Keynotes

Dr. Medina has an extensive career in academia and industry, as an engineer, manager and entrepreneur both in Mexico and the US. He graduated from the National University in Mexico as a mechanical-electrical engineer specialized in control, communications and electronics. Later he earned a PhD in Computer Science from CalTech. Initially, Luis worked in academia where he taught, did research and published. However, the majority of his experience is in industry where he has worked for 29 years, first as an engineer and finally as an entrepreneur. He founded, organized, negotiated and secured financing for two successful companies.

He currently uses this wide experience in the Technology Business Accelerator program ­ TechBA in Austin, where he coaches and helps technology companies from Mexico to enter the US market. He uses sound business practices in the formulation and execution of effective plans that incorporate bicultural principles and realities. Luis is leading the transformation of the business culture in Mexico by developing small technology companies that become global enterprises.

Dr. Amnon Aliphas CEO of VentureOnLine is a serial entrepreneur and a leader in education of the electronic engineering community. Dr. Aliphas obtained his Ph.D. and M.Sc. degrees from Stanford University and his B.Sc. from The Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico, all in Electrical Engineering. His early work was on speech compression and speech recognition and he developed at Kurzweil AI one of the early DSP chips in the industry. Dr. Aliphas was a professor at Boston University and a researcher at Draper Laboratory working on fault-tolerant computing. Dr Aliphas founded DSP World (the largest industry conference and exhibit in DSP Applications and Technology) which he sold to Miller Freeman in 1995. In 1993 he founded TechOnLine which became the largest on-line resource for education and marketing in the electronics industry, TechOnLine was acquired in 2005 by United Business Media. Dr. Aliphas has the patent on the "VirtuaLab" and was selected by EDN magazine as one of the "industry movers in the year 2000".

Amnon Aliphas founded VentureOnLine in 2008 to promote and accelerate the growth of entrepreneurship in the high-tech electronics industry and is starting a fund to help develop high-tech entrepreneurship in Mexico.

Dr. Ricardo Arechavala-Vargas has dedicated his career to research and consulting activities in the domain of small business enterprises and S&T development. He is currently Director of the Institute for the Development of Innovation and Technology in SME´s at Universidad de Guadalajara. Dr. Arechavala received his Doctoral Degree from Stanford University.

His publications are in the fields of S&T policy and management, regional innovation systems and public R&D organizations. He is member of editorial councils for several management and higher education journals in the country. His consulting activities include projects for public and private institutions, including strategic planning for public R&D centers and private firms.

Mr. Valdez has a solid industry background, as an engineer and manager and entrepreneur both in Mexico and the US. He graduated from the Chihuahua Institute of Technology as an industrial engineer specialized in electronics. Later he earned a M.Sc in Electronics specialized in Computer Science from same school.

Mr. Valdez has a solid industry background, as an engineer and manager and entrepreneur both in Mexico and the US. He graduated from the Chihuahua Institute of Technology as an industrial engineer specialized in electronics. Later he earned a M.Sc in Electronics specialized in Computer Science from same school.

He has been an active promoter of professional networks linking other individuals and their companies to Mexico and doing some coaching on the collaboration opportunities that need to happen in today's interconnected world.