Neil Kane

Co-Founder/Managing Partner, ESTEEM (Engineering, Science, and Technology Entrepreneurship Excellence Master's) Graduate Program, University of Notre Dame

A leading authority on technology commercialization, entrepreneurship and innovation, Kane is the Director of Curriculum and Capstone Advising in the ESTEEM Program at the University of Notre Dame. He is the former co-Executive Director of the Illinois Technology Enterprise Center at Argonne National Laboratory and was Innovation Executive in Residence at the Research Park at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC) and Director of Undergraduate Entrepreneurship at Michigan State University. He is the founding CEO of several venture- and angel-backed companies based on university research in areas such as nanotechnology and advanced materials as well as consumer products and software. He held engineering, sales and marketing positions at IBM and Microsoft.  
 
Kane holds a BS in Mechanical Engineering from UIUC and an MBA from The University of Chicago. Named a 2007 Technology Pioneer by the World Economic Forum, he was recognized for Outstanding Entrepreneurship by the National Science Foundation and twice was an invited witness on technology transfer for the U.S. House of Representative's Subcommittee on Research & Science Education. He is a co-author of The Innovator’s Secret Formula and is a graduate of the Player’s Workshop at The Second City in Chicago.