Dr. Kevin C.C. Chang

Chang is also an Associate Professor in Computer Science at UIUC, where he joined the faculty in 2000 with a dream of making things happen through research and through students. There, he has been working with students in large-scale information access -- i.e., information on the Internet-- where the MetaQuerier project deals with large-scale information integration over the "deep Web," and the WISDM project develops data-aware search over the "surface Web."

He received a B.S. from National Taiwan University and a Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering from Stanford University. He was the recipient of an NSF CAREER Award in 2002, an NCSA Faculty Fellow Award in 2003, IBM Faculty Awards in 2004 and 2005, and was named an Excellent Teacher at UIUC in 2001 and 2004. He has served on the program committees of major data management and Web search conferences, including SIGMOD, VLDB, ICDE, WWW, AAAI, CIKM, and ICDM.

Kimathi Marangu

Kimathi Marangu is a recognized expert in loyalty marketing, affiliate marketing and e-commerce. Kimathi was the co-founder of Mall Networks, the leading provider of merchant-funded rewards. Prior to that, Kimathi grew Apple's affiliate program into one of the largest in the industry. He also established Apple's U.S. search and comparison shopping partnerships with Google, Yahoo! Shopping, Shopzilla, Overture, Shopping.com and PriceGrabber. He has been quoted by Fox Business News, USA Today, BusinessWeek.com, New York Newsday, Red Herring and others. Kimathi obtained his A.B. in Economics from Vassar College and his M.B.A. from the Stanford Graduate School of Business.

Paul Krappman

Paul Krappman has more than 20 years of start-up, turn-around and strategy development experience with software and technology companies. Mr. Krappman is a founding partner of Roatan Partners, LLC, an advisory services firm that helps develop growth strategies for technology and software start-up businesses and a Co-Founder of TruAssurance, Inc., a web archival internet service (SaaS) company. Earlier, he was the President of ShipNow, a logistics software company, which got acquired by Kewill Solutions. Paul obtained his BA from Marquette University.

Yuping Tseng

Yuping Tseng also graduated from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign with an M.S. degree. He previously attended National Chiao Tung University for his undergraduate study. He has over 10 years of software development experience. He previously worked at TSMC, but figured his brains weren’t wired for silicon wafers. So he moved to UIUC for his M.S. studies. He then worked at the UIUC Diglib Lab for five years before he joining the forces to start Cazoodle and lead its Taiwan office.

Quoc Le

Quoc Le also graduated UIUC with an M.S. degree. He also studied in a Ph.D. program at UIUC before diving into Cazoodle along with his peers. He previously studied at Hanoi University for his undergraduate studies. Besides using his skills to drive Cazoodle and lead the company’s office in Vietnam , he also enjoys teaching the next generation of bright engineers at Hanoi University.

Rob Schultz

Rob Schultz is a Senior Director of IllinoisVENTURES and a Partner of the Illinois Emerging Technologies Fund. Rob currently serves on numerous corporate boards including Fluensee, RiverGlass, ShareThis, Tekion and Caterva. Rob is the Founder and former CEO of DigitalWork, Inc., leading the company through its IPO. Prior to DigitalWork, Rob was the President of Nequity, a subsidiary of Signet Bank that was acquired in 1997. Prior to his employment at Nequity, Rob was a consultant with McKinsey and Company and Deloitte and Touche.

Tim Hoerr

Tim Hoerr is a seasoned business executive with over 25 years of experience spanning a variety of industries. Tim is the founder and CEO of Serra Ventures, a leading venture capital firm catering to early-stage and emerging technology companies. He also serves a number of high-tech, start-up companies, including Cbana Labs, ImmuVen, Aptimmune Biologics and Diagnostic Photonics. He previously served as Co-founder and Chief Executive Officer of iCyt, a rapidly growing bioscience technology firm located in the University of Illinois Research Park, Champaign, Illinois. iCyt was acquired by Sony Corporation in late 2009.

Harlee Sorkin

Harlee Sorkin is the Founder and Principal of Mentor Management, LLC. He is currently serving as Entrepreneur-in-Residence at the incubation center of University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He is a Director at Busey Wealth Management, Inc. (NASDAQ: BUSE), an Advisor to the Technology Entrepreneur Center at the University of Illinois College of Engineering, and an Advisor to VasSol, Inc., a Chicago, IL medical imaging company. Harlee also serves as a mentor at the Skandalaris Center for Entrepreneurial Studies at Washington University. in St. Louis. Previous roles include VP of Marketing for Degussa BioActives and VP & COO at Traco Labs, Inc., a manufacturer of nutritional ingredients.