Keynote by Professor Rajesh Gupta

Rajesh K. Gupta is a QUALCOMM professor in Computer Science and Engineering at UC San Diego. His research focus is on energy efficiency from algorithms, devices to systems that scale from IC chips, data centers to commercial buildings. His past contributions include SystemC modeling and SPARK parallelizing high-level synthesis, both of which have been incorporated into industrial practice. Earlier Gupta lead or co-lead DARPA-sponsored efforts under the Data Intensive Systems (DIS) and Power Aware Computing and Communications (PACC) programs on role of adaptation in energy efficient system architectures. His ongoing projects are focused on mitigating microelectronic variability and creating non-volatile storage/memory systems. In recent years, Gupta and his students have received a best paper award at IEEE/ACM DCOSS’08 and a best demonstration award at IEEE/ACM IPSN/SPOTS’05. Gupta received a BTech in EE from IIT Kanpur, MS in EECS from UC Berkeley and a PhD in Electrical Engineering from Stanford University. Gupta is a Fellow of the IEEE. Gupta serves as chair of Computer Science and as associate director of the Qualcomm Institute at UCSD.

Tyler Adams

Tyler Adams just graduated from Math and EECS at UC Berkeley with honors.  He will begin his career at Square in New York City this August.

Vivaan Bahl

Vivaan Bahl is currently a senior at Gunn High School. Under the banner of his company (Palo Alto Apps), he has released several apps to both the Apple App Store and Google Play.

One of his recent projects involved the development of the AEDSpotter for the nonprofit organization Racing Hearts of Palo Alto. The iOS and Android app was used in Racing Hearts’ “Spot the Box” campaign, as users located lifesaving Automatic External Defibrillators around the Bay Area in a month-long competition.

Vivaan is looking forward to enrolling in the Computer Engineering program at Carnegie Mellon University in the fall.

Drew Bent

Drew is a senior at Gunn who will be attending MIT in the fall. He loves to build things—everything from iPhone and Android apps to robots at GRT and a solar egg incubator for a Lemelson-MIT InvenTeam. Throughout high school, he has had the opportunity to impact others with his creations at Khan Academy, Sony Ericsson, and several startups—as well as his own venture. Outside of school, Drew is an avid runner and cellist.

Sebastian Bertsch

Sebastian Bertsch has spent his time since Gunn doing as many different things as possible. After a stint studying blacksmithing and educational theory, he worked for TechShop opening new shop locations, and currently designs and fabricates hardware for a radar imaging company. Other jobs included fabricating farm equipment, coaching High School robotics teams, demonstrating 19th century technologies at museums, working in a sheet metal factory and creating assemblage sculpture for a gallery in S.F. He invests his spare time planting fruit trees and exploring the west on motorcycle.

Valentin Bonnet

Valentin graduated from Gunn in 2009 and then ran off to study at McGill University (go Canada!). He returned in 2012 with a bachelors in CS and has been happily working at Google ever since. He enjoys traveling, sports of all kinds, and talking about any and all subjects.

Daniela Buchman

Daniela Buchman graduated in Gunn 2006. She received her Bachelor of Science in mechanical engineering in 2010 and a Master’s degree in Mechanical Engineering from Stanford University in 2012. She has since worked as a Hardware Engineer at Oracle. In her free time she enjoys 3d printing and working on a laser tag set.

Alvin Cheng

Alvin is an mechanical engineer currently working at a contract manufacturer bringing high end medical equipment into production. He also spent many years in the defense industry with focus on military ground vehicles, including testing, manufacturing, and program management. In his spare time, Alvin participates in various form of amateur automobile racing including enduro racing with other former Gunn graduates. Alvin also volunteers for various robotics programs and make and sells custom graphics and creations to meet his customer needs. Alvin was a member of GRT as well as the Autoshop as a student at Gunn, and earned his Bachelors from UC Santa Barbara.

Neel Guha

Anand Gupta

Anand Gupta graduated from Gunn in 2010, and went on to study Molecular and Cell Biology at Harvard University. He has taken the last two years away from Harvard, developing new diagnostics for difficult cancers, supported by the Thiel Fellowship. His project combines experience in pathology and microscopy with ideas from computer vision and machine learning. Previously, Anand worked in both software and biotechnology, at such companies as Sun Microsystems, Amazon.com, Elan, and Halcyon Molecular. He’s passionate about work at the intersection of many fields, as well as the process of translating discoveries from the laboratory to the real world.

Audrey Ho

Audrey Ho studies Computer Science and Chemistry at Stanford University. She is typically found either at her computer, in front of a classroom, or on the dance floor.

 Jacob Kessler

Eagle Kessler (or Jacob, if you think that Eagle is too strange) graduated from Gunn in 2004 and promptly went to college in upstate New York (at RPI – good college, terrible weather). Wisely, he moved back to the Bay Area where he worked first for Sun and then for LinkedIn, where he is today.

