SPEAKER BIOGRAPHIES
Chancellor & Dean David Faigman is the John F. Digardi Distinguished Professor of Law at the University of California Hastings College of the Law and holds an appointment as Professor in the School of Medicine (Dept. of Psychiatry) at the University of California, San Francisco. He received both his M.A. (Psychology) and J.D. from the University of Virginia. Professor Faigman clerked for the Honorable Thomas M. Reavley, Senior Judge of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit. He is the author of over 50 articles and essays, and has published in a variety of outlets, including the Chicago, Virginia, Pennsylvania and Northwestern law reviews, Science, Sociological Methods & Research and Nature Reviews Neuroscience. He is also the author of three books, Constitutional Fictions: A Unified Theory of Constitutional Facts (Oxford, 2008), Laboratory of Justice: The Supreme Court’s 200-Year Struggle to Integrate Science and the Law (Henry Holt & Co. 2004) and Legal Alchemy: The Use and Misuse of Science in the Law (W.H. Freeman,1999). In addition, Professor Faigman is a co-author/co-editor of the five-volume treatise Modern Scientific Evidence: The Law and Science of Expert Testimony (with Cheng, Mnookin, Murphy Sanders & Slobogin). The treatise has been cited widely by courts, including several times by the U.S. Supreme Court. Professor Faigman was a member of the National Academies of Science panel that investigated the scientific validity of polygraphs, is a member of the MacArthur Law and Neuroscience Network and served as a Senior Advisor to the President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology’s Report, “Forensic Science in Criminal Courts: Ensuring Scientific Validity of Feature-Comparison Methods.”
Jerry Nickelsburg joined the UCLA’s Anderson School of Management and The Anderson Forecast in 2006. Since 2017 he has been the Director of The Anderson Forecast. He teaches economics in the MBA program with a focus on Asian economies. As the Director of The Anderson Forecast he plays a key role in the economic modeling and forecasting of the National, and California economies. He has conducted research in the areas of labor economics, industrial organization, statistics, and international monetary economics, focusing on the development of new data and the application of economic theory and statistical methods to policy issues. His current academic research is on specific skills, structural unemployment, and on energy efficiency in transportation. He is a regular presenter at Economic Conferences and is cited in the national media including the Financial Times, Wall Street Journal, New York Times, Los Angeles Times, and Reuters.He received his Ph.D. in economics from the University of Minnesota in 1980 specializing in monetary economics and econometrics. He was formerly a professor of Economics at the University of Southern California and has held executive positions with McDonnell Douglas, FlightSafety International, and FlightSafety Boeing during a fifteen-year span in the aviation business. He also held a position with the Federal Reserve Board of Governors developing forecasting tools, and has advised banks, investors and financial institutions.
From 2000 to 2006, he was the Managing Principal of Deep Blue Economics, a consulting firm he founded. He has been the recipient of the Korda Fellowship, USC Outstanding Teacher, India Chamber of Commerce Jubilee Lecturer, and he is a Fulbright Scholar. He has published over 100 scholarly and popular articles on monetary economics, economic forecasting and analysis, labor economics, and industrial organization and he is the author of two books on monetary economics and exchange rates.
William Yu joined the UCLA Anderson Forecast in 2011 as an economist. At Forecast he focuses on the economic modeling and forecasting of Los Angeles economy. He also conducts research and forecast on China’s economy, and its impacts on the US economy. His research interests include a wide range of economic and financial issues, such as time series econometrics, stock, bond, real estate, and commodity price dynamics, human capital, and innovation. He has published over a dozen research articles in Journal of Forecasting, International Journal of Forecasting, Journal of International Money and Finance, etc. He also published op-ed articles in Los Angeles Times and other newspapers. He developed the City Human Capital Index and the Los Angeles City Employment Estimate and has been cited in the local, national and overseas media frequently including Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, Washington Post, Time, Bloomberg, CBS Money Watch, Al Jazeera, U-T San Diego, LA Daily News, LA Daily Breeze, Straits Times, NBC, ABC, CNBC, CNN, and NPR, as well as various Chinese and Korean media.He received his bachelor’s degree in finance from National Taiwan University in 1995 and was an analyst in Fubon Financial Holding in Taipei from 1997 to 2000. In 2006, he received his Ph.D. degree in economics from the University of Washington where he was also an economics instructor and won two distinguished teaching awards. In 2006, he worked for the Frank Russell Investment Group for Treasury and corporate yields modeling and forecasting. From 2006 to 2011, he served as an assistant and an associate professor of economics at Winona State University where he taught courses including forecasting methods, managerial economics, international economics, and macroeconomics. Currently, he teaches business forecasting courses at UCLA Anderson School of Management and UCLA Extension.
