Friday Event: Entrepreneurship to Engineering Leadership

A Gordon Leadership Center Event on Friday Jan 28: 5PM: "Entrepreneurship to Engineering Leadership"

Location: Jacobs Hall - Qualcomm Conference Center, UC San Diego Jacobs School of Engineering. Map here.


Creativity, innovation and leadership are among the essential attributes of future engineers as identified in the Engineer 2020 report by the National Academy of Engineering. It is critical for students to have the ability to identify new needs and opportunities for technological innovation in highly complex and interdisciplinary domains. The goal of this talk is to discuss a “technological innovation start-up” model and its stages such as seed stage to start-up stage, early stage to expansion & lead stage.


Speaker Bio:

Speaker Bio

Cahit Akin, PhD – Principal, ITU Ventures/President & CEO, Mushroom Networks, Inc. received his PhD and MSE degree in Electrical Engineering and MS in Mathematics from University of Michigan at Ann Arbor. He holds a BS degree in Electrical Engineering from Bilkent University, Turkey. Currently, he is a Principal at ITU Ventures, LLC, a seed stage Venture Capital firm with $200 million under management, where he has been working since 2001. Dr. Akin managed the Adaptive Systems Laboratory out of Cal-IT2 at University of California San Diego, and continues to be a volunteer scholar at Cal-IT2. Dr. Akin is a cofounder and investor in Mushroom Networks, Inc. where he is also the President and Chief Executive Officer. Previously, Dr. Akin has worked as a senior analyst at a boutique marketing consultancy firm on Wall Street ­ New York, formulating marketing strategies for multi-billion dollar companies. Dr. Akin has worked on technical and research aspects of communications for over 7 years including several patents. Dr. Akin is a recipient of the NATO Graduate Study Scholarship award and was a national team member for International Mathematics Olympiad in 1993.