Alden DoRosario - Outstanding Achievement in Entrepreneurship
Alden DoRosario is a Co-Founder and Chief Technology Officer of Chitika Inc., an online advertising network.
In 2004, Alden and his co-founder Venkat Kolluri borrowed $7 each from their wives and decided to compete with Google's Adsense advertising service. Over the next 8 years, with zero dollars of outside venture funding, they bootstrapped their way to being the No. 2 advertising service in the world, all while providing online publishers a viable alternative to Google Adsense. In 2014, they followed their success with Chitika by launching Cidewalk.com, a mobile ad service for small and medium businesses.
Prior to Chitika, Mr. DoRosario served as a Senior Research Engineer at Terra Lycos, where he designed and implemented several key projects on information retrieval, customer analytics and business intelligence. He was was particularly instrumental in designing a large-scale data warehouse to support direct marketing and cross/up sell efforts across the 120 Terra Lycos properties.
Mr. DoRosorio has multiple patents in Internet-related technologies pertaining to breakthroughs in Advertising/Direct Marketing on Internet networks and Information Retrieval.
Mr. DoRosario received a B.S. in Computer Science Engineering from the Visvesvaraya Regional College of Engineering in Nagpur, India in 1995 and an M.S. in Computer Science from the University of Massachusetts Amherst in 2004.
Elaine C. Haney - Outstanding Achievement in Management
Elaine Haney is Chief Operating Officer at Legacy.com, an innovative technology company that is the online leader in the memorial and obituary market, where she oversees the execution of the company's strategic and operational plans and has direct responsibility for Legacy's product and content teams and data worldwide.
Before joining Legacy.com, Ms. Haney served most recently as President & CEO of Tributes.com, which she co-founded with fellow UMASS alum and founder of Monster.com Jeff Taylor in 2008 and successfully sold to Legacy.com in the Spring of 2015. Prior to that, she held several senior management positions for Eons.com, including SVP of Product where she guided the product, design and editorial teams and the initial launch of the Eons website. Before joining the Eons team, Ms. Haney was one of three key executives at Switchboard.com that grew Switchboard's online directory platform from an Internet spin-off to a profitable, publicly-traded company and finally to a successfully acquired entity.
A native of Framingham, Massachusetts, Ms. Haney serves on the Boards of the Boston Club and the Boston Center for Adult Education and sits on the Institutional Advancement Committee (IAC) of the Crittenton Women's Union. She regularly mentors entrepreneurs and young women leaders with ties to major universities within the Boston area such as UMass, Babson, and Bentley.
Ms. Haney received a B.S. in Computer Science from the University of Massachusetts Amherst in 1984 and an M.S. in Applied Management from Lesley University in 1986.
Shaun Kane - Outstanding Achievement by a Young Alum
Dr. Shaun Kane is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Computer Science at the University of Colorado Boulder where he directs the Superhuman Computing Lab.
Professor Kane's primary research interests are accessible user interfaces and mobile human-computer interaction. His work explores ways to make mobile devices easier to use, especially for people with disabilities and people in distracting environments.
Before joining the University of Colorado Boulder, Dr. Kane was an Assistant Professor of Computer Science at the University of Maryland Baltimore County from 2011 to 2014 where he was a Hrabowski Fund for Innovation Fellow. He was recently selected as a 2016 Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellow and is the first CU-Boulder faculty member to receive the prestigious fellowship for work in computer science. Dr. Kane received a Best Workshop Paper Award at the IDC Conference in 2013, Best Paper Award at the CHI Conference in 2011, Finalist in 2010 for the Imagine Cup Touch and Tablet Accessibility Award, Best Poster Award at the iConference in 2009, and Best Paper Award at the MobileHCI Conference in 2008.
Dr. Kane received B.S. and M.S. in Computer Science from the University of Massachusetts Amherst in 2003 and 2005, respectively, and an M.S. and Ph.D. in Information Science from The Information School at the University of Washington in 2011.
Badri Nath - Outstanding Achievement in Research
Badri Nath is a Professor in the Computer Science Department at Rutgers University.
Dr. Nath's current research interests are in the area of software defined infrastructures as it relates to Smart Urban Centers. His current work focuses on developing a robust information architecture for productive use of information.
In addition to several best paper and test-of-time awards (most recently in 2015 from INFOCOM), Dr. Nath received the Rutgers University's prestigious Professor of the Year Award in 1995 and an Excellence in Teaching Award in 2010.
Aside from teaching, Dr. Nath served as the Lead Research and Development Consultant at mFormation Technologies, and is currently a consultant at the data analytics company, Kirusa. Prof. Nath received a B.S. in Electronics from Bangalore University in 1981, an M.E. in Computer Science from the Indian Institute of Science in 1983, and Ph.D. in Computer Science from the University of Massachusetts in 1989.
Tom Wagner - Outstanding Achievement in Technology Development
Dr. Tom Wagner is the founder and CEO of a venture-backed early-stage company developing novel and innovative products in robotics and artificial intelligence focused on augmenting the human workforce and improving commercial operations in logistics and material handling -- over time lowering the cost of goods and services. Dr. Wagner also currently serves as an advisor to small companies, universities, and investors.
Prior to his current engagements, Wagner served as the Chief Technology Officer of iRobot, a publicly traded company and recognized world leader in mobile intelligent robots for the automated home, defense and industry, and telepresence.
Before joining iRobot, Dr. Wagner served as a program manager at the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), the research and development agency of the U.S. Department of Defense, where he managed programs in artificial intelligence, robotics, communications, command and control, tele-health, connected devices, and connected intelligent assistants.
Earlier in his career, Dr. Wagner served as a principal lead at Honeywell, a professor at the University of Maine, and in leadership and advisory roles in small and startup companies.
Dr. Wagner received a B.S. in Computer Science from Michigan State University, an M.S. in Computer Science from the University of New Hampshire, and a Ph.D. in Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence from the University of Massachusetts Amherst.