
The Deep Tech Innovation Lab is on a mission to unleash the potential of emerging talent and drive advancements in deep tech innovation. Through strategic partnerships, interdisciplinary collaboration, and cutting-edge perspectives, we cultivate a diverse ecosystem where industry leaders and top graduate talent converge, propelling early-stage projects towards real-world impact and redefining the landscape of tomorrow’s technologies.
Team
Bo Heiden
Executive Director, Tusher Strategic Initiative for Technology Leadership at UC-Berkeley
Dr. Heiden is the Executive Director of the Tusher Strategic Initiative for Technology Leadership at UC-Berkeley and co-chair of the Technology, Innovation, and Intellectual Property program at the Classical Liberal Institute at the NYU School of Law. He is also the Director of the Center for Intellectual Property (CIP) at University of Gothenburg, which is a joint platform between academia and industry focused on the transformation of knowledge into wealth and welfare.
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Dr. Heiden was recently a member of the European Commission Expert Group on Standard Essential Patents. Dr. Heiden is the co-founder of the Berkeley Deep Tech Innovation Lab, the Dynamic Competition Initiative, ICM Global, and Increasing Diversity in Innovation. Over the past fifteen years, Dr. Heiden has also managed over 150 innovation projects with industry, university research institutes, healthcare providers, and start-up ventures.
Dr. Heiden holds degrees in engineering, technology management, and economics, and his research is at the interdisciplinary interface of economics, law, and innovation, in particular, intellectual property, innovation economics, and competition policy in knowledge-intensive sectors. Before turning his focus to the fields of innovation strategy and policy, Dr. Heiden played professional basketball in a number of European countries. This is why he is so tall.
Matthew Rappaport
Co-Founder & Co-Director, Deep Technology Innovation Lab
Matthew Rappaport is the General Partner of Future Frontier Capital (FFC), a pre-seed, frontier technology venture capital fund. Prior to FFC, in 2004 Matthew co-founded IP Checkups, Inc., an intellectual property strategy and software firm where he managed hundreds of innovation projects for early-stage start-ups and large corporations.
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Matthew is on the faculty at the Fung Institute of Engineering Leadership at UC Berkeley and Co-Founder and Co-Director of the Deep Tech Innovation Lab at the Tusher Strategic Initiative for Technology Leadership at the Institute for Business Innovation, at the Haas School of Business.
He has mentored and taught hundreds of graduate students from Berkeley Law, Haas School of Business, and the Fung Institute on real-world technology commercialization projects in collaboration with startups, corporate innovation departments, and research labs including Lawrence Berkeley National Labs. Matthew has been selected every year since 2011 by his peers as one of the IAM 300: The World’s Leading IP Strategists.
Wayne Stacy
Mentor
Wayne Stacy is the Executive Director of the Center for Law & Technology and an instructor at Berkeley Law. Prior to joining Berkeley Law, Wayne was the Director for the USPTO’s Silicon Valley Office. And before that he spent more than 20 years at the world’s top law firms, including at Baker Botts as the Intellectual Property Chair for the San Francisco office and at Cooley as an equity partner.
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Wayne has served as an adjunct professor at four law schools over the last 20 years—teaching patent law, patent litigation, copyright law, PTAB practice, and NIL licensing. He has served as an advisor on Federal Court local-rule committees and as faculty for the National Institute for Trial Advocacy. And most recently, he served as a Fulbright Specialist focused on developing frameworks for AI regulation in developing economies.
Leah Edwards
Mentor
Leah Edwards is an experienced board member and educator focusing on technology and financing innovation. Throughout her career, she has helped both startups and corporations use new technologies and business models. Leah started her career in management consulting and then launched new products for Intuit, Oracle and Taligent, a joint-venture of Apple and IBM.
