"Inventing and Catalyzing Future Industries" by Phillip Alvelda, DARPA BioTech Office

Learn how new advances in gene therapy, neuroscience and AI promise to transform a vast array of industrial landscapes in the not too distant future.

As scientists' understanding of nature's codes advances, new technologies will reshape biotech, medicine, telecommunications, media, and more.

Dr. Phillip Alvelda will share his experiences and lessons learned over the past three decades in technology, from interning for astrophysicist Carl Sagan, to working on robotics at MIT, his time at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, and the wonderful world of microchips, tiny television screens, and mobile networks he worked on when founding numerous technology companies.

Speaker and Presenter Information

Phillip Alvelda
Program Manager, DARPA

Dr. Alvelda is a Program Manager at the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency [DARPA], where he is developing a national-scale innovation program to create next-generation brain-computer interfaces connecting electronics directly to neurons.

Prior to DARPA and WISE, Dr. Alvelda was the founding CEO of MobiTV, the world’s leading provider of live TV, VoD, and music over mobile networks. MobiTV launched the world’s first live television experience over mobile networks. MobiTV’s service has grown since its launch in 2003 to over 18M subscribers across all the major US, Canada, UK, and Latin American mobile networks, making MobiTV the US’s 3rd largest television distributor.

Dr. Alvelda has been awarded an Emmy by the Academy of Motion Pictures, was selected by Fast Company as the US’s 15th most influential high-tech entrepreneur, and has received numerous other industry leadership awards from AlwaysOn, CNET, Fierce, Frost & Sullivan, Mobile Entertainment (as one of the top 20 most influential New Media Executives), Red Herring, and other influencers for innovation and market leadership. He is a regular invited speaker at media, telecom, and education industry events, including the World Economic Forum, where he was chosen as a “Technology Pioneer” in 2007. Prior to MobiTV, Dr. Alvelda founded The MicroDisplay Corporation, a manufacturer of high-resolution miniature displays for low-cost, high-definition TVs and virtual reality displays.

Dr. Alvelda has also developed spacecraft hardware and software systems and new computing architectures at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, where he designed and built sensors that flew on the Space Shuttle, as well as the Galileo and Magellan interplanetary spacecraft.

Dr. Alvelda sits on the boards of:

Education Superhighway: a 501C3 dedicated to a providing a gigabit of broadband for all public schools in the US, and the policy driver behind the White House’s “Connected Education Initiative”
Schoolzilla: a Big Data analytics provider for school, teacher, and student performance management developed at the Aspire Charter Schools
Underground Labs: the media start-up behind The New York Rock Exchange.

Dr. Alvelda holds over 30 patents and patents-pending on a wide range of technologies, a technical Emmy Award, a Bachelor’s degree in Physics from Cornell University, and Master’s and PhD degrees in Computer Science and Electrical Engineering from MIT.

Expected Number of Attendees

140

Relevant Government Agencies

Air Force, Army, Navy & Marine Corps, Intelligence Agencies, DOD & Military, Dept of Education, NASA, State Government, CIA, Coast Guard, National Institutes of Health, USAID, Federal Government