Start Disrupting

Dr. Zac Doerzaph is the Executive Director of the Virginia Tech Transportation Institute (VTTI), a global leader in transportation research. Working alongside a talented team, Doerzaph focuses on creating a future of ubiquitous, safe, and effective mobility by conducting innovative and impactful research today. Also, a faculty member within the Department of Biomedical Engineering and Mechanics at Virginia Tech, Doerzaph works with fellow faculty to provide experiential learning opportunities to prepare the next generation workforce. Doerzaph is known for innovative and extensive transportation research and leadership projects. His work focuses on maximizing performance at the interface of driver, vehicle, and infrastructure systems through the application of advanced technologies.
Host: Brett Malone
Editor and Producer: Becca Halm

Learn more about entrepreneurship and how to know you've hit traction with your startup from Active Capital Founder and CEO, Pat Matthews.
Pat is the founder and general partner of Active Capital, a venture firm focused on leading seed rounds for B2B SaaS companies outside of Silicon Valley. Prior to Active Capital, Pat was an entrepreneur, operator, and angel investor. Pat’s career started in 1999 when he dropped out of Virginia Tech to start a dot-com with some of his best friends and college roommates. After the dot-com bubble burst, Pat and his team persevered through years of economic downturn before creating Webmail.us, a $10 million dollar software company that was recognized as one of the fastest-growing private companies in America by Inc. Magazine. In 2007, Webmail.us was acquired by Rackspace where Pat worked as an executive on the senior leadership team until 2013. Pat has personally invested in nearly 100 startups and is an active board member of the Virginia Tech Apex Center for Entrepreneurship, Venture for America in San Antonio, and several Active Capital portfolio companies.
Host: Brett Malone
Editor and Producer: Becca Halm

Learn how Disney is utilizing technology to enhance the customer experience with new initiatives and how the Disney accelerator is creating new entertainment adventures and products. Kathy de Paolo, Vice President of Engineering at The Walt Disney Company, shares all this and entrepreneurial advice for all.
Links:
Kathy’s LinkedIn profile
Walt Disney Imagineering: https://sites.disney.com/waltdisneyimagineering/
Disney: https://www.disney.com/
Disney Accelerator: https://disneyaccelerator.com/
Host: Brett Malone
Editor and Producer: Becca Halm

Webster discusses his research with drug discovery and therapeutic areas, and is co-founder of Flux Therapeutics, Inc.

Webster Santos bio: https://chem.vt.edu/people/faculty/teaching-and-research/wsantos.html
Prof. Webster Santos received his BS and Ph.D. from the University of Virginia under Prof. Timothy Macdonald. Following his doctoral studies, he moved to Harvard University as a Ruth Kirschtein NIH fellow with Prof. Gregory Verdine. At Harvard, he performed chemical biology studies targeting RNA structures as well as HIV-1 integrase. In 2006, he started as an assistant professor of chemistry at Virginia Tech and was promoted to associate then full professor in 2018. He held a chaired position as the Blackwood Junior Faculty fellow of Life Science and is currently the Agnes and Cliff Lilly faculty fellow of drug discovery. He is a co-founder of three biotech companies and received the Schug Research Award as well as an Innovator’s award at Virginia Tech. He is on the editorial advisory board of current topics in medicinal chemistry, medicinal research reviews as well as boron in the Americas. His current research centers on developing drugs towards fatty liver disease, cancer, and multiple sclerosis, synthetic methodology of installing boron and silicon onto carbon bonds and chemical biology of targeting HIV-1 RNAs.

In this episode, Brett Malone, Ph.D., VTCRC President/CEO, talks with Michael about TORC, the region's strengths and how it has helped the company, his vision for autonomous trucking and more.
Michael Fleming official bio

Torc Robotics, a pioneer in self-driving vehicles {website}

Torc Robotics, headquartered in Blacksburg, Virginia, is an independent subsidiary of Daimler Truck AG, the global leader and pioneer in trucking. Founded in 2005 at the birth of the self-driving vehicle revolution, Torc has 16 years of experience in pioneering safety-critical, self-driving applications. Torc offers a complete self-driving vehicle software and integration solution and is currently focusing on commercializing self-driving trucks. “Trucking is the backbone of the U.S. economy, delivering food and products to every community in the country,” said Torc CEO Michael Fleming. “Daimler has led innovation in trucking for more than a century, from the first truck to driver assist technology. Torc is working with Daimler Truck to commercialize self-driving trucks to make our roads safer and better fulfilling our mission of saving lives.”
#self-driving #entrepreneur #virginiatech #hokies #vtcrc #torc