Nate Levine

Nate Levine is a co-founder of OpenGov, a software company has built the premier web-based financial transparency and business
intelligence platform for governments. The OpenGov Platform is in use by governments across the country, including the cities of Los Angeles and Palo Alto. Nate co-founded and served as Operations Director of California Common Sense, where he established California’s first-ever data transparency portal and a recognized brand for research excellence. Nate has postponed completion of his Bachelors degree in Electrical Engineering at Stanford University and in 2014 was named to the Forbes 30 Under 30 List.

Ting-Ting Liu

Ting-Ting Liu graduated from Gunn in 2011, and is currently studying Biomedical and Mechanical Engineering at Harvard University. Since graduating, she’s worked on multiple engineering projects, such as the development of a wrist-worn wireless heart rate monitor for athletes, and an integrated UV/steam mat cleaner to combat skin-borne infections. In addition to her interest in engineering, Ting-Ting also has multiple years of experience with entrepreneurship, marketing, and business operations. She firmly believes it’s possible to pursue both engineering and business, and would be happy to speak to anyone interested in the two. This summer, Ting-Ting will be joining the Performance Engineering team with the Adidas group.

Nitsan Shai

Nitsan Shai is a student at Carnegie Mellon University and is an Electrical and Computer Engineering major with minors in Computer Science and Music. He graduated from Gunn in 2012 where he mainly focused on computer science, math, and physics. At CMU, Nitsan is involved in peer tutoring, a cappella, the student theatre group Scotch n’ Soda, recording concerts and performances with the School of Music, and greek life.

Garrett Reid

Garrett Reid is a security engineer (in the computer industry – he doesn’t know how locks work). He graduated from Gunn High School in Palo Alto, and went on to get a computer science degree from the University of Colorado at Boulder. He’s always had a passion for security, but somehow stayed out of trouble. He also realizes you don’t want multiple paragraphs of descriptive text 🙂

Jonathan Stevens

Jonathan Stevens is a UC Irvine student majoring in Computer Game Science, which emphasizes the technical side of game development. A 2011 Gunn grad, he took a variety of multimedia and technology electives ranging from graphic design and video production to introductory programming. Much of his free time at UCI is spent with the Video Game Developer’s Club, where he works with teams of peers to produce games and learn from industry professionals. He is currently working on a virtual reality game for the Oculus Rift.

Nick Sturiale

Nick Sturiale joined Ignition as managing partner in 2013, after more than 25 years of experience developing startups, both as venture capitalist and entrepreneur. Prior to Ignition, Nick spent three years at JAFCO Ventures as a general partner, where he invested in companies such as Reputation.com, Bill.com and Delphix.

Prior to JAFCO, Nick spent eight years at Sevin Rosen Funds, where he incubated and led first investments in companies such as XenSource, which was acquired by Citrix Systems (CTXS) for $500 million; Splunk (SPLK), the leading public company in “big data”; and Hightail (formerly YouSendIt), a leading SaaS vendor in file collaboration.  Nick also worked at The Carlyle Group as a managing director and co-head of its Silicon Valley office.

Prior to venture capital, Nick spent twelve years as a software entrepreneur.  He was founding CEO of Timbre Technologies, a manufacturing-analytics software company, which won the 1999 UC Berkeley Business Plan Competition and was acquired by Tokyo Electron for $138 million in 2001.

Currently he serves on the board of directors of Splunk, Hightail, Vuclip, StrongLoop and BlueData.

Nick holds a BS degree in economics from California State University, Chico, and an MBA with distinction from the University of California, Berkeley, where he is a frequent guest lecturer.

Emily Wang

Emily Wang is a Gunn High School senior who believes that anybody can become an inventor. She believes that engineering gives us the opportunity to help improve lives and make progress in society. Emily was the president and founder of Research Science & Invention (RSI) Club, where students initiate engineering projects and solve problems in fields ranging from cyber security to civil engineering. In 2012, Emily’s team was awarded, as one of top 15 teams in the nation, a Lemelson-MIT InvenTeam grant. Her team is developing the “Cluck Bucket,” a solar egg incubator for Uganda, and they have presented their prototype at MIT for the EurekaFest invention festival, as well as at the National Collegiate Inventor and Innovator Alliance (NCIIA) Conference. Emily also engineers bright fluorescent proteins at Stanford University’s Department of Bioengineering, which may allow researchers to investigate diseases at the molecular level. In her spare time, Emily enjoys singing, dancing, and cooking. Next year, she is attending Harvard College, where she is interested in studying bioengineering and computer science.

Shilpa Yarlagadda

Shilpa is a senior at Gunn who will be attending Berkeley in the fall and is founder of Club Academia, a nonprofit Ed-Tech company. Club
Academia is built on the platform “of the students, by the students and for the students” as it hopes to provide a world-class education for all students through its concise video-tutorials. Shilpa has recently won the $20,000 Westly prize for her work and has presented at numerous education conferences. She’s been invited to speak at ISTE14, Dell World, EduTech, Student Voice Live, TEDx and TED events as well as Building Learning Communities 2014 as a keynote speaker this year. In her free time, she enjoys writing short stories and exploring the outdoors.