Keynote Speakers

Charles Fan is a Senior Vice President at VMware in strategic R&D. Charles and his team are looking into the fundamental shifts happening in technologies and customer needs, and how these disruptive changes will impact the data management methodologies in the cloud. Prior to this role, Charles was the founder and leader of both the VMware China R&D Center, and the EMC China Center of Excellence. Today, Over 1500 engineers work in those R&D Centers, and both centers are among the most respected R&D groups in China. Prior to the China roles, Charles was a co-founder and CTO of Rainfinity, which was acquired by EMC in 2005. He led the creation of Rainfinity's industry leading file virtualization and high availability products. Charles has also held positions at Intel Corporation, Goldman Sachs, and Cheyenne Software. He is an expert in distributed systems and network storage technologies, and received his Ph.D. and M.S. in Electrical Engineering from the California Institute of Technology, and his B.E. in Electrical Engineering from the Cooper Union.

Yasheng Huang is the International Program Professor in Chinese Economy and Business and a Professor of Global Economics and Management at the MIT Sloan School of Management.

Huang founded and runs the China Lab and the India Lab, which aim to help entrepreneurs in those countries improve their management skills. He is an expert source on international business, political economy, and international management. In collaboration with other scholars, Huang is conducting research on human capital formation in China and India, entrepreneurship, and ethnic and labor-intensive foreign direct investment (FDI). Prior to MIT Sloan, he held faculty positions at the University of Michigan and at Harvard Business School. Huang also served as a consultant to the World Bank.

His research has been profiled in many publications, including TheWall Street Journal,The Economist, Businessworld, Le Monde, the Economic Times, as well as in numerous Chinese publications. He also has contributed to the Financial Times, The New York Times, and Foreign Policy. Huang’s published books include Inflation and Investment Controls in China (1996), FDI in China (1998), Selling China (2003), and Financial Reform in China (2005, co-edited with Tony Saich and Edward Steinfeld). His most recent book, Capitalism with Chinese Characteristics (2008), is based on detailed archival and quantitative evidence spanning three decades of reforms. Huang shows that private entrepreneurship, facilitated by financial liberalization and microeconomic flexibility, played a central role in China’s economic miracle.

Huang has held or received prestigious fellowships, such as the National Fellowship at Stanford University and the Social Science Research Council-MacArthur Fellowship. He is a member of the Trust Center for MIT Entrepreneurship, a Fellow at the Center for Chinese Economic Research and the Center for China in the World Economy at Tsinghua University, a Fellow at the William Davidson Institute at Michigan Business School, and a World Economic Forum Fellow.

Huang holds a BA in government from Harvard College and a PhD in government from Harvard University.

Kai Li is a Paul M. Wythes '55, P'86 and Marcia R. Wythes P'86 Professor at Princeton University, where he worked as a faculty member since 1986. Before joining Princeton University, he received his Ph.D. degree from Yale University, M.S. degree from University of Science and Technology of China, Chinese Academy of Sciences, and B.S. degree from Jilin University.

His research expertise is in operating systems, parallel and distributed systems, de-duplication storage systems, large display systems, and data analysis and search of large feature-rich data. He pioneered Shared Virtual Memory or Distributed Shared Memory (DSM) that allow users to program using shared-memory programming model on clusters of computers, which opened a new research area in parallel distributed systems. His work on efficient user-level communication on a cluster of computers contributed to the industry communication standards now widely used in cluster computing and large-scale supercomputers.

In 2001, he co-founded Data Domain, Inc whose mission was to replace tape automation with disk-based eco-systems at data centers. He was the principal founder and led the innovations of key technologies to build the first and subsequent disk-based commercial deduplication storage systems. Such storage systems can store an order-of-magnitude more backup and archival data than traditional approaches and can transfer them efficiently over wide area network to remote sites for disaster recovery. These products have revolutionized how storage systems are built and how backups are stored at data centers. Data Domain went public in 2007 and acquired by EMC in 2009. In 2011, its product line has achieved $1.56B revenue with 78% gross margin. He served in Data Domain in roles as the initial CEO, CTO and Chief Scientist. He serves on the technical advisory board of EMC since 2009.

Dr. Li is a member of National Academy of Engineering, an ACM fellow and an IEEE fellow. He recently received ACM SIGOPS Hall of Fame award for his early work on distributed shared memory.

Christine Ortiz is the Dean for Graduate Education and a Professor of Materials Science and Engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. She has received over 30 national and international honors, including the Sigma Xi Distinguished Lecturer Award, the MIT Martin Luther King Jr. Leadership Award, a recognition award for “Outstanding Alumni” by the National Consortium for Graduate Degrees for Minorities in Engineering and Science, and the National Science Foundation Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers, which was presented to her by President George W. Bush at the White House. She is a National Security Science and Engineering Faculty Fellow, a member of the Defense Science Study Group, and was a Lady Davis Fellow and visiting professor at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in Israel, where she received the Hadassah Appreciation Medal.

Dr. Ortiz currently serves on the editorial boards of the journals Science, Advanced Biomaterials, Transactions of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers, Applied Mechanics Reviews, Scientifica, and The Open Nanomedicine Journal. She has served as a reviewer for the National Science Foundation, the National Institutes of Health, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, and the Department of Defense. Dr. Ortiz is the founding and current faculty director of the MIT International Science and Technology Initiatives (MISTI) Israel Program.

