The Vertex | Speakers on the 18th of September

Markus Nordberg

Markus Nordberg is the Head of Resources Development of the Development and Innovation Unit at CERN, Switzerland. He is currently involved in launching a sensor and imaging R&D initiative called ATTRACT aiming at both scientific and societal impact.

He also manages the new IdeaSquare initiative at CERN that hosts detector R&D and society-driven MSc-student projects. Prior to this function, he served 12 years as the Resources Coordinator of the ATLAS project at CERN (www.atlas.ch). He has also served as Visiting Senior Research Fellow at the Centrum voor Bedrijfseconomie,

Faculty ESP-Solvay Business School, University of Brussels, and as a member of the Academy of Management, Strategic Management Society and the Association of Finnish Parliament Members and Scientists, TUTKAS. He has a degree both in Physics and in Business Administration.

Jan Auernhammer

Jan Auernhammer, PhD is Executive Director Business Design Research at the Center for Design Research, Stanford University.

Jan’s current research focuses on the practices of how businesses and organizations can be designed expanding both managerial and design practices.

He supports organizations in designing human behavior, rituals, routines, shared worldviews, and experiences. This human-centered view and design practice allows the development of emergent strategy and organizational capabilities such as self-organization, sustainability, and innovation.

In the past he worked at SUTD-MIT International Design Center, National University of Singapore’s Institute of System Science, Edinburgh Napier’s Business School, and the car manufacturer Daimler AG.

Rui Coutinho

Rui Coutinho is a strategist, a manager of innovation and science, professor, researcher, mentor and entrepreneur. Is the Head of the Center for Business Innovation at Porto Business School.

Founder and Coordinator of Porto Design Factory - Instituto Politécnico do Porto- institution that incorporates the Design Factory Global Network and Stanford University Global Alliance for Redesign.

Rui Coutinho was also the creator and manager of the startups accelerator programmes, Porto Design Accelerator and Beta Sound System.

Is the co-founder of Ignition and i-Angola, two consulting companies specialized in research, development and evaluation of public politics on social activities, education, entrepreneurship and innovation, in Africa and Europe.

He is “external expert” of the European Commission - Education & Culture DG and in the project HEInnovate" OECD / European Commission.

João Claro

João Claro is President of the Executive Board of INESC TEC and Associate Professor of Industrial Engineering and Management at Faculdade de Engenharia of the Universidade do Porto (FEUP). At INESC TEC he is also a researcher in the Centre for Innovation, Technology, and Entrepreneurship.

He is affiliated with Porto Business School where he heads the Entrepreneurship and Innovation academic area. Between 2013 and 2017, he was the National Director of the Carnegie Mellon Portugal Programme, an international partnership in Information and Communication Technology (ICT) between Portuguese universities, research labs and companies, and Carnegie Mellon University (CMU), funded by Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia.

In 2008 he was a visiting scholar with the Engineering Systems Division at MIT. In the past 15 years, he has taught and mentored more than 150 technology commercialization teams from Portuguese universities, research labs and companies, in multiple initiatives with ANI, COTEC Portugal, FCUP, FEUP, INESC TEC, Porto Business School and CMU.

Mark Searle

Mark Searle is Managing Director of the Innovation Acceleration Group at UC Berkeley Executive Education. He is an award-winning international serial entrepreneur in domains ranging from enterprise software, cloud computing and consumer Internet to 3D printing and Argotech.

Mark has led and taught Innovation and Entrepreneurship programs inside major corporations including BOSCH, and Caterpillar.

His 20+ years of experience as co-founder, CEO and COO of several early-stage and growth-stage technology companies included roles as CEO of Barcelona-based Kinamik Data Integrity and multiple Bay Area startups. Companies under Mark’s leadership have won numerous awards including: “Top European ICT Startup” (Eurecan); “AlwaysOn Global 250”; Guidewire Group “Innovate 100” most innovative startups, "Red Herring 100" Top North American Startups, and others.

António Murta

António is Managing Partner and co-founder of Pathena. Also, António serves as Non Exec Board Member of several companies of Pathena’s portfolio.

António has a degree in Systems Engineering from Minho University, MBA from Porto Business School, AMP from INSEAD. Has also done post-graduate studies at IESE (Barcelona) and MIT.
From 1992 to 1997 he was Corporate Information Officer of Sonae Distribuição, the largest Portuguese retailer.

He founded and was CEO of Enabler from 1997 onwards - Enabler was a systems integrator strictly focussed in Retail. This company was acquired by Wipro in 2006 and from then to the end of 2009 he was VP of Retail Services at Wipro.

He is also a founding partner of various other IT companies connected - Mobicomp (now part of Microsoft), ITPeers, Profimetrics, QuiiQ, Cardmobili.

Pedro Vilarinho

Pedro is Chief Executive of HiSeedTech – a not-for-profit Association, founded by a group of private companies, that aims at supporting the creation of social and economic value from scientific and technological knowledge either through technology entrepreneurship and /or open innovation.

Pedro also serves as non-executive board member of several start-ups, mainly in the biotech / life sciences space.

In 2003, Pedro joined the founding team of COTEC Portugal, where he was responsible for the projects dealing with technology-based entrepreneurship, namely the COHiTEC Program, for which he was awarded (together with Angus Kingon, from Brown University) the 2006 Price Foundation Innovative Entrepreneurship Educators Award, awarded by the Stanford Technology Ventures Program.

In 2016 he left COTEC to launch HiSeedTech. Since joining COTEC he supported the creation of 25 tech-based startups, that, overall, gathered over €40 million in funding.

Nathalie Risacher

Nathalie Risacher was appointed Senior Country Manager of Natixis in Portugal, in October 2017.

Since 2009, she has been nominated by French government decree to serve as an active Foreign Trade Advisor firstly for the US region and now for Portugal.

Nathalie currently serves on the Advisory Board of the French American Chamber of Commerce and the Board of Directors of the “French Institute Alliance Française”, in New York.

Before coming to Portugal, Nathalie has spent 17 years in New York, notably as Chief Operating Officer of the Americas Platform and member of the CIB Americas Executive Committee, since 2013.

Prior to this, she was the Chief Security and Operational Risk Officer for Natixis CIB Americas. She received the 2012 Grand Jury Prize as top Chief Security Officer (CSO) in France awarded by a panel of distinguished CSOs for her work and researches on Cyber Security.

Earlier, she worked for CDC Asset Management in Paris.

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