Solomon Darwin at the Kairos Summit

(L-R) Vivek Wadhwa, Ankur Jain (Founder of the Kairos Society), and Solomon Darwin at the Kairos Summit

Professor Solomon Darwin, Associate Director of the Program in Open Innovation, Professor Bernt Wahl, Industry Fellow at the Center for Entrepreneurship & Technology, and Berkeley SkyDeck’s Executive Director Jeff Burton were invited to attend the Kairos Society Global Summit 2013 as mentors.

The Kairos Society is a non-profit student-run entrepreneurial organization founded in 2008. The Global Summit was organized with the vision of bringing together the world’s brightest collegiate entrepreneurs, and pairing them with today’s globally influential leaders to develop pioneering solutions to the most challenging problems across various industries.

This year’s Global Summit was held in New York City on February 22nd-23rd; with 350 student attendees representing 100 universities from over 20 countries. Invitations were sent to 250 world leaders to participate and serve as mentors, including: Duncan Niederauer, CEO of NYSE; Beth Comstock, CMO & EVP of General Electric; Alex Gorsky, CEO of Johnson & Johnson; Howard Buffet, Executive Director of the Howard Buffet Foundation; Vivek Wadhwa, VP of Innovation and Research at NASA Singularity; Judy Rodin, President of the Rockefeller Foundation; and Mark Rockefeller of Rockefeller Consulting.

In addition to hosting intimate breakout discussions between world leaders and young entrepreneurs, the Kairos Summit also acknowledged the top 50 undergraduate student-led startups from the Kairos Society, known as the Kairos 50. UC Berkeley students have founded six of these distinguished companies:

  • Omar Haroun (UC Berkeley) and Reuben Doetsch (Columbia University): Sportaneous – a marketplace for fitness classes.
  • Will Drevno and Richard Berwick: Dreambox – creators of a 3D printing vending machine.
  • Georgy Ramonov and Sabrina Atienza: M3D – a search engine for medical researchers that pulls data in hours versus days.
  • Nanxi Liu: Nanoly Bioscience – created a polymer that allows vaccines to survive without refrigeration.

    Nanxi Liu Nanoly Bioscience

    Nanxi Liu: Nanoly Bioscience

  • Harshil Goel, Harshil Goel, Timothy Lee, Matt Fay, Zachary Hargreaves, Jordan Greene (UC Berkeley), and Jason Forslin (University of the Pacific): VIRES (Virtually Infinite Rotary Exponentiation System) – a transmission design that increases efficiency and torque.
  • Nikita Bier and Jeremy Blalock: Politify, Inc. – an outline for government, a simulator that models how policies and budgets will affect citizens.
  • The Kairos Society believes that young entrepreneurs possess new perspectives and diverse experiences that set the platform for disruptive, groundbreaking ventures. With insight from experienced global leaders and technological programs provided by the world’s top innovative companies, the Kairos Society is hopeful that these student leaders will help to change the world.