This is an event you may be inter­ested in, if you are based in the San Fran­cisco Bay Area.

The MIT Club of North­ern Cal­i­for­nia, Amer­i­can Soci­ety on Aging, The Busi­ness Forum on Aging and Smart­Sil­vers presents:

The Emerg­ing Brain Fit­ness Mar­ket:  Build­ing Bet­ter Brains (Con­tact infor­ma­tion and Reg­is­tra­tion Here)

Date: 02/12/2008 Tues­day
Time: 6:00pm
Venue: Wil­son Son­sini
Loca­tion: 950 Page Mill Road, Palo Alto
Cost: $20 online, $25 walk-in

Con­tact infor­ma­tion and Reg­is­tra­tion Here.

Here is the buzz  Sci­en­tific, tech­no­log­i­cal and demo­graphic trends have con­verged to cre­ate an excit­ing new mar­ket in brain fit­ness, where soft­ware and online appli­ca­tions can assess and train cog­ni­tive abil­i­ties. That equates to a sharper mind and bet­ter mem­ory reten­tion con­tribut­ing to health­ier aging.  There is cur­rently a $400m world­wide mar­ket with high growth ahead predicted.

Join us in lively and infor­ma­tive dis­cus­sions as Alvaro Fer­nan­dez; CEO of SharpBrains.com sum­ma­rizes the sci­ence, key mar­ket seg­ments, play­ers and trends, based on the first Brain Fit­ness Soft­ware Mar­ket Report, pre­sented in this event.  He will dis­cuss the impli­ca­tions with sev­eral neuro-technology, gam­ing experts and investors.”  Mod­er­ated by Zack Lynch, the speaker and panel will discuss:

· What results are sci­en­tists dis­cov­er­ing from the use of Brain Fit­ness tools?
· Who will use brain tools and why?
· What is the mar­ket poten­tial for new com­pa­nies enter­ing the brain fit­ness mar­ket?
· What kind of brain fit­ness appli­ca­tions are being developed?

Speaker:
– Alvaro Fer­nan­dez, SharpBrains.com

Mod­er­a­tor:
– Zack Lynch, Neu­rotech­nol­ogy Indus­try Orga­ni­za­tion (NIO)

Pan­elists:
– Andy Don­ner, Physic Ven­tures
– Kunal Sarkar, CEO Lumos Labs
– Alexan­der Doman, CEO Advanced Brain Tech­nolo­gies
– Dan Michel, CEO Dakim
Open­ing Remarks and Speaker/Panelists Intro­duc­tions:
– Susan Ayers Walker, Smart­Sil­vers and AARP.org (Con­tribut­ing Tech­nol­ogy Journalist)

Time:
6:00PM Reg­is­tra­tion, Hors d’oeuvres and Net­work­ing
7:00PM Pre­sen­ta­tion and Panel Discussion

Con­tact infor­ma­tion and Reg­is­tra­tion Here.

Bios:

Alvaro Fer­nan­dez, Co-founder, CEO SharpBrains.com. Alvaro is a lead­ing voice and thought-leader in the grow­ing science-based brain fit­ness mar­ket, Alvaro has been quoted by Los Ange­les Times, Forbes, MSNBC, Mar­ket­Watch, among oth­ers, and is a guest blog­ger at the Huff­in­g­ton Post. Alvaro has pre­sented trends in the emerg­ing brain fit­ness mar­ket at mul­ti­ple con­fer­ences and uni­ver­si­ties includ­ing the Neu­rotech Lead­ers Sum­mit, Seri­ous Games Sum­mit, Stan­ford Busi­ness School, Neu­rotech­nol­ogy Indus­try con­fer­ence, the Insti­tute for the Future, Amer­i­can Soci­ety on Aging (2007), and more. He started his career at McK­in­sey & Com­pany and led the launch and turn­around of sev­eral pub­lish­ing and edu­ca­tion com­pa­nies in the US and Europe, includ­ing Ber­tels­mann On Line, Docent, Inc, and Edu­soft, a unit of Houghton Mif­flin. Alvaro has an MBA and MA in Edu­ca­tion from Stan­ford Uni­ver­sity, and enjoys teach­ing The Sci­ence of Brain Health and Brain Fit­ness at SFSU and UC-Berkeley Osher Life­long Learn­ing Insti­tute. Alvaro launched Sharp­Brains with neu­ro­sci­en­tist Dr. Elkhonon Goldberg.

