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BOARD OF DIRECTORS
Alan Coté of Williston VT is the president and founder of Green Mountain Innovations LLC. Through this patent practice, he has advised and represented dozens of inventors - both small corporations and individuals - on the process of obtaining a patent and related intellectual property matters. His experience also includes involvement in a number ventures on an equity basis, serving as IP lead. In 1997, he co-founded CC Kinetics Inc. CCK spent several years developing breakthrough technology for sports performance monitoring, and licensed the resulting intellectual property to a Polar Electro OY, the world's leader maker of heart rate monitors for athletes. As president of and partner in CCK, his leadership drove the project from idea genesis through final licensing negotiations. He holds a BS in Mechanical Engineering from the University at Buffalo, and was admitted to practice before the US Patent and Trademark Office in 2001 as a patent agent. Coté is also a cycling enthusiast, and raced at the elite level. He has written about cycling technology, culture, and competition, as has been a Contributing Writer to Bicycling magazine for over ten years.
Thomas G. Ference, resides in Essex Junction, VT. Dr. Ference is currently the vice president and a co-founder of Interphase Technologies, Inc. a start-up optical instrumentation company. He is also a registered patent agent. In prior employment he worked for another startup company TeraComm Research, Inc. and also as a materials engineer at IBM for 10 years. He has recently licensed and is co-developing several of his inventions. Dr. Ference is a graduate of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology with a Ph.D. in Materials Science. He has over 40 US patents issued or pending and 13 technical publications. Dr. Ference has extensive experience in taking technologies from laboratory scale experiments to manufactured products. His interest in InventVermont is to develop a mechanism within Vermont that will better network inventors with the resources they need to commercialize their ideas.
Kathleen Liang is the lead faculty in the Community Entrepreneurship major at the University of Vermont. Kathleen joined the Department of Community Development and Applied Economics at UVM in 1998, teaching Entrepreneurship related courses such as Strategic Planning, Risk Analysis and Forecasting and Introduction to Community Entrepreneurship. Kathleen's research and teaching topics include Individual Entrepreneurs (personality, traits and characteristics), Decision Making and New Venture Creation, Pre-Venture Assessment and Research, Family/Couple Issues in Entrepreneurship, Tourism Impact in Vermont Economy, and Rural Development and Agricultural Industry in general. Kathleen is a certified instructor by Rural Entrepreneurship Through Action Learning, FastTrak programs and Babson Entrepreneurship Educator program. She works with local youth group and nascent entrepreneurs frequently, and provides her service to the pre-venture preparation and start-up phase for most of the businesses. Kathleen has received numerous teaching and research awards in Entrepreneurship Education, and has published over 60 referred articles.
Peter Woodson, resides in St. George, VT. Peter believes InventVermont provides a valuable mechanism for innovators to leverage local knowledge and skills to successfully bring new concepts to market. Peter focuses his energies on further developing the value-added services for the membership, and securing the external resources necessary to support the organization. Peter is a Program Manager at General Dynamics where he provides business development, strategic planning and program management for a broad range of advanced development projects. Peter frequently works with small companies to apply their advanced technologies to address major government programs. Prior to joining General Dynamics, Peter co-founded a non-profit, worked briefly for a VC and a venture-backed start-up, and developed business intelligence systems for Fortune 500 clients. Peter has an MEM and MBA from Duke University and an AB from Dartmouth College.
OFFICERS
President: Thomas G. Ference
Vice President: Peter Woodson
Treasurer: Peter Woodson
Secretary: Kathleen Liang
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