Gavin Newsom was elected Lieutenant Governor of California in 2010 and previously served as Mayor of San Francisco (2004-2011). Gavin is widely recognized for his bold willingness to lead – repeatedly developing and implementing innovative and groundbreaking solutions to some of our most challenging issues. On a wide range of topics including same-sex marriage, gun safety, marijuana, the death penalty, universal healthcare, access to preschool, paid family leave, technology, criminal justice reform, sugary drinks, and the minimum wage, Gavin stuck his neck out and did the right thing, which often led to sweeping changes when his policies were ultimately accepted, embraced, and replicated across the state and nation.
Gavin’s top priorities are economic development, education, protecting the environment, and justice – ensuring California continues to lead by example while actively resisting any attempt by the Trump administration to take us backwards.
Gavin is married to Jennifer Siebel Newsom. They reside in Marin County with their four children Montana, Hunter, Brooklynn, and Dutch.
Robin Feldman is the Harry & Lillian Hastings Professor and Director of the Institute for Innovation Law at the University of California Hastings. Her most recent books in the life sciences are DRUG WARS (Cambridge) and RETHINKING PATENT LAW (Harvard). Professor Feldman also has published more than 50 articles in law journals including at Harvard, Yale, and Stanford, as well as in the American Economic Review and the New England Journal of Medicine. Professor Feldman’s empirical work has been cited by the White House and numerous federal agencies. She has appeared frequently before committees of the US House and Senate, the Federal Trade Commission, the Department of Justice, the Patent & Trademark Office, and various committees of the California legislature. Professor Feldman recently participated in the GAO’s preparation of a report to Congress on the future of Artificial Intelligence and in the Army Cyber Institute’s threat casting exercise on weaponization of data. In addition to her scholarship, Professor Feldman runs the Startup Legal Garage, in which students perform free legal work for 60 early-stage technology and life science companies each year, with the work supervised for free by outside Law Firms. UCLA Law students participate by video link. Startup Legal Garage has been named one of the most innovative law school programs in the country, and Professor Feldman has been named one of the Women Leaders in Technology Law. In 2012, she was elected to the American Law Institute, where she currently serves as an advisor to the Restatement of Copyright.
Samuel Angus concentrates his practice on advising startup/venture-backed companies, seed, venture capital and debt financings, mergers and acquisitions, intellectual property licensing, joint ventures and general corporate matters. Sam represents a broad range of companies from privately held startup companies to publicly traded corporations. His practice also includes advising entrepreneurs and investors. Representative Experience:
Prior to joining Fenwick & West, Sam practiced commercial lending law at Lillick & Charles. Prior to becoming a lawyer, Sam was a founder and the Chief Executive Officer of Design Look Publications, Inc., a publisher of fine art calendars and other published gift products.
Sam sits on the advisory board of the Lester Center for Entrepreneurship & Innovation at the University of California, Berkeley. He also frequently lectures at the Haas School of Business and the Stanford Technology Ventures Program.
Shomit Ghose is a partner at Silicon Valley venture fund, ONSET Ventures, which he joined in 2001. Prior to entering venture capital, he was a startup software entrepreneur with a career of operating excellence spanning 19 years. Shomit’s startup roles included three highly successful IPOs as SVP of Operations at Tumbleweed Communications; VP of Worldwide Services at BroadVision; and software engineer at Sun Microsystems. He was also CEO and board member of ONSET portfolio company, Truviso, for two years leading to its acquisition by Cisco Systems. Shomit is a proud product of the California public school system, and received his degree in Computer Science from the University of California, Berkeley. He serves on the advisory boards of UC Berkeley College of Engineering’s Sutardja Center, Innovation Center Denmark, and the Lundbeck Foundation Clinical Research Fellowship Program. He is also a member of UC Riverside’s Technology Partnerships Council of Advisors and an adjunct professor in product development and innovation at the University of Southern Denmark. In his private life Shomit has been committed to coaching girls’ sports for many years in softball, high-level club soccer, and club and high school varsity and junior varsity lacrosse.
Prof. Darrell is on the faculty of the CS and EE Divisions of the EECS Department at UC Berkeley. He leads Berkeley’s DeepDrive (BDD) Industrial Consortia, is co-Director of the Berkeley Artificial Intelligence Research (BAIR) lab, and is Faculty Director of PATH at UC Berkeley. Darrell’s group develops algorithms for large-scale perceptual learning, including object and activity recognition and detection, for a variety of applications including autonomous vehicles, media search, and multimodal interaction with robots and mobile devices. His areas of interest include computer vision, machine learning, natural language processing, and perception-based human computer interfaces. Prof. Darrell previously led the vision group at the International Computer Science Institute in Berkeley, and was on the faculty of the MIT EECS department from 1999-2008, where he directed the Vision Interface Group. He was a member of the research staff at Interval Research Corporation from 1996-1999, and received the S.M., and PhD. degrees from MIT in 1992 and 1996, respectively. He obtained the B.S.E. degree from the University of Pennsylvania in 1988. Prof. Darrell also serves as consulting Chief Scientist for the start-up Nexar, and is a technical consultant on deep learning and computer vision for Pinterest. Darrell is on the scientific advisory board of several other ventures, including DeepScale, WaveOne, SafelyYou, and Graymatics. Previously, Darrell advised Tyzx (acquired by Intel), IQ Engines (acquired by Yahoo), Koozoo, BotSquare/Flutter (acquired by Google), and MetaMind (acquired by Salesforce). As time permits, Darrell has served and is available as an expert witness for patent litigation relating to computer vision.
