The Next Startup Wave

Anna Thornton earned her BSE from Princeton University and her Ph.D. from Cambridge University. Dr. Thornton began her career as a faculty member in MIT’s Mechanical Engineering department. During her time at MIT, her research focused on product development, manufacturing, and quality systems. After leaving MIT, Dr. Thornton was a senior partner in Analytics Operations Engineering, where she worked with over 40 large companies to implement, streamline, and improve their product development, manufacturing, and quality systems. As the Director of Engineering and Quality at Dragon Innovation, she helped over 30 new hardware startups transform prototype designs into final products. Dr. Thornton is the author of many articles, blogs, and a book, and she is a frequent speaker in multiple university and industry forums.

Carl Bass was president and CEO of Autodesk from 2006-2017. He spent 24 years at Autodesk where he held a series of executive positions including chief technology officer and chief operations officer. Carl co-founded Ithaca Software, which was acquired by Autodesk in 1993. Bass serves on the boards of directors of Autodesk, Zendesk Inc., Formlabs, Built Robotics, Zoox, Planet Labs, and Autolabs AI; on the board of trustees of the Smithsonian’s Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum, Art Center College of Design, and California College of the Arts; and on the advisory boards of Cornell Computing and Information Science, UC Berkeley School of Information, and UC Berkeley College of Engineering. Bass serves on the boards of directors of Autodesk and HP Inc.; on the board of trustees of the Smithsonian’s Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum, Art Center College of Design, and California College of the Arts; and on the advisory boards of Cornell Computing and Information Science, UC Berkeley School of Information, and UC Berkeley College of Engineering. He holds a bachelor’s degree in mathematics from Cornell University.

David Putnam joined the College of Engineering at Cornell University in 2002. Prior to joining the engineering faculty, he was an NIH postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Chemical Engineering at MIT in the laboratory of Professor Robert Langer. From 2000 until 2002, he held a joint appointment at MIT and as a scientific co-founder of a start-up company, TransForm Pharmaceuticals. From 2008-2009 he was an Entrepreneur-in-Residence at PureTech Ventures in Boston, MA where he focused on emerging technologies in the field of drug delivery. He leads the Putnam research group, which focuses on the design and synthesis of functional biomaterials. Putnam is founder/co-founder of four companies including TransForm Pharmaceuticals (drug formulation, acquired by Johnson & Johnson in March, 2005), Articulate Biomedical (late-stage osteoarthritis), Versatope Therapeutics (immunotherapy/vaccines), and ProVis Medical (surgical devices).

Jason is an entrepreneur, scientist, and speaker. His Ph.D. research studies focused on orthopedics, injury prevention, and the microbiome. While at Cornell, Jason discovered his passion for entrepreneurship, working as the first engineer at a robotics hospitality startup. Jason since has founded and grown Iterate Labs, an AI analytics company for digitizing and optimizing human motion for industrial workforces. Iterate Labs has recently closed their seed round and has some of the largest food processing and manufacturing companies as customers.