Workshop Speakers

We are happy to announce the speakers of the Workshop on Commercializing New Technologies:

Hermann Hauser co-founded Amadeus Capital Partners in 1997 with Anne Glover and Peter Wynn. In his long and successful history as an entrepreneur and venture capitalist, he has founded or co-founded companies in a wide range of technology sectors. These include Acorn Computers, Active Book Company, Virata, Net Products, NetChannel, and Cambridge Network Limited. He was a founder director of IQ (Bio), IXI Limited, Vocalis, SynGenix, Advanced Displays Limited, Electronic Share Information Limited and E*Trade UK .

At Amadeus Hermann has been a non-executive director of many investee companies including CSR, which provides single chip wireless solutions supporting communications over short-range radio links, and Entropic Research Laboratory, a company that developed voice recognition software, which is now the voice recogniser in Microsoft Word. Entropic was sold to Microsoft in 1999. He is a non-executive director of Plastic Logic, which has developed a process for producing flexible plastic transistors for use in computer displays, and Solexa, which is developing ultra-high throughput DNA sequencing technology.

Hermann holds an MA in Physics from Vienna University and a PhD in Physics from the Cavendish Laboratory at King's College, Cambridge . He is a Fellow of the Institute of Physics and of the Royal Academy of Engineering and an Honorary Fellow of King's College, Cambridge . Hermann holds honorary doctorates from the Universities of Bath, Loughborough and from Anglia Polytechnic, and was awarded an Honorary CBE for 'innovative service to the UK enterprise sector' in 2001. In 2004, he was made a member of the Government's Council for Science & Technology.

Austrian by birth, Hermann speaks German, English, Italian and French.

Dr. Gerhard Plasonig is the Delegate of the Board of ETeCH AG and one of its management company's co-managers. He is also the founder and Managing Director of GP International SA (GPI), a technology investment holding company in Zurich, Switzerland, and sits on the Board of several of GPI's spin-outs, e.g. WoodWelding SA.

He received an Undergraduate Degree in Mechanical Engineering and has four years of experience as an automotive engineer with the Volkswagen Group. From 1980-84, he was a graduate student at the Vienna University of Economics and Business Administration, specialising in business policy and industrial relations. He received his master degree in 1984, and in 1985 he received a post-doctoral degree in project management at the Technical University of Vienna.

From 1985-89, he was a Research and Teaching Assistant at the Vienna University of Economics and Business Administration where he received his PhD specialising in strategic technology management. He was on special leave for the "Dynamics of Technology Project" in the 1986 Young Scientist Summer Program of the International Institute of Applied System Analysis in Laxenburg. In 1987, he was a Fulbright Doctoral Fellow with Prof. Ed Roberts at MIT's Sloan School of Management.

From 1989-1991 he was responsible for consulting projects in North America and projects related to European companies for the Technology Management Group of Pugh-Roberts Associates Inc. (an M.I.T. spin-out technology consultancy and member of the PA Consulting Group), in Boston, USA.

Dr. Plasonig spent seven years with The Generics Group AG in Boston (USA) and Cambridge (UK), of which he served four years, from 1994-1997 as Director on the board of Scientific Generics, and was responsible for the Generics Group's European and Asian business development, also leading major strategic technology and consulting assignments in Europe and the US.

He has researched, lectured, and written extensively on strategic mangement, entrepreneurship, venture and project management. He is Visiting Professor at the Technical University of Munich and serves as guest lecturer for Innovation Management at the Vienna University of Economics and Business Administration, Department of Business Strategy in Austria .

Helmut Leopold. Since 1999 Helmut Leopold is with Telekom Austria where he currently holds the position of the Managing Director Platform and Technology Management. He is responsible for implementing new technologies and the realization of the new services in the infrastructure of Telekom Austria . Before,he had filled various management positions at Alcatel since 1994. From 1989 to 1994 he served as a research engineer at Alcatel ELIN Research Center where he covered the fields of high performance networking and multimedia communications.

Mr. Leopold has been always actively involved in European projects in broadband (ESPRIT, RACE, ACTS and COST) and in international standardization (ETSI). He is a member of various task forces in telecommunication programs of the Austrian Fovernment, and since 1997 he has been a lecturer on Broadband Communications at the University of Technology of Vienna and he has been evaluator in the R&D programmes of the European commission. He is also Vice president of the Austrian Research Center Forschungszentrum Telekommunikation Wien (FTW) and is president of the IPV6 Task Force in Austria . Mr. Leopold holds a degree in Electronics and Communications from the Technical College HTBLV Rankweil, Austria and a degree in Computer Science from the University of Technology of Vienna.

Georg Buchtela is Head of the Patent and Licensing Department of aws, Austria Wirtschaftsservice. He is responsible for all patent related operations of aws. His department is involved in more than 100 priority filings each year. AWS holds patents in Europe, both Americas as well as in Far and Mid East. AWS runs special programmes in respect to market innovation, to defend against counterfeits and for patent litigation. These programmes include financial, operational, and awareness measures. The clients of the programmes are nearly all Austrian Universities , PROs, other parts of the public sector and business organisations including SME. Georg Buchtela is directly involved in patent policy and co-ordination of intellectual property exploitation programmes which includes several nationwide but also international activities.