The Mentoring Program provides student inventors with access to expert advice at all stages along the process from conceptualization to commercialization. The various mentoring opportunities are coordinated by a student Mentoring Committee.

---

The Student Mentoring Program connects graduate MBAs and law students with undergraduate innovators. Students can contact our in-house business and legal mentors for advice on issues ranging from business plan development, to commercialization, to applying for a patent. Our current mentors have diverse backgrounds in engineering, business and corporate law.

---

Dr. Han Shen grew up in Nanjing, China. After earning his B.S. in chemistry at Nanjing University in 1998, Han moved to the US and started his graduate program at the University of Chicago, where he worked with Professor Richard F. Jordan to study the reaction of vinyl chloride with transition metal complex. Upon completing his Ph.D. research in 2002, Han joined Rohm and Haas Company (ROH), a Fortune 300 company and largest US specialty chemical manufacturer, to work as Senior Scientist in the Department of Emerging Technologies, where he contributed to various technology areas ranging from catalysis to material innovations. He is credited as inventor of 3 issued and 2 pending US patents. He was also extensively involved in patent strategy for emerging technologies and technology assessment for M&A. At ROH, Han chaired the board of a 2000-member internal technical community organization to promote collaboration and innovation. Additionally, he served as conference program chair for the American Chemical Society, a 160,000-member global professional society, to promote the biotechnology for health and wellness. Han is currently a first-year MBA student at Wharton.

Mentoring Type: Master of Business Administration (MBA)

Mentoring Hours: By appointment (email: hanshen at wharton dot upenn dot edu)

Craig Schroeder is the owner and general manager of Blue Skies Properties, a residential real estate investment company. Prior to starting this business, he worked for 16 years at MBNA, a Fortune 500 financial services corporation, serving as senior executive vice president from 1996 to 2005. His background includes experience in the key areas of consumer banking, including lending, customer satisfaction, collection, and quality assurance. Early in his career, he served as assistant to MBNA’s Chairman and CEO, and in that role he was a junior member of the team that took the company public in its 1991 New York Stock Exchange IPO. As senior executive vice president, he spent the majority of his time managing various corporate operations, including education, administration, purchasing, communications, employment and personnel programs, and international expansion strategy. He also served for several years as executive director of the MBNA Foundation, responsible for all of the company’s community donations, volunteer programs, employment programs for people with disabilities, scholarships, and school grants.

Mr. Schroeder is a member of the board of directors of the Innovative Schools Development Corporation, a non-profit organization that provides resources for charter schools and other innovative public schools in Delaware. He has a bachelor's degree in psychology from Penn’s School of Arts and Sciences, and is currently pursuing his Master of Computer Information Technology degree from the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences.

Mentoring Type: Business, Computer and Information Science

Mentoring Hours: By appointment (email: wcraig at seas dot upenn dot edu)

Oleg Elkhunovich is a third-year law student at the University of Pennsylvania Law School. Oleg received a BS in Computer Science and Economics and a MS in Computer Science from Yale University. While at Yale, Oleg was a Vice President of Yale Entrepreneurial Society where he was responsible for, among other things, organizing a business plan competition and an entrepreneurship conference. Oleg then worked as a Project Manager for a start-up enterprise resource management software company, co-founded an e-commerce business unit, and worked as a Product Manager for an online markting company. During his first summer in law school, Oleg worked in a Wilmington, DE office of a national Intellectual Property law firm. Oleg will split the second summer in a California offices of the international general practice firm and the litigation boutique firm.

Mentoring Type: Law

Mentoring Hours: TBA

Thomas Mather is a Doctoral Candidate in ModLab, Dr. Mark Yim's section of GRASP lab. In his previous life he worked as a IC Design Engineer working on the chip sets or cellphones. He also worked or a small research firm that worked on implantable medical devices. Thomas has diverse electrical backgroud in both discrete componant system design and VLSI analog design on silicon. He is experienced in electrical prototyping and design.

Mentoring Type: Engineering

Mentoring Hours: By appointment only (email: mathert at seas dot upenn dot edu)

Mosha Zhao is a third year PhD candidate in Chemical and Biomolecular engineering at the University of Pennsylvania. She has both academic and industry working experience in detergent, skin care and catalysis chemistry. She previously worked as an entrepreneurship instructor to facilitate teams in business competitions. The innovation team she founded in 2006 was accepted by the Innovation Fund and got into the final round of the PennVention Competition. She is currently a pitch consultant on the Innovation Fund committee of Weiss Tech House.

Mentoring Type: Chemical Engineering, Team Management, Entrepreneurship, PennVention

Mentoring Hours: By appointment only (email: moshahe at seas dot upenn dot edu)

---

The Weiss Tech House routinely engages a network of more than 200 alumni and industry experts to facilitate mentoring opportunities for students.

Students can access industry mentors in the following ways:

1. Attend a workshop, event, and our distinguished speaker series. See our event calendar.



2. Apply to the Innovation Fund. All teams accepted by the Innovation Fund are provided with a Team Leader from the Mentoring Committee who will facilitate and manage contacts with relevant industry mentors.



3. Participate in PennVention. Throughout three rounds of competition, all teams entering PennVention, will receive intensive industry mentoring services including face-to-face discussion, guidance and feedback.



4. Graduating students can request a mentor to supervise their project's exit from the Weiss Tech House and provide advice for the future by sending an email to mentoring@weisstechhouse.com.

Click here to visit the Industry Experts page.

Industry leaders who would like to share their expertise with our undergraduate inventors are welcome to contact Anne Stamer at director@weisstechhouse.com.