The Emerging Brain Fitness Software Market: Building Better Brains

This is an event you may be inter­est­ed in, if you are based in the San Fran­cis­co Bay Area.

The MIT Club of North­ern Cal­i­for­nia, Amer­i­can Soci­ety on Aging, The Busi­ness Forum on Aging and Smart­Sil­vers presents:

The Emerg­ing Brain Fit­ness Mar­ket:  Build­ing Bet­ter Brains (Con­tact infor­ma­tion and Reg­is­tra­tion Here)

Date: 02/12/2008 Tuesday
Time: 6:00pm
Venue: Wil­son Sonsini
Loca­tion: 950 Page Mill Road, Palo Alto
Cost: $20 online, $25 walk-in

Con­tact infor­ma­tion and Reg­is­tra­tion Here.

Here is the buzz  Sci­en­tif­ic, tech­no­log­i­cal and demo­graph­ic trends have con­verged to cre­ate an excit­ing new mar­ket in brain fit­ness, where soft­ware and online appli­ca­tions can assess and train cog­ni­tive abil­i­ties. That equates to a sharp­er mind and bet­ter mem­o­ry reten­tion con­tribut­ing to health­i­er aging.  There is cur­rent­ly a $400m world­wide mar­ket with high growth ahead predicted.

Join us in live­ly and infor­ma­tive dis­cus­sions as Alvaro Fer­nan­dez; CEO of SharpBrains.com sum­ma­rizes the sci­ence, key mar­ket seg­ments, play­ers and trends, based on the first Brain Fit­ness Soft­ware Mar­ket Report, pre­sent­ed in this event.  He will dis­cuss the impli­ca­tions with sev­er­al neu­ro-tech­nol­o­gy, gam­ing experts and investors.”  Mod­er­at­ed by Zack Lynch, the speak­er and pan­el will discuss: 

· What results are sci­en­tists dis­cov­er­ing from the use of Brain Fit­ness tools?
· Who will use brain tools and why?
· What is the mar­ket poten­tial for new com­pa­nies enter­ing the brain fit­ness market?
· What kind of brain fit­ness appli­ca­tions are being developed?

Speak­er:
— Alvaro Fer­nan­dez, SharpBrains.com

Mod­er­a­tor:
— Zack Lynch, Neu­rotech­nol­o­gy Indus­try Orga­ni­za­tion (NIO)

Pan­elists:
— Andy Don­ner, Physic Ventures
— Kunal Sarkar, CEO Lumos Labs
— Alexan­der Doman, CEO Advanced Brain Technologies
— Dan Michel, CEO Dakim
Open­ing Remarks and Speaker/Panelists Introductions:
— Susan Ayers Walk­er, Smart­Sil­vers and AARP.org (Con­tribut­ing Tech­nol­o­gy Journalist)

Time:
6:00PM Reg­is­tra­tion, Hors d’oeu­vres and Networking
7:00PM Pre­sen­ta­tion and Pan­el Discussion

Con­tact infor­ma­tion and Reg­is­tra­tion Here.

Bios:

Alvaro Fer­nan­dez, Co-founder, CEO SharpBrains.com. Alvaro is a lead­ing voice and thought-leader in the grow­ing sci­ence-based brain fit­ness mar­ket, Alvaro has been quot­ed by Los Ange­les Times, Forbes, MSNBC, Mar­ket­Watch, among oth­ers, and is a guest blog­ger at the Huff­in­g­ton Post. Alvaro has pre­sent­ed trends in the emerg­ing brain fit­ness mar­ket at mul­ti­ple con­fer­ences and uni­ver­si­ties includ­ing the Neu­rotech Lead­ers Sum­mit, Seri­ous Games Sum­mit, Stan­ford Busi­ness School, Neu­rotech­nol­o­gy Indus­try con­fer­ence, the Insti­tute for the Future, Amer­i­can Soci­ety on Aging (2007), and more. He start­ed his career at McK­in­sey & Com­pa­ny and led the launch and turn­around of sev­er­al pub­lish­ing and edu­ca­tion com­pa­nies in the US and Europe, includ­ing Ber­tels­mann On Line, Docent, Inc, and Edu­soft, a unit of Houghton Mif­flin. Alvaro has an MBA and MA in Edu­ca­tion from Stan­ford Uni­ver­si­ty, and enjoys teach­ing The Sci­ence of Brain Health and Brain Fit­ness at SFSU and UC-Berke­ley Osh­er Life­long Learn­ing Insti­tute. Alvaro launched Sharp­Brains with neu­ro­sci­en­tist Dr. Elkhonon Goldberg.

