Bülent Erbilgin

Dr. Bülent Erbilgin has over three decades of industry executive leadership and teaching experience in technology. As an executive of seven startups and several public companies he successfully released products ranging from Cyber-security, Network Security, Web applications, SaaS, Complex high-availability software, Highly-distributed systems, Analytics, Big data, IOT, Machine Learning to Network Intelligence products. His teaching experience in the last few years includes Leadership, Teaming, Ethics, Innovation, Entrepreneurship, Design Thinking, , Lean Design & Development as well as Engineering Management at UC Berkeley, Northeastern University and KAUST. In addition Dr. Erbilgin has mentored founders and students in various entrepreneurship classes to identify startup opportunities, develop business plans, and VC presentations. He spent significant time with number of teams guiding them through all stages of forming a startup. Served on panels together with VC’s to evaluate and score various startup teams as part of the classes. Most recently Dr. Erbilgin led the Security Software Development effort at Workday. Prior to that Dr. Erbilgin was a VP Engineering at Telesense, VP Engineering at Cryptography Research/Rambus, VP Engineering at SS8, and several other companies. Dr. Erbilgin holds a Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering (Computer Architecture) and M.S. in Computer Science from Stanford University.

Hattan Ahmed

Hattan currently leads the Entrepreneurship Center at KAUST, delivering the university’s entrepreneurship vision. He believes in young people as change agents of the future and that universities play a key role in creating national economic impact. In his role as an advocate for innovation, Hattan works across the entire entrepreneurship ecosystem in the Kingdom, delivering entrepreneurship training, creating corporate innovation programs, and accelerating startups that will contribute to the national transformation agenda. Hattan has a diverse background in industry, startups and academia. As a startup co-founder, he brings a successful entrepreneurial background to his role, having navigated early stage growth to acquisition. He has received multiple entrepreneurial awards on both a national and international scale. He also brings a rich background in Information Technology to his role, with experience in system design development and implementation within industries ranging from oil and gas, travel and retail.

Lama Hakem

Dr. Lama Hakem is the Education Programs Lead at the Entrepreneurship Center at KASUT. She has a PhD in Conflict Analysis and Resolution. She was an assistant professor at different universities in Saudi Arabia. She has taught several classes for undergraduate and graduate students in the field of leadership, ethics, teaming, negotiation and entrepreneurship. Currently, Dr. Lama is Co-teaching the elective entrepreneurship courses, and Entrepreneurship for All. Also, she runs workshops on different topics including design thinking, leadership, entrepreneurship, and conflict resolution

Laura Ferrarello