Professor Lance R. Collins is the Joseph Silbert Dean of Engineering at Cornell University. Prior to that he served as the S. C. Thomas Sze Director of the Sibley School of Mechanical & Aerospace Engineering from 2005-2010, and he was Director of Graduate Studies for Aerospace Engineering 2003-2005. He joined Cornell in 2002, following 11 years as Assistant Professor, Associate Professor and Professor of Chemical Engineering at the Pennsylvania State University. In 2011, He was part of the Cornell leadership team that successfully bid to partner with New York City to build a new campus on Roosevelt Island focused on innovation and commercialization in the tech sector. Professor Collins’ research combines simulation and theory to investigate a broad range of turbulent flow processes.

In 2007 he was elected a fellow of the American Physical Society. In 2014 he received the William Grimes Award from the American Institute of Chemical Engineers (AIChE) and in 2015 he was elected a fellow of the AIChE and also received the AIChE’s first-ever Pioneers of Diversity Award. He has served as vice chair, chair and past chair of the US National Committee on Theoretical & Applied Mechanics, 2008-2014. He currently serves as vice chair of the Division of Fluid Dynamics for the American Physical Society, 2014-2015. Professor Collins earned his B.S.E. in 1981 at Princeton University and his M.S. in 1983 and his Ph.D. in 1987 at the University of Pennsylvania, all in Chemical Engineering.

Jeremy Levine is a partner in Bessemer’s New York office. He joined the firm in 2001 and focuses primarily on software and Internet companies. He has led early stage investments in consumer-Internet companies including LinkedIn, Pinterest, Raise, Wikia and Yelp; e-commerce businesses including KupiVIP and Shopify; and SaaS companies including MindBody and Parallels.  Several of his portfolio companies have gone public in the last few years, and he has also served on the boards of several Bessemer-backed companies before they were acquired by larger corporations such as Amazon, AOL, Cox, Sony and Naspers.

Jeremy graduated from Duke University with a B.S. in computer science and economics.

Jason Springs is the Co-Founder and Head of Marketing of GeneWEAVE, now a division of Roche Molecular Diagnostics. GeneWEAVE focuses on developing transformative medical diagnostics to rapidly detect bacterial infections and guide antibiotic selection in a fraction of the time possible using current medical diagnostics. GeneWEAVE’s solutions focus on solving the problem of antibiotic resistance, identified by the CDC and the WHO as a problem so large that it threatens the existence of modern medicine. Jason co-founded GeneWEAVE with two other Cornell graduate students while earning his MBA at Cornell’s Johnson School. He served as board member and helped raise $25M in venture funding before the company’s 2015 acquisition by Roche in a deal valued at up to $425M. Jason currently resides in San Jose, CA with his wife Angel and his cattle dog Max.

Meredith Amdur was President and CEO of WANTED Technologies, an online provider of big data analytics platform, tools and embedded data solutions to the HR sector, before selling the publicly traded Canada-based business to the Corporate Executive Board (CEB) in late 2015. She previously held senior leadership and strategy roles at DirecTV, Microsoft, Deloitte, and Informa, where her accomplishments included heading the strategic planning for Microsoft’s Entertainment & Devices Division (Xbox), serving as the General Manager of Strategy for the Bing search engine, leading DirecTV digital entertainment product strategy and spearheading new initiatives in big data analytics and advanced geospatial visualization tools for Microsoft’s Azure cloud platform. Amdur forged her early career in London, England in the 1990s, co-founding and running a business-information publishing, and market research company (Baskerville Communications, later Informa Media).

Amdur holds an MBA from Cornell University (’03), an MSc from the London School of Economics, and a BA from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

PAMELA G. MARRONE (’78 BS CALS) is CEO and Founder of Marrone Bio Innovations, Inc. (NASDAQ: MBII), since 2006. Prior to this position, Dr. Marrone founded AgraQuest in 1995 and served as its CEO, Chairman and President until April 2006. Before AgraQuest, she was founding president and business unit head for Entotech, Inc. (1990-1995) in Davis (CA), a successful bio pesticide subsidiary of Denmark-based Novo Nordisk (sold to Abbott in 1995). At Monsanto (1983-1990), she led the Insect Biology group, which was involved in pioneering projects in transgenic crops, natural products, and microbial pesticides. In October 2014, Dr. Marrone was awarded Agrow’s “Best Manager with Strategic Vision” for her career-long leadership in biopesticides.

Dr. Marrone received the NRDC’s Growing Green Award in “Business Leader” category, to recognize new pioneers in sustainable farming and food. Dr. Marrone is an alumni-elected Trustee of Cornell University. She is on the University of California President’s Board of Science and Innovation and the UC Davis College of Agriculture and Environmental Sciences Dean’s Advisory Council. The City of Davis awarded her the first Business and Economic Development Award for job creation and her contributions to the local economy, community and industry. Dr. Marrone was the Sacramento Chamber’s 2001 Businesswoman of the Year, and Cornell University’s College of Agriculture and Life Sciences 2001 Distinguished Alumni Award Recipient, and a 2003 recipient of the UC Davis’ College of Agriculture and Natural Resources Alumni Award of Distinction. Dr. Marrone resides in Davis, CA with her husband, Michael Rogers ’78 HE.

Howard was born in Toronto, lived in Phoenix for 20 years and now lives in Coronado, CA with his wife, two awesome kids and two dachshunds.  Howard graduated from the University of Western Ontario, Arizona State University, and American Graduate School of International Management (Thunderbird). He is focused on innovation in personal finance and do-it-yourself investing, and makes early stage investments though Social Leverage.  Howard’s current start-up is called StockTwits, where he is a co-founder and now Chairman after 5 years as CEO.  Howard also manages a hedge fund (Lindzon Capital Partners) and has done so since June of 1998. In 2006, Howard created and founded Wallstrip and created over 300 shows before it was purchased by CBS. After that Howard moved out west to play golf, but now rarely does.  His primary hobbies include driving his kids around, staying awake and seeking the perfect sleep solution.