Bruce Haggar

Bruce Haggar is currently the president of MedQ Systems Consulting. a leading biomedical industry consulting organization. Previously, he was president of Bruce Haggar Consulting, Inc., specializing in Process Validation and FDA/Regulatory consulting and auditing. He is widely recognized as one of the nation's experts in quality system development and consulting, process validation, medical device auditing, risk management and medical device design control. MedQ Systems Consulting is regularly acting as a certifying organization for FDA compliance actions, and supports warning letter, 483 and consent decree compliance actions. Mr. Haggar is also used regularly by FDA to review compliance cases and is supporting the MDSAP program. He is a past Chair of the ASQ/Biomedical Division and the editor of the Biomedical Quality Auditor Handbook. Mr. Haggar is a Biomedical Engineer with experience in a variety of biomedical technology firms in product development, manufacturing and regulatory/quality assurance. He was a primary developer of the external automatic defibrillator technology in the late 1980's at Cardiac Resuscitator Corporation and First Medical Devices, Inc. He is active in various industry organizations and a regular conference presenter including ASQ Biomedical Division, Advamed, AAMI, ORCA and RAPS. He also served as an Investigator for the U.S. FDA.

Gordon Niva

Gordon is an independent aerospace and system engineering consultant and CEO/CTO of mySmartHome who lives in South Dakota and Southern California. Gordon retired from The Boeing Company in 2011 where he was active in high tech business development. He and his wife, Susan, founded mySmartHome in 2012. mySmartHome is an Internet of Things (IoT) company that specializes in innovative sensor technology and develops custom smarthomes in South Dakota. You can learn more about mySmartHome at smarthome-247.com. Gordon is also a mentor to young entrepreneurs at Research Park. Gordon spent 30 years as a Reserve component Army officer retiring as a Colonel (O6). Since 1994, he has been an internationally recognized expert and lecturer on systems engineering and project management. He is a consistent runner and trekker. He and Susan have run 35 consecutive Los Angeles Marathons as a married couple. Gordon and Susan have reached the summit of Kilimanjaro and trekked the rugged terrain of Patagonia. Gordon received undergraduate degrees in engineering physics and chemistry at SDSU. He received his M.S. in physics and Ph.D. in astrophysics from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. In 2013, he was named an SDSU Distinguished Engineer-the highest honor bestowed within the department of engineering at SDSU.

Doug Perry

Doug Perry received his BSEE from SDSU in 1978 and moved to California where he completed all of the classes toward an MSCS from University of Santa Clara. He started his career designing silicon chips and moved into developing, marketing and supporting Electronic Design Automation tools to chipmakers all over the world in all kinds of industries. Along the way, he started companies from ground zero and sold them, worked at a number of companies that went public, joined a number of early startups and advised a number of startups on technology and other issues. About 10 years ago, he started doing research into Artificial Intelligence/Machine Learning and was recognized by Google as an early Google Developer Expert in TensorFlow/Machine Learning. He moved back to Brookings in 2019. His passion is helping startups succeed.

Dhiraj Sharan

Dhiraj Sharan has 20 years experience as an enterprise software technology leader and serial entrepreneur. In his current role, Dhiraj is the CEO of Query.AI. Query.AI is a decentralized data access and analysis solution that simplifies security investigations across disparate platforms without data duplication (please visit https://query.ai for more information). Dhiraj has helped some of the world’s largest technologies companies grow and innovate - companies like HPE, ArcSight, Niara, Aruba and Novell. Dhiraj is a prolific coder and an innovator, with more than 10 patents in cybersecurity and data analytics. He holds B.Tech CS from IIT (BHU, India) and Certificate in Management from Harvard University. In his free time, Dhiraj likes to advise and mentor first-time entrepreneurs in their journey through innovation, company formation, technology development, product validation and venture funding.

Sanjay Sharma

Sanjay Sharma is a strategic thought leader with an impressive 17+ years of entrepreneurial experience building technology start-ups from the ground up. As CEO of Roambee, he is responsible for leading the company’s vision, driving its worldwide business growth and increasing Roambee's value. He is also a renowned speaker and featured author on topics like supply chain, disruptive technologies and digitization. He has delivered engaging talks around the world at prestigious platforms like Mobile World Congress, TiE, Global Digital Forum, Geo IoT World, Logipharma, Red at Summit, IoT Evolution Expo, International Smart Logistics and Supply Chain Conference and DHL IoT Day. Sanjay has successfully co-founded and led two successful Silicon Valley companies: KeyTone Technologies and Plexus Technologies, with successful exits. Prior to that, he was an innovator through his technology careers at NASA, EMC and Schlumberger. He holds many patents and has published papers in journals like IEEE, ISCA and South Dakota Academy of Science. Sanjay has a master of science in electrical engineering from South Dakota State University and a bachelor's degree in electronics engineering from the University of Bombay.