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University of Maryland
Entrepreneurship Connector
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SPECIAL GRADUATE STUDENT ENTREPRENEURS PANEL!

DATE: Monday, November 12, 5-7 p.m.
PLACE: 1107/1111 Jeong H. Kim Engineering Building
Pizza and sodas will be served; the dress code is entrepreneur-casual!
Join the Entrepreneurship Connector group and register to attend at: http://www.facebook.com/groups/UMDeConnector

Entrepreneur Panel: When Your Research Makes a Company

This panel features three former graduates students whose research became the foundation for startups. Come learn about how they juggled graduate school with entrepreneurship, how their technologies translated into commercial products, and how they have progressed to-date.

Mehdi Kalantari is a serial entrepreneur. As a Ph.D. student in electrical and computer engineering, Kalantari started what is now RioRey (www.riorey.com), a leading provider of solutions against Internet attacks on computer networks. He then started Resensys (www.resensys.com), a company offering a cost-effective and scalable solution for the real time monitoring of important structural state quantities such as stress, strain, fatigue cracks, vibration, etc. His company's sensors are deployed on and monitor the health of bridges, tunnels and similar structures.

Zeynep Dilli and Mahsa Dornajafi both worked on the technologies that laid the foundation for FlexEl (www.flexelinc.com), a company developing ultra-high capacity, thin-film batteries that can be scaled to any size and fabricated to meet any form factor. Both Dilli and Dornajafi earned graduate degrees in electrical and computer engineering, then transitioned straight to launching FlexEl and refining the company's thin-film battery technology. FlexEl recently received a $6 million investment from a Fortune 500 company. The company also acquired $3 million in grants and third party investment funding. FlexEl has 12 full-time and 18 part-time employees.

CONNECT!
Meet and network with fellow UMD and alumni entrepreneurs and enjoy pizza. Entrepreneurship Connectors are a great place to look for partners, brainstorm ideas, and get inspired.

Join the Entrepreneurship Connector group and register to attend at: 
http://www.facebook.com/groups/UMDeConnector

--Eric

Eric Schurr
Director of Communications
Maryland Technology Enterprise Institute (Mtech)
University of Maryland
(301) 405-3889 work
(301) 867-3110 cell
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http://www.mtech.umd.edu
http://twitter.com/#!/mtechumd