Advantage Accelerator

Jim is an avid high-tech innovator with a passion for entrepreneurship.  He currently works for and advises multiple advanced materials startups with focus on materials commercialization, innovation/IP strategy, technical market analysis, team culture, and investor communications.  He has a Ph.D. in Physical Chemistry from Oregon State, has been granted more than 30 US and international patents, and is the Co-Founder of Polynovation,LLC. 

Jen Akeroyd, PhD, RN co-founded SUTUREGARD Medical in 2015, completed the Accelerate and Launch programs in 2016, and was named Entrepreneur of the Year in 2017 by RAIN. She enjoys mentoring around issues related to customer discovery, broadly, and, more specifically, medical device commercialization including regulatory issues, and medical device sales and marketing. 

Mike Brown has served in various executive management roles for numerous global corporations (HP, Compaq and W.L. Gore & Associates) all in new business creation.

Rich is co-founder and CEO of Valliscor - a pharma-focused, chemical manufacturing company specializing in fluoroalkylation.  Rich is also Faculty Lead for Innovation Excellence and Professor of Chemistry at Oregon State University. He was a graduate of the first class of the OSU Advantage Accelerator

Eduardo Ceballos is an entrepreneur, an investor, and the CEO of Allographix, Inc., a venture development firm focused on seeding, staffing and launching Willamette Valley businesses.

Valerie has over 15 years experience in microsystems technology development and manufacturing. While a MEMS integration engineer with HP, she was an active member of the MEMS and Sensors Industry Group Technical Advisory Committee.

Research Associate Professor in mechanical engineering at OSU with extensive experience in designing and building mechanical devices to solve a wide variety of compelling technical problems.

I work with talented women innovators, scientists, technologists, engineers, mathematicians and all medical professions (doctors, veterinarians, dentists, nurses) through a program called STEMMbridge to develop skills in leadership and life to become confident, independent, and fully in control of their destinies.

Skip Rung is the founder, President, and Executive Director of Oregon Nanoscience and Microtechnologies Institute (ONAMI), Oregon’s first “Signature Research Center” and an unprecedented collaboration among Oregon’s research universities and the private sector. ONAMI’s mission is to accelerate research commercialization via startup and spinout companies in order to extend the success of Oregon’s world-leading “Silicon Forest” technology cluster. 

Sanjai has worked on a series of technical-entrepreneurial ventures as a marketing and management professional. He is also a proud OSU alumnus, having earned Master’s degrees in both Microbiology and Business from the university.

Derek van Bronkhorst is a marketing and communications professional with extensive experience in branding, messaging, crisis management and bringing products to market, working with hardware and software companies in Silicon Valley.

Dr. Kent B. Welter is the Engineering Chief – Testing and Analysis at NuScale Power, LLC. Expertise in technology development, systems engineering, operations management, safety, risk, and testing. Competencies in a wide range of enabling business processes for business-to-business products and services, including international product deployment in highly regulated industries

Serial entrepreneur, although he has tried to retire numerous times. Dan was named Entrepreneur of the Year for Benton County 2003. 

Mr. White is a Social Entrepreneur with extensive international experience funding and building Social Enterprises through innovative models of trade and development. Mr. White was most recently Co-founder and Chief Agriculture Officer at Flavorful Brands, a joint-venture with Bejo Seeds—world's largest hybrid seed producer, and House Foods Group—a multi-billion dollar Japanese CPG conglomerate.