SVOD 2006. Expert Panel

The highlight of SVOD-2006 will be the presentation of the best twenty five private companies from Russia, Ukraine and other FSU contries. 25 innovative projects will be pre-selected by the SVOD Expert Panel for presentations to the audience of US investors and potential corporate partners. Companies presentations will be judged by our distinguished Panel of Judges [0]

Alexei Andreev [0], Managing Director and EVP, Harris & Harris Group
Nathan Bach [0], Marketing Manager, Dionex Corporation
Sergey Burkov [0], Head of Moscow R&D Office, Google
Anna Dvornikova [0], Director, American Business Association of Russian Professionals (AmBAR)
Stas Khirman [0], Co-founder and CTO, Skyrider
Slava Kritov [0], Networking and Security Technologist, Symantec Corporation
Alex Miroshnichenko [0], CTO, PowerFile, Inc.
Igor Plotnikov [0], Director of Engineering, Cisco Systems
Olena Stadnyuk [0], Manager, Genentech, Inc.

	Harris & Harris Group [1] Alexei Andreev, Ph.D. is a Managing Director and Executive Vice President at VP Harris & Harris Group since 2005. Prior to joining Harris & Harris Group, Mr. Andreev was an associate with Draper Fisher Jurvetson, a venture capital firm, where he was exclusively focused on nanotechnology and material science investment opportunities. While at DFJ, he played an integral role in sourcing and funding of Solicore, D-Wave Systems, Intematix and EoPlex, where he served as an active Board Director or Observer. Previously, he worked for TLcom Capital Partners, a London-based venture capital fund backed by Morgan Stanley. Prior to that, he was employed by Renaissance Capital Group/Sputnik Funds, a venture capital fund in Moscow, Russia. Before he started his business career, Mr. Andreev was a researcher at the Centre of Nanotechnology, ISAN (RAS), in Troitsk, Russia where he was focused on optical and electrical properties of Quantum Dot heterostructures in strong magnetic fields. Mr. Andreev received his Ph.D. degree from the Department of Theoretical Physics of Moscow Steel and Alloys Institute led by Alexei A. Abrikosov (recipient of the Nobel Prize in Physics 2003), where he was a recipient of the Scholorship for Outstanding Young Scientists of Russian Academia of Sciences, the Scholarship from the International Center of Fundamental Physics and Soros Scientific Foundation. Mr. Andreev also received a B.S. with honors in Engineering/Material Sciences from Moscow Steel and Alloys Institute and with an M.B.A. from Stanford Graduate School of Business. He is a director of the American Business Association of Russian Professionals.
	Dionex Corporation [2] Nathan Bach, Ph.D., is currently a marketing manager at Dionex Corporation, a manufacturer of chromatography equipment.Nathan devoted many years to business development and marketing working with small and large biotechnology and pharmaceutical companies. He successfully represented in the US off-shore companies looking for development of American market and helped local start-ups to expand in global markets. Nathan provides his clients with market analysis, helps them with formulating business strategy and vision, focusing on building value. He orchestrates co-development and licensing activities, helping to capitalize on companies’ technology. His experience includes drug development, genomics, proteomics, and chromatography equipment. Nathan holds M.Sc. in Biochemistry from the Moscow State University in Russia and Ph.D. in Immunology from the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel. He authored 20 papers in peer-reviewed scientific magazines and one patent.
	Google [3] Sergei Burkov, Ph.D. is a serial entrepreneur who co-founded and led three startup companies. Dulance is the next generation shopping search engine. Bilbo Innovations, Inc. invented and brought to market STEP ON IT! computer pedals. Invincible Data Systems pioneered transparent disk and e-mail encryption. It was later acquired by VASCO Data Security (NASDAQ: VDSI). Dr. Burkov is a former research physicist who held appointments at top American universities, including Cornell University and the University of Wisconsin. Dr. Burkov obtained Ph.D. in theoretical physics from the Landau Institute for Theoretical Physics and M.S. in physics with Honors, from Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology.
	American Business Association of Russian Professionals (AmBAR) [4] Anna Dvornikova was a Co-Founder and the VP of Business Development at BKP Security, a government IT security company. Prior to that, she was a Foreign Advisor at the international law firm, Coudert Brothers, and has experience working on multiple corporate, commercial, and intellectual property transactions both in the US and in Russia. Before moving into private business, Anna held academic research positions at the Center for International Security and Cooperation (Stanford University) and the Moscow office of the John M. Olin Institute for Strategic Studies (Harvard University) focusing on international security issues. She has her J.D. from the Moscow State Institute of International Relations (MGIMO) and her Master of Laws degree from Boalt Hall School of Law, University of California, Berkeley. Anna served as AmBAR President as well as a Chairperson of the Executive Committee of the Silicon Valley Open Doors (SVOD-2005) Technology Investment Conference.
