Press Release
Contact: Robert Albright |
Phone: 919-549-7500 ext.123 |
Duke’s Kristina Johnson to Speak at CED’s InfoTech 2005
Dean of Pratt School of Engineering Will Address Attendees During Lunch on Oct. 12; CED Also Announces Concurrent Panel Topics for 15th Annual IT Conference
September 28, 2005, Research Triangle Park, NC – The Council for Entrepreneurial Development (CED) today announced that Kristina Johnson, Ph.D., Dean of Duke University’s Pratt School of Engineering and Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering, will deliver featured comments at CED’s InfoTech 2005 conference. Scheduled for October 12 at the Sheraton Imperial Hotel & Convention Center in the RTP, CED’s 15th annual InfoTech conference will highlight North Carolina's IT industry and explore the latest industry trends and new business opportunities.
Johnson joined Duke University in 1999 to become the first female dean of the Pratt School of Engineering in the school’s 60-year history. She has published over 140 papers and proceedings and is author on 42 patents. A fellow of the Optical Society of America, Johnson has helped spin-off six companies from research groups and sits on several corporate Boards including ColorLink, Inc., where she is also a co-founder, and is on the Advisory Boards of Vennworks and the NSF Engineering Directorate. She also founded an intellectual property licensing company called KAJ, LLC, to help new companies get started using technology developed at the center.
Johnson received a B.S., M.S. and Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering from Stanford University. After a NATO post-doctoral fellowship at Trinity College in Dublin, Ireland, she joined the University of Colorado in 1985 as an Assistant Professor and was promoted to full Professor in 1994. Johnson was awarded the NSF Presidential Young Investigator Award, the IBM Faculty Award in 1985 and the Dennis Gabor Award for creativity and innovation in modern optics by the International Optics Commission in 1993. From 1994 until 1999, Johnson directed the Optoelectronics Computing Systems Center at Colorado and Colorado State Universities.
Johnson, who will speak during lunch at InfoTech 2005, joins previously announced keynote speaker Walt Mossberg of The Wall Street Journal in offering featured remarks at the conference.
“Kristina Johnson is a true champion of technology commercialization and innovation,” said CED President Monica Doss. “We are fortunate to have her as a leader, not only in the academic community, but also in North Carolina’s entrepreneurial community. She will bring a unique and valuable perspective to this year’s InfoTech conference.”
In addition to Johnson’s comments at lunch, InfoTech 2005 will feature 10 concurrent panel discussions throughout the day, including the following topics:
- Broadband Wars: The Future of Entertainment
- Computer Games in Serious Applications: Education, Training and Beyond
- Crossing Borders: Best Practices in International Sales Expansion
- Driving Improvements in Processing Power: Current Innovations in Semiconductor Materials and Chip-Level Technologies
- The Future of Cellular Technology: A Global and Growing Marketplace
- How Much is Enough? Economic Models for Protecting Your Intellectual Property
- The Info-Bio-Nano Nexus: InfoTech's Collision Course with Advanced Technologies
- Outsourcing: The Devil is in the Details
- Squeezing Blood from a Turnip: Financing Your Start-Up
- Zero Down Time: Disaster Recovery for the 21st Century
Beyond featured speakers and panel discussions, InfoTech 2005 will also showcase 25 demos from North Carolina’s most promising innovators. For more information on the conference, visit www.cednc.org/infotech.
About CED: The Council for Entrepreneurial Development, headquartered in Research Triangle Park with a divisional office in Wilmington, is a private, non-profit organization formed in 1984 to stimulate the creation and growth of high-impact companies in various North Carolina innovation centers. In July 2005, Wilmington’s Coastal Entrepreneurial Council merged with CED to create CED-Coastal, a divisional office focused on entrepreneurial development in Wilmington and throughout North Carolina’s entire coastal region. CED provides education, mentoring and capital formation resources to new and existing high-growth entrepreneurs through annual conferences, seminars, workshops and programs on entrepreneurial management and finance. CED is the largest and oldest entrepreneurial support organization in the nation with more than 4,000 members representing over 1,100 entrepreneurial companies, financiers and professional firms. www.cednc.org.
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