Zack Lynch, Founder and Exec­u­tive Direc­tor of the Neu­rotech­nol­ogy Indus­try Orga­ni­za­tion (NIO). NIO is the trade asso­ci­a­tion rep­re­sent­ing com­pa­nies involved in neu­ro­science, brain research cen­ters and patient advo­cacy groups across the world. Zack founded NIO to give the over 500 neu­rotech com­pa­nies devel­op­ing drugs, devices and diag­nos­tics for neu­ro­log­i­cal dis­eases and psy­chi­atric ill­nesses a col­lec­tive voice. He is also the founder of Neu­roIn­sights, a mar­ket research firm and invest­ment advi­sory firm cov­er­ing neu­rotech. He is the pub­lisher of the invest­ment newslet­ter, Neu­rotech Insights, edi­tor of Brain Waves, an indus­try weblog pro­vid­ing com­men­tary on the inter­sec­tion of neu­ro­science and soci­ety, and co-author of Neu­roIn­sights 350 page annual report on global neu­rotech­nol­ogy indus­try. Mr. Lynch is quoted widely in the press with respect to devel­op­ments across com­mer­cial neu­ro­science. Mr. Lynch serves on the advi­sory boards of the McGov­ern Insti­tute for Brain Research at MIT, Cen­ter for Neu­roe­co­nomic Stud­ies at Clare­mont Grad­u­ate Uni­ver­sity, Cen­ter for Cog­ni­tive Lib­erty & Ethics, the Insti­tute for Global Futures and Social­text, a soft­ware com­pany. Pre­vi­ously, he was an exec­u­tive and founder of sev­eral enter­prise soft­ware com­pa­nies in profit opti­miza­tion and col­lab­o­ra­tive fore­cast­ing. Zack received an MA in Eco­nomic Geog­ra­phy and dou­ble BS in Evo­lu­tion­ary Biol­ogy and Envi­ron­men­tal Sci­ence, all from UCLA.

Pan­elist Bios

Andy Don­ner, Physic Ven­tures — Andy is is expe­ri­enced in finan­cial ser­vices, health­care, and infor­ma­tion tech­nol­ogy indus­tries. Andy was pre­vi­ously a Senior Asso­ciate with Great Spirit Ven­tures, an early-stage ven­ture cap­i­tal fund, where he focused on con­sumer health­care invest­ments. Mr. Don­ner led Great Spirit Ven­tures’ invest­ment in Attune Foods, Cora­zonas Foods, Light­Full Foods, and The Nat­ural Den­tist, where he cur­rently serves on the board. Prior to join­ing Great Spirit Ven­tures, Mr. Don­ner spent six years found­ing, and man­ag­ing rapid-growth com­pa­nies in the high-tech indus­try, includ­ing at Madison.com, where he served as Co-Founder and Chief Oper­at­ing Offi­cer; Entopia, where he estab­lished and directed the prod­uct mar­ket­ing depart­ment; and LeapFrog Enter­prises, where he devel­oped new busi­ness oppor­tu­ni­ties in the health­care indus­try. Mr. Don­ner grad­u­ated cum laude from Duke University’s pre-med pro­gram and earned his MBA at the Haas School of Busi­ness at the Uni­ver­sity of Cal­i­for­nia, Berke­ley, where he was awarded full-tuition as a Haas Merit Scholar.

Kunal Sarkar, CEO Lumos Labs — Kunal is a found­ing mem­ber of Lumos Labs and leads the oper­a­tions and mar­ket­ing team. Pre­vi­ously he was a Vice Pres­i­dent at McCown De Leeuw and Co. (MDC), a $1.2 bil­lion pri­vate equity fund mak­ing growth equity invest­ments. At MDC Kunal was inte­grally involved in the strat­egy, oper­a­tions and the finan­cial recap­i­tal­iza­tion of a num­ber of port­fo­lio com­pa­nies includ­ing serv­ing on the board of On Stage Enter­tain­ment and USBuild, and the IPO of StoneMor (STON). Prior to MDC, he worked in the Strate­gic Plan­ning and Devel­op­ment group at the Walt Dis­ney Com­pany, where he worked closely with senior man­age­ment to eval­u­ate acqui­si­tions, joint ven­tures and new busi­ness oppor­tu­ni­ties. Kunal grad­u­ated magna cum laude from Prince­ton Uni­ver­sity with a B.A. in Eco­nom­ics with a minor in Finance.