	Skyrider [5] Prior to founding Skyrider, Mr. Khirman founded Narus, a global leader in software and technology for the telecom industry and government agencies, where he designed the world’s most scalable network transaction analysis system. Mr. Khirman had previously served as the networking group leader at VDOnet, a pioneer in internet video. Mr. Khirman brings more than 20 years of experience in the software industry as an architect, manager, visionary, and inventor; he was behind the development of a number of standards organizations and participated in the early definition of the VoIP protocol. Mr. Khirman holds a Master’s degree in Mathematics from the University of Kiev.
	Symantec Corporation [6] Slava Kritov is currently with Symantec Advanced Technology Group working on technology evaluations for M&A and OEM licensing purposes, strategic partnership projects and research in networking, content aware storage and application performance management. Slava graduated from PhysTech with the firm intention to be a rocket scientist but later changed his mind and started to work for Apple, which enriched his horizons enough to attract him to UN Freenet project providing free internet to people in need. When the supply of altruism had burned away he joined Genesys in San Francisco hoping to get rich quickly. This process took six years and did not yield demonstrable results; however the experience of working in an international company later acquired by French guys had left deep imprints and prompted a lot of deep thought. To recover from management addiction, Slava joined a small startup in the valley, but later preferred the lavish Veritas offices to a cube with a phone that rings every minute. Slava has extensive experience with networks and business applications, as well as various security and reliability aspects of hard-, soft- and wet- ware and reads Cryptonomicon before going to bed.
	PowerFile, Inc. [7] Alex Miroshnichenko joins PowerFile with a variety of engineering experience in companies throughout the U.S. and Soviet Union, and is responsible for product development and engineering at PowerFile. He recently spent 12 successful years at VERITAS Software Corporation where he held a number of research and development positions, including the Senior Director of the Advanced Technology Group. Prior to joining VERITAS, Alex worked on optical storage solutions at QSTAR Technologies, Inc. Alex graduated from the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology with a Masters of Applied Physics.
	Cisco Systems [8] Igor Plotnikov, Ph.D. works on network security at Cisco (NASDAQ:CSCO) after the acquisition of his second startup MI Secure. Before he served as VP of Engineering at F5 Networks. He joined F5 (NASDAQ:FFIV) as a result of its acquisition of uRoam, Inc. a pioneer in the SSL VPN market. Before co-founding uRoam, Dr. Plotnikov worked for Netscape Communications on key products like CoolTalk and Netscape Conference. Prior to Netscape, he held the position of scientist at InSoft, which was acquired by Netscape in 1996. Early in his career, he was a co-founder and chief engineer at Stoik Software, Ltd., a private Russian company dedicated to image processing software development. He received his physicist-engineer diploma with honors from the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology followed by a Ph.D. in Physico-Mathematical Sciences from the Institute in 1988.
	Genentech, Inc. [9] Olena Stadnyuk, MD, MPH is a Manager at Genentech's development department. Genentech is a public biotech company with over $100B market capitalization. Before assuming her post in Genentech, Olena worked in a medical device start-up PolyRemedy. Prior to joining PolyRemedy Olena worked in a venture capital fund Flagship Ventures in Cambridge, MA as an intern. At Flagship Olena led market competitive analysis and financial due diligence for prospective investments in biopharma and medical devices companies. Before moving to the US, Olena worked at Innovative Ventures Inc., a venture capital company located in Moscow, Russia. While at IVI, Olena selected investment and partnering opportunities in the Life Science field. Olena was a semifinalist of the MIT 50K business plan competition. She has articles published in international biomedical journals and conducted presentations at international conferences. Olena Stadnyuk has an MD with honors from National Medical University, Kiev, Ukraine and Master in Health Care Management degree from Harvard University.