Zack Lynch, Founder and Exec­u­tive Direc­tor of the Neu­rotech­nol­o­gy Indus­try Orga­ni­za­tion (NIO). NIO is the trade asso­ci­a­tion rep­re­sent­ing com­pa­nies involved in neu­ro­science, brain research cen­ters and patient advo­ca­cy groups across the world. Zack found­ed NIO to give the over 500 neu­rotech com­pa­nies devel­op­ing drugs, devices and diag­nos­tics for neu­ro­log­i­cal dis­eases and psy­chi­atric ill­ness­es a col­lec­tive voice. He is also the founder of Neu­roIn­sights, a mar­ket research firm and invest­ment advi­so­ry firm cov­er­ing neu­rotech. He is the pub­lish­er of the invest­ment newslet­ter, Neu­rotech Insights, edi­tor of Brain Waves, an indus­try weblog pro­vid­ing com­men­tary on the inter­sec­tion of neu­ro­science and soci­ety, and co-author of Neu­roIn­sights 350 page annu­al report on glob­al neu­rotech­nol­o­gy indus­try. Mr. Lynch is quot­ed wide­ly in the press with respect to devel­op­ments across com­mer­cial neu­ro­science. Mr. Lynch serves on the advi­so­ry boards of the McGov­ern Insti­tute for Brain Research at MIT, Cen­ter for Neu­roe­co­nom­ic Stud­ies at Clare­mont Grad­u­ate Uni­ver­si­ty, Cen­ter for Cog­ni­tive Lib­er­ty & Ethics, the Insti­tute for Glob­al Futures and Social­text, a soft­ware com­pa­ny. Pre­vi­ous­ly, he was an exec­u­tive and founder of sev­er­al enter­prise soft­ware com­pa­nies in prof­it opti­miza­tion and col­lab­o­ra­tive fore­cast­ing. Zack received an MA in Eco­nom­ic Geog­ra­phy and dou­ble BS in Evo­lu­tion­ary Biol­o­gy and Envi­ron­men­tal Sci­ence, all from UCLA.

Pan­elist Bios

Andy Don­ner, Physic Ven­tures — Andy is is expe­ri­enced in finan­cial ser­vices, health­care, and infor­ma­tion tech­nol­o­gy indus­tries. Andy was pre­vi­ous­ly a Senior Asso­ciate with Great Spir­it Ven­tures, an ear­ly-stage ven­ture cap­i­tal fund, where he focused on con­sumer health­care invest­ments. Mr. Don­ner led Great Spir­it Ven­tures’ invest­ment in Attune Foods, Cora­zonas Foods, Light­Full Foods, and The Nat­ur­al Den­tist, where he cur­rent­ly serves on the board. Pri­or to join­ing Great Spir­it Ven­tures, Mr. Don­ner spent six years found­ing, and man­ag­ing rapid-growth com­pa­nies in the high-tech indus­try, includ­ing at Madison.com, where he served as Co-Founder and Chief Oper­at­ing Offi­cer; Entopia, where he estab­lished and direct­ed the prod­uct mar­ket­ing depart­ment; and LeapFrog Enter­pris­es, where he devel­oped new busi­ness oppor­tu­ni­ties in the health­care indus­try. Mr. Don­ner grad­u­at­ed cum laude from Duke Uni­ver­si­ty’s pre-med pro­gram and earned his MBA at the Haas School of Busi­ness at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Cal­i­for­nia, Berke­ley, where he was award­ed full-tuition as a Haas Mer­it Scholar.

Kunal Sarkar, CEO Lumos Labs — Kunal is a found­ing mem­ber of Lumos Labs and leads the oper­a­tions and mar­ket­ing team. Pre­vi­ous­ly he was a Vice Pres­i­dent at McCown De Leeuw and Co. (MDC), a $1.2 bil­lion pri­vate equi­ty fund mak­ing growth equi­ty invest­ments. At MDC Kunal was inte­gral­ly involved in the strat­e­gy, oper­a­tions and the finan­cial recap­i­tal­iza­tion of a num­ber of port­fo­lio com­pa­nies includ­ing serv­ing on the board of On Stage Enter­tain­ment and USBuild, and the IPO of StoneMor (STON). Pri­or to MDC, he worked in the Strate­gic Plan­ning and Devel­op­ment group at the Walt Dis­ney Com­pa­ny, where he worked close­ly with senior man­age­ment to eval­u­ate acqui­si­tions, joint ven­tures and new busi­ness oppor­tu­ni­ties. Kunal grad­u­at­ed magna cum laude from Prince­ton Uni­ver­si­ty with a B.A. in Eco­nom­ics with a minor in Finance.

