Sera” (2020, Solferino) and “Brothers of the Mountains. Arturo and Oreste Squinobal from the Alps to the Himalayas” (2000 KDP, 2020; 2019, Corbaccio). She was the co-author of “Tech and the City. The Making of New York’s Startup Community” (2013, Guerini; 2013 Mirandola Press), and she co-curated the exhibition “MAKE IN ITALY. 50 Years Of Italian Breakthroughs: From The First PC (P101) To The First Space-Bound Espresso Read More ›
Blake Lemoine is a software engineer and artificial intelligence researcher. He has worked on personality modeling, AI bias and social contextual modeling. He has also contributed to the ISO standards on artificial intelligence as well as ISO technical reports on AI bias and ethics. He was fired by Google after sharing conversations he had with their LaMDA system which led him to believe that the system is sentient.
Having worked at Microsoft for 20 years, Nicole is responsible for Microsoft Teams and Microsoft 365 platform product marketing. Prior to working on the Teams business, Nicole spent over five years leading product and developer audience marketing for Microsoft Azure. Nicole has also held leadership roles on the Visual Studio, SharePoint and Microsoft Project businesses. During her time at Microsoft, Nicole’s responsibilities have included product management, product marketing and sales strategy and execution functions in both worldwide and European offices. Prior to joining Microsoft, Nicole worked for startup focused on a customer relationship management SaaS solution for small businesses. Nicole earned her MBA at the University of Michigan and BBA at the University of Texas at Austin. Before attending graduate Read More ›
Ryan received his PhD in Genome Sciences, and later his MBA, at the University of Washington. During 8 years at Seattle startup Adaptive Biotechnologies, Ryan led the Computational Biology group and then the Antigen Map Project, in which Adaptive and Microsoft set out to combine high-throughput molecular biology and machine learning to “read” the immune system for disease diagnosis. At A-Alpha, Ryan is using his expertise in sequencing, proteomics, and computational analysis to build and optimize A-Alpha Bio’s data science pipeline. In his spare time, Ryan enjoys baking, gardening, and hiking in the Cascades.
Undersecretary, US Department of Energy, Obama Administration
Editor
July 4, 2022
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Steven E. Koonin is an American theoretical physicist and former director of the Center for Urban Science and Progress at New York University. He is also a professor in the Department of Civil and Urban Engineering at NYU’s Tandon School of Engineering. From 2004 to 2009, Koonin was employed by BP as the oil and gas company’s Chief Scientist. From 2009 to 2011, he was Under Secretary for Science, Department of Energy, in the Obama administration.
Dr. Nedvetzki has over 20 years’ experience in the biomedical R&D industry, primarily focused on the development of drugs and medical devices. Dr. Nedvetzki previously served as a R&D Manager and Senior Pre-Clinical Manager at Polypid Ltd., where he headed development of drug and drug/device combination products, overseeing every aspect of drug discovery/development, through preclinical and clinical planning and management. Before that served as Drug Development Manager at BioLineRx Ltd. Dr. Nedvetzki earned his Ph.D. in immunology from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and did his post-doctoral work at Imperial College in the UK.
Mr. Anthony L. Posawatz, also known as Tony, P.E., serves as President and Chief Executive Officer of Invictus iCAR, LLC (innovation Consulting & Advisory Resources). Mr. Posawatz is an industry leader. He served as Chief Executive Officer of Fisker Automotive, Inc. since August 2012. He has over 30 years of automotive industry experience, 20 years of which as an executive, where he is best known for his leadership role as Vehicle Line Director of Global Electric Vehicles & Chevrolet Volt at Superior Chevrolet, Inc. His pioneering approach to product innovation was responsible for award-winning vehicles like the Chevrolet Volt, the Chevrolet Avalanche and the Cadillac Escalade. An active and respected member of the industry. He has been the Chairperson of Technology Advisory Read More ›
Steve is an Adjunct Scholar at the Hudson Institute, focused on quantum technology development and standards. He is an advisor to the Quantum Alliance Initiative and a member of the Quantum Industry Coalition. He is a long-time advisor to the NanoBusiness Commercialization Association and the Future in Review (FiRe) technology conference and was a co-founder and Executive Director of the Graphene Stakeholders Association. Steve is the author of Quantum Investing, and co-author of Venture Investing in Science, Graphene Technology and Boomernomics.
Howard “Cork” Hayden is a Professor Emeritus of Physics from the University of Connecticut. A Pueblo native, he graduated from Aurora High School, entered the University of Denver as an engineering major, but soon discovered that he wasn’t temperamentally suited to all that reality. He switched to physics and went on to earn his B.S., M.S., and Ph.D. at DU. On receiving his Ph.D., he went to the University of Connecticut where he spent 32 years doing teaching and research. He did accelerator-based atomic physics, including measurements of cross-sections for various processes, measurements of energy loss in atomic collisions and of lifetimes of excited states, beam-foil spectroscopy, and ion implantation. He performed a Trouton-Noble (1904) experiment with 100,000 times as Read More ›
Greg is the President of The RChain Cooperative. Previously he has worked as Principal Architect of Microsoft’s BizTalk Process Orchestration, Principal Architect of Microsoft’s Highwire offering as well as Principal Architect of ATM Network management solution for ATT/NCR and Co-designer and developer of MCC’s Rosette/ESS.
Award-winning entrepreneur John van Leeuwen is CEO of Universal Matter, a company he co-founded with Dr. James Tour, professor of organic chemistry and nanotechnology at Rice University. For more than 10 years prior, John led EcoSynthetix, a company he also co-founded that became a recognized leader in renewable chemicals.
Technology Analyst and Visiting Fellow, American Enterprise Institute
Editor
August 5, 2021
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Bret Swanson is a visiting fellow at AEI’s Center for Internet, Communications, and Technology Policy and president of Entropy Economics LLC, a strategic research firm specializing in technology, innovation, and the global economy. He advises investors and technology companies, focusing on the Internet ecosystem and the broadband networks and applications that drive it. Swanson is also a scholar at the US Chamber of Commerce Foundation, where, since 2005, his research has centered on economic growth and policies that encourage it. For eight years Swanson advised technology investors as executive editor of the Gilder Technology Report and later was a senior fellow at the Progress & Freedom Foundation, where he directed the Center for Global Innovation. Swanson began his career as Read More ›
Associate Professor of Business Management, BYU Hawaii
Editor
August 5, 2021
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Gale L. Pooley is an associate professor of business management at Brigham Young University-Hawaii. He has taught economics and statistics at Alfaisal University in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, Brigham Young University-Idaho, Boise State University, and the College of Idaho. Dr. Pooley earned his BBA in Economics at Boise State University. He did graduate work at Montana State University and completed his PhD at the University of Idaho. His dissertation topic was on the Knowledge Acquisition Preferences of the CEOs of the Inc. 500. In 1986 he founded Analytix Group, a real estate valuation and consulting firm. The Analytix Group has performed over 5,000 appraisals in the U.S. and Saudi Arabia. Dr. Pooley has held professional designations from the Appraisal Institute, the Read More ›
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 ›
President AT&T Labs and Chief Technology Officer at AT&T
Editor
October 17, 2019
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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 ›
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 ›
Gordon and Betty Moore Professor Emeritus of Engineering and Applied Science at the California Institute of Technology
Editor
October 10, 2019
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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 ›
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 ›