Professor Ortiz obtained her B.S. from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, NY, and her M.S. and Ph.D. from Cornell University in Ithaca, NY, all in the field of materials science and engineering.

Edward B. Roberts is the David Sarnoff Professor of the Management of Technology and Founder/Chair of the MIT Entrepreneurship Center. Among his 170 articles and eleven books, his "Entrepreneurs in High-Technology: Lessons from MIT and Beyond" (Oxford University Press) won the Association of American Publishers Award for Outstanding Book. Professor Roberts chaired MIT Sloan's Management of Technological Innovation and Entrepreneurship Group for over 30 years, chaired the mid-career MIT Management of Technology Program for 20 years, and most recently started and directs the intensive MIT Sloan Entrepreneurship and Innovation MBA Track. Dr. Roberts’ 2009 report, "Entrepreneurial Impact: The Role of MIT", http://entrepreneurship.mit.edu/impact.php, documents the history, determinants and consequences of MIT’s entrepreneurial achievements.

Beyond MIT, Edward Roberts is active as co-founder, board member and angel investor in many high-tech start-ups. His primary co-founded companies are Medical Information Technology, Inc. and Sohu.com, Inc. (Beijing), and he continues as a Director of both firms. Roberts co-founded and became a General Partner of the Zero Stage Capital Equity Funds, the first Massachusetts “seed funds”, later also co-founding CommonAngels. Current early-stage Boards include Daktari Diagnostics, DynoMedia (Beijing), and Visible Measures. He holds four MIT degrees, including the PhD in Economics.

Kevin is the Chief Operating Officer of the World Economic Forum USA, the North American affiliate of the World Economic Forum, for which he oversees operations and serves as Corporate Secretary.

Since 1992, either internally or as an external advisor, Kevin has held a number of global roles for the World Economic Forum, including heading its Centre for Global Industries, overseeing its Membership and Partnership department, leading its Financial Institutions sector, and guiding its Institutional Strategy function. He has also launched several World Economic Forum initiatives including its Risk Response Network, its Private Investors industry, worldwide industry summits, and its Global Leaders for Tomorrow community. In 2005 he founded its North American affiliate, the World Economic Forum USA, and has overseen its growth to over 100 staff.

Previously, Kevin spent ten years with McKinsey & Company as part of its North American Wholesale and Investment Banking practice as well as its Corporate Finance and Strategy group in Switzerland. There he was primarily focused on corporate, business unit, and product strategy, serving wholesale and retail financial companies as well as non-profit institutions.

Kevin graduated from Stanford University with an M.B.A. and J.D., with distinction, and was elected to the Order of the Coif. He graduated from Harvard University with an A.B., magna cum laude, and is currently an adjunct professor at Brandeis University's International Business School.

Kevin is a frequent speaker and author on several topics, such as moving corporate governance beyond compliance to leadership; corporate risk, resilience and preparedness; the business, economic and societal implications of globalization; and the complexity of businesses’ engagement with their stakeholders. He sits on several for profit and non-profit boards, including Claridge Inc. and the New Center for Arts & Culture.

Dick K.P. Yue is the Philip J. Solondz Professor of Engineering, and Professor of Mechanical and Ocean Engineering at MIT. He serves as the Director for International Programs for the School of Engineering, and co-Chair of the Institute-wide MIT Global Council. Professor Yue is also the MIT Director for the Singapore-MIT Alliance, and the co-Director for the Singapore-MIT Alliance for Research and Technology. He considers himself "first and foremost a researcher and educator", but his position in the MIT administration affords him numerous opportunities to make an impact Institute-wide.

Professor Yue received all his degrees (S.B., S.M. and Sc.D./Ph.D.) from MIT, and has been a faculty member in Ocean Engineering (now part of the Department of Mechanical Engineering) since 1983. He is active in research and teaching in marine fluid mechanics and ocean engineering, fields of interest that are fundamental to broad classes of problems ranging from coastal and offshore development to understanding the role of oceans in global warming. He also directs the Vortical Flow Research Laboratory and co-directs the Ocean Engineering Towing Tank facility. His main research contributions are in theoretical and computational hydrodynamics. He has authored/co-authored more than two hundred papers and a two-volume textbook on wave hydrodynamics and ocean fluid mechanics. Professor Yue served as Associate Dean of Engineering from 1999-2007. He was the originator of the MIT OpenCourseWare (OCW) concept, which now offers materials for over 1,800 MIT courses online. He was also the Founding Faculty Director of the Undergraduate Practice Opportunities Program (UPOP), a program that is transforming engineering education by providing sophomores with special training and industry-based work experiences.

Weijie Yun is currently a Senior Advisor at Northern Light Venture Capital. Prior to that, he was the co-founder and CEO of Telegent Systems, Inc. where he led the company to create the mobile TV market around the world. Prior to Telegent, he led marketing and product management at Berkana Wireless, Inc., which was acquired by Qualcomm. He also served as the founding president & CEO of AIP Networks and was a founder and director of SiTek, Inc., a spin-off from BEI Technologies.

Weijie was awarded 2008 Northern California Entrepreneur of the Year by Ernst & Young. He holds MS and PhD degrees in Electrical Engineering from the University of California at Berkeley.