| UCSB Engineering Dean Joins Santa Barbara Technology Incubator’s Advisory Board |
Matt Tirrell, Dean of the College of Engineering at UCSB, joined Santa Barbara Technology Incubator’s (“SBTi’s”), Board of Advisors. This is another step in SBTI’s building a deep bench of technical and business experts from the community ready to serve high technology start-ups. Leaders in wireless, optical and broadband Internet infrastructure are being selectively recruited at this time to augment the five member Director and ten member Advisory Boards.
“I am delighted to join the SBTi Tech Advisory Board because of the
possibilities it offers to see new technology at early stages and to help
devise ways that the resources of the Santa Barbara community can be used
to contribute to the development of exciting new professional and economic opportunities in the region,” stated Matt Tirrell.
Tirrell, a member of the National Academy of Engineering, is currently the Richard A. Auhll Professor with appointments in the departments of Chemical Engineering and Materials, and Dean of UCSB’s world-renowned College of Engineering. His current research focuses on the manipulation and measurement of interfacial properties of materials used in applications from coatings and adhesion to lubrication and bioengineering.
“We are thrilled to have Matt as a key member of our Technical Advisory Board,” stated SBTI CEO and Chairman, Dennis Cagan. “We are carefully hand selecting those technical leaders who have the knowledge, connections and experience to best serve our new ventures. We feel that Matt is the most appropriate and best possible first member we could have recruited.”
Other SBTI Board members include business leaders such as Larry Barels, Trevor Fetter and Ernest Drew. Barels was founder and former CEO of Wavefront Technologies as well as former Chairman of Software.com (Nasdaq SWCM). Trevor Fetter is the current Chairman and CEO of Broadlane, Inc. the new business-to-business e-commerce company created by Tenet Healthcare Corporation and Ventro Corporation. Ernie Drew was most recently President and CEO of the Industrial Group of Westinghouse Electric Corporation. Prior to that he was President and CEO of Hoechst Celanese Corporation, a $7 billion revenue company. Drew served on the Boards of Fortune 500 companies, Ashland, Inc. and Public Service Enterprise.
The SBTI management team has reviewed over two-hundred business plans and is currently incubating two start-ups. They expect to make eight to ten additional investments in high-technology start-ups over the next year.