Dr. Regis B. Kelly is the Director of QB3, one of the four California Institutes for Science and Innovation. The QB3 innovation team converts discoveries into practical benefits for society. As Director, Dr. Kelly helped launch two QB3-associated companies, QB3@953, a Life Sciences Startup incubator and Mission Bay Capital, a venture fund. As a result of his experiences, Dr. Kelly was seconded as Senior Advisor on Innovation and Entrepreneurship to the President of the University, Janet Napolitano in 2014 and 2015. Prior to joining QB3 in 2004, Regis Kelly served as executive vice-chancellor at UCSF and Chairman of the Department of Biochemistry and Biophysics. He holds the inaugural Byers Family Distinguished Professorship. His academic research was in the field of molecular and cellular neurobiology. His training was at Harvard, Stanford, Caltech and the University of Edinburgh. He has served on many national and international boards. In 2014 he was appointed an officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) for services to science, innovation, and global health.
Vern Norviel is a partner at Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati, where he leads the patents and innovation counseling practice. Vern has three decades of experience in formulating successful strategies for life science companies and the development of their IP programs. He represents a wide variety of companies, as well as venture capital firms, in areas such as therapeutics, diagnostics, nanotechnology, genomics, proteomics, and personalized medicine. In fact, Vern's interest in the field of personalized medicine prompted him to become the first attorney to have had his or her entire genome sequenced and made available in a public database. Before joining the firm in 2003, Vern was the general counsel and corporate secretary of Perlegen Sciences, Inc., a start-up biotechnology company that scans the entire human genome for important therapeutic and diagnostic products. Previously, as senior vice president and general counsel, he was an early employee of Affymetrix, the biotechnology company that pioneered and developed DNA chip technology. He also had been a partner at Townsend and Townsend and Crew in Palo Alto.
During his career, Vern has authored or prosecuted more than 20 patents that have been litigated in the United States and abroad, and has overseen intellectual property lawsuits throughout the world.
Vern previously served as a member of Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati's board of directors and currently serves on the board of the WSGR Foundation. In addition, he is a lecturer in biotechnology law at UC Berkeley School of Law.
SAM ZUCKER concentrates on corporate transactions for high growth, life sciences, healthcare and technology companies in the U.S., Asia, and throughout the world, including representations of investors and portfolio companies in biotechnology, healthcare and medical devices. His practice covers three main areas:Business Combinations & Collaborations: Sam represents both buyers and sellers in mergers and acquisitions and divestitures. He works on joint ventures, strategic alliances and collaborations. Sam collaborates extensively with the firm’s ex-US offices on international and multi-jurisdictional transactions.
Financings: Sam works on venture capital, startup and private equity financings as well as public company securities offerings (including IPO’s, follow-ons, CMPOs, registered directs and PIPES). He also handles regulatory matters, primarily, SEC, NASDAQ and ISS matters.
Corporate Governance: Sam advises his clients’ management and board of directors on corporate governance and critical strategic matters – including acquisitions, corporate development and capital market strategies as well as general corporate, public company reporting and market regulatory issues.
Barclay Kamb represents biotechnology, medical technology, digital health and other life sciences companies in a broad range of corporate and financial matters, with deep experience in transactions involving intellectual property. Much of his practice is devoted to negotiating and drafting corporate partnership agreements, licensing arrangements, strategic alliances, joint venture agreements and other complex technology transactions. Barclay also provides general representation of technology companies in corporate law, venture capital financings, private placements, asset sales and other strategic transactions involving his clients.Barclay often speaks on the business and legal aspects of complex technology deals and presents as a guest lecturer at the Haas School of Business regarding biotechnology and corporate partnering. Barclay serves on the Editor Board of the Biotechnology Law Report and as a member of the Board of Directors of the Palo Alto Institute for Research and Education.
Barclay received a BS degree in Biology from Stanford University in 1983. He conducted post-graduate studies in biology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology under a National Science Foundation Fellowship award. He received his JD degree in 1988 from the University of California at Berkeley, Boalt Hall School of Law where he was awarded the Prosser Prize in Contracts. Barclay also served as an Associate Editor on the California Law Review.