G. Alexan­der Doman, Pres­i­dent and CEO of Advanced Brain Tech­nolo­gies (ABT) – Alex is founder of ABT, a neu­ro-tech­nol­o­gy com­pa­ny that devel­ops and dis­trib­utes inter­ac­tive soft­ware and music pro­grams for the improve­ment of mem­o­ry, atten­tion, lis­ten­ing, aca­d­e­m­ic skills, sen­so­ry pro­cess­ing, brain health, peak per­for­mance and more . Alex is the third gen­er­a­tion of a pio­neer­ing fam­i­ly of neu­ro-devel­op­men­tal spe­cial­ists work­ing with pedi­atric and adult pop­u­la­tions since the 1940’s. Pri­or to found­ing ABT he served as Exec­u­tive Direc­tor of the Nation­al Acad­e­my for Child Devel­op­ment. For the last 15 years his career has been focused on research, prod­uct devel­op­ment, and edu­ca­tion pri­mar­i­ly in the areas of psy­choa­coustic music tech­nolo­gies and brain fit­ness software.

Dan Michel, Founder & CEO, Dakim – Dan spent more than 30 years help­ing some of Amer­i­ca’s most suc­cess­ful com­pa­nies mar­ket and adver­tise their brands. Over the last twen­ty years, he was Chief Oper­at­ing Offi­cer of BBDO Worldwide/Los Ange­les (1980–1988), Pres­i­dent of Mar­ket­ing of Colum­bia Pic­tures (1988–1989), and Pres­i­dent and Co-Cre­ative Direc­tor of his own award-win­ning, cre­ative adver­tis­ing agency, Michel/Russo, Inc., which he found­ed in 1989, and sold in 1999. Dan’s father was diag­nosed with Alzheimer’s Dis­ease in 1993. Based upon learn­ing about the dis­ease, and hav­ing gained first­hand expe­ri­ence par­tic­i­pat­ing in activ­i­ties with his father, he rec­og­nized the ther­a­peu­tic and emo­tion­al val­ue of cog­ni­tive­ly stim­u­lat­ing activ­i­ties, and the press­ing need for more effec­tive means of pro­vid­ing this line of ther­a­py for suf­fer­ers of Alzheimer’s Dis­ease and relat­ed demen­tia. Dan earned a B.A. from Clare­mont Men’s Col­lege (now Clare­mont McKen­na Col­lege) and an M.S. from North­west­ern University.

About the MIT Club of North­ern Cal­i­for­nia (MITCNC): The MITCNC is the pre­mier region­al alumni/ae club of the Mass­a­chu­setts Insti­tute of Tech­nol­o­gy. The club offers numer­ous resources in entre­pre­neur­ship, career devel­op­ment, and pro­fes­sion­al net­work­ing in the Bay Area. In addi­tion, the Club pro­vides many oppor­tu­ni­ties for social inter­ac­tion between MIT alumni/ae as well as alumni/ae from sim­i­lar uni­ver­si­ty clubs. T

About Smart­Sil­vers: The goal of Smart­Sil­vers is to “lever­age tech­nolo­gies which fos­ter active aging. Our mis­sion is to out­reach and pro­mote aware­ness, devel­op­ment and deploy­ment of inno­v­a­tive, con­sumer friend­ly prod­ucts and tech­nol­o­gy-lever­aged ser­vices which cater to the unique needs of our expand­ing senior pop­u­la­tion. Prod­ucts and ser­vices that pro­vide inde­pen­dence, mobil­i­ty and qual­i­ty of lifestyle with­in safe, com­fort­able and famil­iar home environments.

About The Boomer Tech Series: This series of evening events that will focus on emerg­ing tech­nolo­gies and appli­ca­tions tar­get­ed at the inter­sec­tion of Tech­nol­o­gy and Aging; the enhanc­ing of qual­i­ty of life as we age. Spon­sored by the MIT Club of North­ern Cal­i­for­nia and devel­oped by the Smart­Sil­vers Alliance, we are plan­ning future events on top­ics such as sen­sors and ambi­ent tech­nol­o­gy applied to Smart Home Man­age­ment and oth­er sig­nif­i­cant new tech­nolo­gies for health and life management.

Con­tact infor­ma­tion and Reg­is­tra­tion Here.