The Team
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Dr. Mark FungFounder and Managing Member Mark Fung is a long-time, successful venture capital investor with a focus on promising emerging and frontier technology companies, concentrating particularly in the areas of generative AI, robotics, blockchain, and developer tools. Mark is a corporate attorney with over 30 years' experience. Early in his career, he served under Dr. Zbigniew Brzezinski, a staunch advocate of the Transatlantic-European partnership and one of the principal architects of the normalization of U.S.-China relations. In Washington, Mark served in the Office of Management and Budget, International Affairs Division, within the Executive Office of the President followed by service in the White House National Security Council (Global Affairs/Transnational Threats Directorate). He continued his public service in the United States Senate under Senator Barbara A. Mikulski, then Chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee. Mark was also the inaugural General Counsel of the US$5B (now US$10B) China-Africa Development Fund. More LessMark continues to be actively involved in education at the Harvard University Asia Center External Advisory Committee and Johns Hopkins University, where he served on the Board of Advisors at the School of Advanced International Studies. He previously served on the university-wide Board of Trustees at New York University. Mark is a member of the Board of Advisors of the Sonia and Celina Sotomayor Judicial Internship Program — named in honor of the sitting United States Supreme Court Justice and her mother — which aims to develop future leaders from the New York City area. He is also a Member of the Board of the Fouad Ajami Fellowship at Johns Hopkins-SAIS named in memory of the prominent professor and Middle East scholar. Each year, summer fellowships are awarded to graduate students to study Arabic language in the Middle East. Mark is a Life Member of the Council on Foreign Relations. He is fluent in Mandarin Chinese and is currently learning Arabic. Education & Training
B.A., New York University (Politics Honors) |
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Dr. Bernard HaykelAdvisory Board Member Bernard Haykel is professor of Near Eastern Studies and the director of the Institute for Transregional Study of the Contemporary Middle East, North Africa and Central Asia at Princeton University. He has been described as the foremost secular authority on the Islamic State's ideology. In addition to English, Haykel is fluent in Arabic and French and has taught advanced level Arabic at Georgetown, Oxford and Princeton. More LessBernard was awarded a Fulbright Fellowship in Yemen in 1992–1993. He obtained a bachelor's degree in International Politics at Georgetown University, MA, M Phil and, in 1998, Ph.D. in Islamic and Middle-Eastern Studies from the University of Oxford. After working as a post-doctoral research fellow at Oxford University in Islamic Studies, he joined New York University in 1998 as associate professor before taking up his post at Princeton. He became a Guggenheim Fellow in 2010. He is a member of the board of directors of the Arab Gulf States Institute in Washington. |
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Dr. Sanjay SarmaAdvisory Board Member Sanjay Sarma currently serves as CEO, President, and Dean at the Asia School of Business. Additionally, he holds esteemed titles as the Fred Fort Flowers (1941) and Daniel Fort Flowers (1941) Professor of Mechanical Engineering, as well as vice president for Open Learning at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Sanjay's significant contributions to the commercial RFID industry include the development of various standards and technologies. He is a co-author of The Inversion Factor: How to Thrive in the IOT Economy (MIT Press, 2017). In addition to his academic and industry roles, Sanjay represents MIT on the board of the MOOC provider, edX. More LessSanjay founded IoTask, a consultancy providing advisory services for the establishment and standardization of Internet of Things systems across diverse industry sectors. A frequent industry speaker, he holds positions on the boards of governors of EPCglobal and GS1 US, with a standing invitation as a guest of GS1. He also serves on the board of Hochschild Mining and holds roles as a technical advisor and board member at Top Flight Technologies. From 2012 to 2014, he chaired the board of EPCglobal. Previously, he served as CTO and director (board member) at OATSystems, a key player in the RFID market, which was acquired by Checkpoint Systems in 2008. Sanjay has earned multiple prestigious academic recognitions, including the National Science Foundation CAREER Award, the Cecil and Ida Green Career Development Chair at MIT, the Den Hartog Award for Excellence in Teaching, the Keenan Award for Innovations in Undergraduate Education, the MacVicar Fellowship, and the New England Business and Technology Award. He has been featured on Business Week's 'e.biz 25 Innovators' list and Information Week's "Innovators and Influencers." In 2010, Sanjay was honored with the inaugural RFID Journal Special Achievement Award. He has authored over 50 publications encompassing a wide range of topics, including computational geometry, virtual reality, manufacturing, CAD, RFID, security, and embedded computing. Sanjay completed his B.Tech. in Mechanical Engineering at the Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur in 1989, followed by an ME from Carnegie Mellon University in 1992 and a Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley in 1995. |