G. Alexan­der Doman, Pres­i­dent and CEO of Advanced Brain Tech­nolo­gies (ABT) – Alex is founder of ABT, a neuro-technology com­pany that devel­ops and dis­trib­utes inter­ac­tive soft­ware and music pro­grams for the improve­ment of mem­ory, atten­tion, lis­ten­ing, aca­d­e­mic skills, sen­sory pro­cess­ing, brain health, peak per­for­mance and more . Alex is the third gen­er­a­tion of a pio­neer­ing fam­ily of neuro-developmental spe­cial­ists work­ing with pedi­atric and adult pop­u­la­tions since the 1940’s. Prior to found­ing ABT he served as Exec­u­tive Direc­tor of the National Acad­emy for Child Devel­op­ment. For the last 15 years his career has been focused on research, prod­uct devel­op­ment, and edu­ca­tion pri­mar­ily in the areas of psy­choa­coustic music tech­nolo­gies and brain fit­ness software.

Dan Michel, Founder & CEO, Dakim – Dan spent more than 30 years help­ing some of America’s most suc­cess­ful com­pa­nies mar­ket and adver­tise their brands. Over the last twenty years, he was Chief Oper­at­ing Offi­cer of BBDO Worldwide/Los Ange­les (1980–1988), Pres­i­dent of Mar­ket­ing of Colum­bia Pic­tures (1988–1989), and Pres­i­dent and Co-Creative Direc­tor of his own award-winning, cre­ative adver­tis­ing agency, Michel/Russo, Inc., which he founded in 1989, and sold in 1999. Dan’s father was diag­nosed with Alzheimer’s Dis­ease in 1993. Based upon learn­ing about the dis­ease, and hav­ing gained first­hand expe­ri­ence par­tic­i­pat­ing in activ­i­ties with his father, he rec­og­nized the ther­a­peu­tic and emo­tional value of cog­ni­tively stim­u­lat­ing activ­i­ties, and the press­ing need for more effec­tive means of pro­vid­ing this line of ther­apy for suf­fer­ers of Alzheimer’s Dis­ease and related demen­tia. Dan earned a B.A. from Clare­mont Men’s Col­lege (now Clare­mont McKenna Col­lege) and an M.S. from North­west­ern University.

About the MIT Club of North­ern Cal­i­for­nia (MITCNC): The MITCNC is the pre­mier regional alumni/ae club of the Mass­a­chu­setts Insti­tute of Tech­nol­ogy. The club offers numer­ous resources in entre­pre­neur­ship, career devel­op­ment, and pro­fes­sional net­work­ing in the Bay Area. In addi­tion, the Club pro­vides many oppor­tu­ni­ties for social inter­ac­tion between MIT alumni/ae as well as alumni/ae from sim­i­lar uni­ver­sity clubs. T

About Smart­Sil­vers: The goal of Smart­Sil­vers is to “lever­age tech­nolo­gies which fos­ter active aging. Our mis­sion is to out­reach and pro­mote aware­ness, devel­op­ment and deploy­ment of inno­v­a­tive, con­sumer friendly prod­ucts and technology-leveraged ser­vices which cater to the unique needs of our expand­ing senior pop­u­la­tion. Prod­ucts and ser­vices that pro­vide inde­pen­dence, mobil­ity and qual­ity of lifestyle within safe, com­fort­able and famil­iar home environments.

About The Boomer Tech Series: This series of evening events that will focus on emerg­ing tech­nolo­gies and appli­ca­tions tar­geted at the inter­sec­tion of Tech­nol­ogy and Aging; the enhanc­ing of qual­ity of life as we age. Spon­sored by the MIT Club of North­ern Cal­i­for­nia and devel­oped by the Smart­Sil­vers Alliance, we are plan­ning future events on top­ics such as sen­sors and ambi­ent tech­nol­ogy applied to Smart Home Man­age­ment and other sig­nif­i­cant new tech­nolo­gies for health and life management.

Con­tact infor­ma­tion and Reg­is­tra­tion Here.

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