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Heidi Olinger Heidi Olinger is an educator and the author of Fashionably Mashed: The STEM of Fashion Design. For teaching excellence, she has been honored by the Boettcher Foundation and others. She is the founder and CEO of Pretty Brainy, a nonprofit organization that designs STEAM (science, technology, engineering art, and math) curricula and materials to support teachers in exciting students about learning and in preparing them, especially girls, to pursue the broadest of career options. Her work in apparel design has won the highest honor from the Mom’s Choice Awards® and was featured in an international showcase by the World Trade Center-Denver. In 2012 InnovatioNews named Pretty Brainy “An educational leader for STEM education.” |
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Brent Sebold Brent Sebold is the Director of the Fulton Engineering Student Startup Center within the Ira A. Fulton Schools of Engineering at Arizona State University. Dr. Sebold is responsible for the development and operation of the Startup Center and the delivery of its signature entrepreneurship and innovation courses, workshops, mentoring programs, new venture competitions, and other extra-curricular startup advancement events. Prior to directing the Startup Center, Brent was the Director of Acceleration Curriculum within ASU’s Office of the Vice President for Entrepreneurship and Innovation. Additionally, he led the regional ecosystem development efforts for the U.S. Department of Defense’s implementation of ASU’s Furnace Technology Transfer Accelerator and operated Arizona Furnace 2.0 in partnership with several research and funding organizations throughout the state. Brent also ran ASU’s Edson Student Entrepreneur Initiative and the inaugural ASU Student Startup Bowl. During his tenure, he managed 40 Edson client companies who raised over $1.2 million in external funding and featured 10 grand prize winners in several global student startup competitions, including Entrepreneur magazine's 2011 Collegiate Entrepreneur of the Year. Brent earned a Business Administration degree from Ohio University and his Master and Doctor of Education degrees at ASU. He is also a co-founder of MakersTour.com. |
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Stephen L. Canfield Dr. Stephen Canfield is a professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at Tennessee Technological University. He received his Ph.D. in mechanical engineering at Virginia Tech in the field of parallel architecture robotics. His research interests include robot kinematics and dynamics, topological optimization of compliant manipulators and in-space mechanisms. His current research is in robot modeling, control and development with a focus on climbing mobile robots for autonomous welding and NDE inspection in hazardous, unstructured environments. Dr. Canfield’s robots are being used by companies including TVA, General Dynamics, Northrop Grumman, Newport News and NASSCO. Dr. Canfield is the co-founder of Robotic Technologies of Tennessee, commercializing mobile, and has commercialized two mobile welding robots and is in the process of transitioning licensing to the Weld Tool Corporation. He participated in NSF’s I-Corps program (GT 2013 cohort) and the I-Corps-L program (DC 2014 cohort) as a student which led to a startup with industry partnership and investment to develop miniature climbing robots for inspecting hazardous waste containers. |
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Jennifer Carolan Jennifer Carolan is Managing Director of the NewShools Seed Fund, which she co-founded to make investments in early-stage education technology companies with potential for big impact in K-12 education. Jennifer began her career as a teacher in traditional district schools where she became interested in differentiated learning. After studying master teachers at Stanford School of Education, she published her research on differentiation in Education Leadership. Jennifer is most interested in the intersection of technology, differentiated instruction and access. Jennifer is on the Boards of: BetterLesson, Education Elements, EdSurge, Equal Opportunity Schools and FreshGrade. She still teaches sometimes, most recently Innovations in Teaching 338 at Stanford’s School of Education/d.school and a home math camp for her kids and their friends. Jennifer has three children who attend a charter school in Los Altos California. |
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Bharani Rajakumar Bharani Rajakumar is currently CEO and Founder of LearnBop Inc, an automated tutoring software that helps students learn mathematics. Inspired by his K-12 educational experience, he attended Carnegie Mellon to get his MBA and launch LearnBop. LearnBop is now used by schools in 17 states to help implement the common core math standards. Immediately after undergrad, Bharani worked as an Operations Analyst at Lehman Brothers. Bharani is a graduate of the University of Florida where he earned a B.S in Finance. He currently resides in New York City where the start-up continues to grow. In his spare time, you can find him hanging out with his wife and watching The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon. |
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In addition to serving as the Teaching Assistant for the I-Corps L program, Lindsey also manages the logistics of coordinating and conducting the I-Corps programs for the DC regional node. She oversees the region's social media and outreach efforts and assists in the behind-the-scenes work in screening teams, organizing venues, training teaching assistants and planning several regional cohorts per year. Lindsey received her M.Ed in College Student Personnel Administration and has over a decade of experience in event and conference planning. |
2015 San Francisco Bay Area Teaching Team
Core Teaching Team
Karl Smith
Ann McKenna
Christopher Swan
Russell Korte
Adjunct Instructors
Heidi Olinger
Brent Sebold
Stephen Canfield
Jennifer Carolan
Bharani Rajakumar
Node Instructors
Dean Chang
Todd Morrill
Teaching Assistant
Lindsey Mitchell
Evaluation Team
Gary Lichtenstein
Cathleen Simons
Sheri Sheppard