Dr. Abigail Barrow, Founding Director of the Massachusetts Technology Transfer Center, will share insights on how startups get off the ground and find funding. She will also discuss the roles and opportunities available to engineers in emerging technology firms. In addition, she will review the resources supporting technological and scientific entrepreneurship in the state.

Dr. Abigail Barrow is the Founding Director of the Massachusetts Technology Transfer Center (MTTC). She is responsible for the overall management of the MTTC and the development of its programs. Prior to joining the MTTC, Dr. Barrow served as managing director of William J. von Liebig Center at the University of California San Diego (UCSD). The von Liebig Center was created in 2001 to support the commercialization of research being performed in the UCSD Jacobs School of Engineering. She has also served as a member of the board of directors of the Center for the Commercialization of Advanced Technologies Consortium (CCAT), which assisted in the identification and commercialization of technologies in the area of crisis and consequence management and received more than $25 million in federal funding from the Office of Naval Research.

Dr. Barrow worked in a variety of roles at UCSD CONNECT from 1990 to 2001. CONNECT is a non-profit organization founded at UCSD to fire up the innovation economy in the San Diego region. At CONNECT, she developed and expanded many of its programs to support early-stage company formation and technology commercialization. Her work there includes such diverse roles as contract negotiation and management; setting up procedures for grant applications; and developing and teaching graduate level courses on starting and financing a technology company. The CONNECT program is now internationally recognized and has been successfully replicated in other regions of North America and in Europe.

A longtime champion of STEM education, Dr. Barrow is on the board of the National Collegiate Inventors and Innovators Alliance (NCIIA). She is a Fellow of the Beyster Institute at the Rady School of Management at UCSD and is on the Scientific Advisory Board of the Simula Research Laboratory in Norway. She serves as an Xconomist for Xconomy.com. Dr. Barrow was named a Mass High Tech All-Star in 2008 for her work in bridging technological innovation from the lab into commerce. She claims that her work in technology transfer is ultimately about people, and her resume features many board memberships and leadership roles in collaborative efforts. She is currently tweeting @MassCleanEnergy in support of the Sixth Annual Conference on Clean Energy.

Dr. Barrow received her Ph.D. from the Science Studies Unit and a B.Sc. in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Edinburgh.