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She then joined the founding team of an enterprise SaaS company, Post Communications, which was acquired by Netcentives within two years for $380 million. After advising and serving in interim leadership roles for sustainability startups, which she helped sell to major companies, including the US Green Business Council and SolarCity, she co-founded a marketing technology company, Overstat, which was purchased by Tealeaf Technology (now IBM). Leah serves on the Boards of Cumplo.com, an SMB lending platform, and NameCoach, an AI- based name pronunciation and personalization platform. Leah is also an executive coach and a Lecturer for UC Berkeley’s Engineering School and DeepTech Innovation Lab. Leah’s involvement in Higher Education began in 2012 as the Director of the Center for Entrepreneurial Studies at the Stanford Graduate School of Business. Leah has specialized in commercializing new technology and set up external education partnerships for Autodesk. While serving as Partner at Pegasus Tech Ventures, she made investments aligned with each corporate investor’s strategic priorities and helped set up innovation collaborations. Leah holds a B.S. in Business Administration from the University of California, Berkeley and an MBA and Certificate of Public Management from the Stanford Graduate School of Business.
Viktor Ström
Research Fellow
Dr. Ström is a Research Fellow at the Deep Technology Innovation Lab and an invited Visiting Researcher, sponsored by Professor David J. Teece, at UC Berkeley’s Tusher Strategic Initiative for Technology Leadership. He is also a Postdoctoral Scholar in the Unit for Innovation and Entrepreneurship at the School of Business, Economics and Law, University of Gothenburg, and a member of the university’s research Centre on Knowledge-Intensive Innovation Ecosystems (U‑GOT KIES).
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He holds a B.Sc. in Mechanical Engineering, an M.Sc. in Entrepreneurship and Business Design, and a Ph.D. in Innovation, Entrepreneurship, and Intellectual Capital Management. Dr. Ström’s research analyzes how knowledge is created, transferred, and disseminated in various types of knowledge networks—spanning university-industry engineering collaborations, mergers and acquisitions of knowledge-intensive firms, and the emergence and growth of deep tech ventures.
Chang Zi Qian
Mentor
Chang is a Visiting Scholar at Berkeley Law specializing in AI law and legal technology innovation. His career trajectory spans litigation practice, government innovation policy, and entrepreneurship. After starting out as a commercial litigator, he served in the Singapore Prime Minister’s Office, where he shaped startup policy and managed government venture investments.
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Prior to his Berkeley appointment, Chang spent a decade as Founder and CEO of INTELLLEX, pioneering AI-driven knowledge management solutions for the legal industry. He currently also serves as a Frontier Research Fellow at the Berkeley Center for Responsible, Decentralized Intelligence (RDI). His work bridges cutting-edge technological innovation with practical commercial applications and responsible governance frameworks.
Kavisha Shroff
Mentor
Kavisha Shroff is a bioengineer by training and operates at the intersection of science, strategy, and storytelling. As Program Manager at the Deep Tech Innovation Lab (DTIL), Kavisha leads marketing and communications while supporting program operations, strategic industry engagement, and classroom initiatives.
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Previously, she was part of the founding team that launched the iGEM Indian League across the Indian subcontinent, building its communications strategy and launching her undergraduate institution’s first bioengineering research club to foster interdisciplinary collaboration. At TIDE (Together in Development and Education), she designed and ran pilot programs for teacher training, spearheaded the internship program, and supported the enterprise development team.
Early in her career, she worked across science education, biotech research, and deep tech startups, developing skills in research translation, stakeholder engagement, and go-to-market strategy. Kavisha holds a Master of Engineering in Bioengineering from UC Berkeley and a Bachelor of Technology in Bioengineering from MIT ADT University, Pune, India.
The Deep Tech Innovation Lab advances the commercialization of groundbreaking technologies that address critical global challenges. By fostering collaboration between bright, interdisciplinary minds and industry leaders, the lab accelerates the development of innovative solutions in fields like renewable energy, biotechnology, and AI. This not only contributes to technological progress but also cultivates a new generation of skilled leaders equipped to tackle future challenges. The lab’s emphasis on practical, real-world applications ensures that these advancements are not just theoretical but translate into tangible improvements across industries ultimately enhancing quality of life and driving societal progress.