Dr. Shrivastav received his Ph.D. in speech and hearing sciences from Indiana University in 2001. He has used his expertise to study communication processes and technology with a special emphasis on the study of communication difficulties resulting from disease or the normal aging process. His research has been funded by federal and private agencies, including the National Instititutes of Health. He was instrumental in the development of the Audigence optimization method and has been involved in its development since 2002. He is currently an associate professor at the University of Florida, Gainesville, and a research health scientist at the Brain Rehabilitation Research Center, Malcom Randall VA Medical Center, Gainesville, Fla.
Dr. Alice E. Holmes is a Professor of Audiology and Graduate Coordinator in the Department of Communicative Disorders at the University of Florida. She received her doctorate in Communication Disorders from the Pennsylvania State University. She is Board Certified by and holds a Specialty Certification in Cochlear Implants from the American Board of Audiology. Dr. Holmes has also been the audiology director of the Cochlear Implant Team at the University of Florida since 1985. She is a past president of the Academy of Rehabilitative Audiology and an Invited Fellow of the International Colloquium of Rehabilitative Audiology. Her honors include the 2003 Professional Achievement Award, Idaho State University, GN Resound 1999 Caring of the Profession Award, and Florida Association of Speech-Language Pathologists and Audiologists 1999 Clinician of the Year. Her research, teaching and clinical work throughout her career has focused on the rehabilitative techniques including the use of amplification and cochlear implants for persons with hearing loss to enhance their quality of life.
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James Bress is currently the president of AST Technology Labs (AST) which he founded in 1995. AST provides product testing and design consulting services to telephone equipment developers and manufacturers. Mr. Bress’s work at AST has been focused on the development of testing capabilities, including test plans and procedures, the development of custom testing equipment, product development consulting, and client development and retention. Telephony product testing performed at AST is based on standards published by various standards organizations, and also custom testing capabilities and test plans, developed by AST, for which standards do not currently exist.
Mr. Bress has been an active member of the Telecommunications Industry Association (TIA) standards organization for over 12 years and a major contributor to many standards developed by the TIA-TR-41 engineering committee. Mr. Bress served as chairman of the TIA-TR-41.3 subcommittee (Analog and Digital Wire-line Telephone Standards) from 2000 to 2007, and he is currently the vice-chairman of TR-41.3.
Before founding AST, Mr. Bress was a Member of the Technical Staff at Bell Communications Research (Bellcore) from 1985 to 1995. While at Bellcore, Mr. Bress focused on new services development, publishing network and telephone equipment requirements, and developing and operating a telephone equipment testing lab. Bellcore’s customers were the Regional Bell Operating Companies (RBOCs) and telephony equipment manufacturers.
Mr. Bress earned a MSEE from the California Institute of Technology and a BSEE from the University of North Carolina–Charlotte.
Mr. Deffebach received his BSEE from the University of Florida in 1988 and his JD from Emory University in 1992. He practiced intellectual property law in an Atlanta law firm, followed by serving as in-house litigation and licensing counsel for Harris Corporation. In 1997, he joined ATLC Ltd., an organization specializing in the monetization and licensing of patent portfolios. Mr. Deffebach has participated in patent licensing agreements generating over $1.5 billion for his clients. In addition to his patent licensing work, Mr. Deffebach also currently utilizes his licensing experience as an angel investor in an array of start-ups.
Richard Fox has twenty years of experience in the creation of new companies from well funded defense and aerospace technology.
Richard is a principal in Astralis Group, LLC. Astralis Group maximizes the value of new technologies by creating successful business and product opportunities. The Group partners with companies to develop business strategies, and advises on the execution of those strategies. When appropriate, the Group participates as part of the implementation team.
Richard’s first company was a spin-out of an operation of Westinghouse, with a machine vision system derived from a military target recognition system. Based on that success, Richard pioneered innovative concepts for nurturing and growing entrepreneurial high tech businesses. As President of the Central Florida Innovation Corporation, Richard guided the launch of companies based on military technologies.
Richard has worked with Lockheed Martin, SAIC, Agere Systems, and high growth potential entrepreneurial companies, to develop strategic plans for growth markets.
Fox was a member of the senior management team of ENDOlap, Inc., a medical products company that designed and marketed products used in minimally invasive surgery. Six years after its founding, ENDOlap was recognized as the 13th fastest growing company in the State of Florida, and three years later, it was acquired by Cardinal Health, Inc., a Fortune 100 company.
Richard served on the Florida Seed Capital Board and has been a member of several task forces for the State of Florida on venture capital and seed capital investing. He is a member of the board of the National Association of Seed and Venture Funds.
Richard is a frequent speaker on the subject of new company creation by professional teams. He earned his B.S. degree in physics from M.I.T., and holds 14 patents on the application of computers to industrial processes, and on medical devices
Mr. Gorman received his degree in logistics and marketing from The Ohio State University in 1983. In 1986, he first entered the hearing health care market with Beltone Electronics where he spent nearly 11 years working with exclusive distributors of hearing instruments to grow their business and profitability. In 1997, Curt joined Nobel BioCare, the world’s largest dental implant company, to head up their Craniofacial Rehabilitation and Audiology division that had a new technology in the area of hearing restoration. In 1999, the division was spun-off into a new company known as Entific Medical Systems. Curt spent two years working closely with the FDA to expand the indications of the product and develop the proper customer base. In 2003, Cochlear Corporation acquired Entific. Currently, Curt is president of ProstaLund Inc., a urology company with its roots in Sweden and its U.S. base of operations in Sanford, Fla. Curt has more than 20 years of experience in hearing health care, both within hearing aids and clinically based hearing implant markets. In addition, he has been involved with three start-up ventures as president or CEO—two in the hearing health care field and all three involving Scandinavian owners.
Dr. John G. Harris received his BS and MS degrees in Electrical Engineering from MIT in 1983 and 1986. He earned his PhD from Caltech in the interdisciplinary Computation and Neural Systems program in 1991. At Caltech, he designed and implemented neuromorphic computation chips with Professors Koch and Mead. After a two-year postdoc at the MIT AI lab, Dr Harris joined the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department at the University of Florida (UF). He is currently a full professor and co-directs the Computational NeuroEngineering Lab with a joint appointment in the Biomedical Engineering Department. Dr. Harris leads the Hybrid Signal Processing Group in researching biologically-inspired algorithms, circuits and architectures for sensing and signal processing. Dr. Harris has published over 100 research papers and patents in these research areas. For several years, he and his students have collaborated with cell phone manufacturers in designing techniques to improve the quality and intelligibility of telephone speech signals.
Mr. Troner received his Bachelor of Science in Electrical Engineering in 1980 and his Juris Doctorate in 1984, both from the University of Florida. Mr. Troner has been practicing intellectual property law for more than 22 years, beginning his practice in Washington, D.C., in 1985 with the firm of Barnes and Thornburg. He later joined Harris Corporation in Melbourne, Fla., as Senior Intellectual Property Counsel supporting both the Semiconductor and Communications Sectors of Harris. In 1995, Mr. Troner left Harris to form his own patent licensing firm, André–Troner L.C. with partner Edward André and has been representing clients such as Kodak Co. and Harris Corp. in the licensing of their patents worldwide. Partner Bud Deffebach joined the firm in 1997 and together André–Troner L.C. has brought in more than $1.5 billion to their respective clients. Most recently, Mr. Troner has been providing advice to Audigence to assure the proper intellectual property protection is acquired on all of Audigence’s intellectual property.
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