Schedule

10 am

Check-In

10:30 am

Opening Remarks

• Cornelia Huellstrunk, Executive Director of the Keller Center

Multipurpose Room A-B

10:40 am

Design for Impact Panel Discussion

Beyond the Pitch: Ventures Built on Context, Critique, and Rigor

Moderator: Manish Bhardwaj, Director of Design for Impact Program in Humanities and Social Sciences

Panelists:

• Nena Golubovic, Director of Design for Impact Program in Sciences and Engineering
• Ben Lehnert, Entrepreneurship & Design Fellow; Chief Design Officer at Stark
• Sophia Vernon, Undergraduate Class of 2027
• Janet Vertesi, Associate Director of the Keller Center; Associate Professor of Sociology

Multipurpose Room A-B

11:45 am

Networking/Lunch

Guided Networking

• What I Wish I Knew: Navigating the Tools of Venture Creation
  Entrepreneurship requires more than inspiration — it demands mastery of the practical tools that turn ideas into ventures. This session surfaces the hard-won lessons of strategy, markets, and execution that every founder wishes they had known earlier. Participants will explore how instrumental skills, from business models to scaling tactics, can make the difference between promise and impact.
• Critique as Catalyst: How Design Critique Accelerates Ventures
  Breakthrough ventures are not built on speed alone, but on reflection, challenge, and refinement. This session introduces design critique as a structured practice that sharpens ideas, reveals blind spots, and accelerates innovation. Participants will see how critique, drawn from design and adapted to entrepreneurship, can transform early concepts into ventures built to endure.

Multipurpose Room C

Lunch and Demo Stations
Multipurpose Room Lobby Area

1 pm

Remarks

• Sigrid Adriaenssens, Director of the Keller Center; Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering
• Andrew Houck, Dean of Princeton's School of Engineering
• Cornelia Huellstrunk, Executive Director of the Keller Center

Multipurpose Room A-B

1:15 pm

Humanities and Social Sciences presentations

• Blue Lab - Allison Carruth, Professor; Faculty Director of Blue Lab and Barron Bixler, Creative Director, Blue Lab; Professional Specialist, Effron Center for the Study of America
• Princeton Production Workforce Training - Tess James, Lecturer; Associate Director, Theater and Music Theater
• Princeton Free Food: A Scalable, Real-Time Community Platform - Lorae Stojanovic, Research Specialist, Eviction Lab
• Voge Academy - Nic Voge, Senior Associate Director, McGraw Center for Teaching & Learning

STEM presentations

• Crosslayer Labs - Henry Birge-Lee, Graduate Student
• Economical Proton-Boron11 Fusion - Nat Fisch, Professor, Astrophysical Sciences
• PeriMind - Mitchell Ng, Co-founder
• Structured Light Laser Diagnostics for Semiconductor Processing - Ivan Romadanov, Staff Research Physicist and Yevgeny Raitses, Managing Principal Research Physicist; Lecturer in Astrophysical Sciences and the Program in Plasma Physics

Multipurpose Room A-B

2:40 pm

Reception and Demo Stations

Multipurpose Room Lobby Area

3:30 pm

Award Announcements

Multipurpose Room Lobby Area

4 pm

Event concludes

2025 Judges

• Desiree Barron-Callaci, Senior Program Officer, American Council of Learned Societies
• Jossy R. Harrington, Senior Associate, Tech Council Ventures
• Thierry Klein, President of Bell Labs Solutions Research, Nokia Bell Labs
• Alice Kogan, Lecturer, Keller Center
• De Nichols, Author, Designer, and Researcher leading Culture Lab UXR
• Richard Purcell, Director, Business Development, LeagueMed

 

2024 Innovation Forum participants and judges with Keller Center executive director Cornelia Huellstrunk

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