I.J. Ikävalko
Nanotechnology, software, venture development consultant.



Above: Blue Morpho butterfly -- a 21st C. object lesson in nanotechnology provided by nature. Morpho wings exhibit cognitive abilities leveraging sub-wavelength optical phenomena. Specifically the morpho can detect vapors, including gases emitted by explosives. GE Global Research has a grant from the U.S. government to replicate the Morpho Sulkowskyi's wing structures for defense purposes

 ijikavalko

Current projects:
— Business development services to a quantitative analysis oriented hedge fund strategies firm; nanoscience consultant and Executive Director of a new nanotechnology fund at a Houston, TX investment bank; energy / oil & gas market analysis. Various Advisory Board positions.


Curriculum Vitae:

— Born in Helsinki, Finland, to a family involved in the arts, theater and journalism. Managed cabaret theater. Studied philosophy, French literature, mathematical logic, cognitive science, computing, information architecture. Early career in U.S. as artist (painter).

— Headhunter specializing in IBM mainframe operating systems (Multiple Virtual Storage).

— President and equity partner in MultiMate,  word-processing software application for the IBM PC. Marketing, licensing, capital raising. Sold share of company (32.5%) to Silicon Valley & Boston venture capital firm Greylock Partners.

— International Marketing Director for Haka-Stroi (the Russia unit of Haka, Finland's largest construction company); catalyst in formation of joint ventures bringing together leading U.S. firms (United Technologies, Parsons Corporation). Haka-Stroi built the Len Otis Lift (Russia's first digital elevator factory) for Otis Elevator.

— Arranged U.S.-Finnish partnerships in strategically important projects (e.g., repurposing of a Soviet era "star-wars" plant of Minradiokom, the Soviet Ministry of Radio Industry). Venture development to support U.S. role in Russia, accelerate capitalism, enable reduction of WMDs. Cooperation with the foreign trade agency of the government of Finland ("FinPro") and McDonnell-Douglas.

— NCC Projects co-founder --  Helsinki-based construction-engineering firm that combined Russia expertise with the financial resources of NCC Ab, the Swedish conglomerate. NCC is noted for infrastructure such as bridges and oil platform foundations.

— Developed U.S. energy and aerospace ventures in Russia and Kazakhstan (for example, Occidental Petroleum in Nizhevartovsk; the Chevron Tengiz-Korolev oil fields).

— Role in arranging project finance for international construction via US government agencies (TDA, OPIC, Ex-Im Bank, USAID) and private sources (investment banks, major consulting firms).

— Speaker on technology, venture start-ups and innovation at national and international conferences, to industry, government and educational institutions, including Yale, the University of Michigan, the Finland Trade Center network (FinPro), the DMC (Defense Systems Management College ), the US Export-Import Bank, and Houston, TX oil and gas interests.

— Business development for EPS Software Corp., prominent software boutique focused on Microsoft-based "enterprise" custom software development. EPS is visible within the industry for its multiple Microsoft MVPs, its advanced .Net frameworks (Milos Solution Platform) and legacy migration services / tools (VFP to .Net conversions). The company publishes CoDe Magazine .

— Health care IT for Sogeti, part of Capgemini.

— Currently, Executive Director of the IICC Nanotechnology Fund at a Houston investment banking and private equity firm. 

— Personal: married to writer, arts & funding consultant Barbara Rosen, author of Arriaga (biography of the "Spanish Mozart"), and co-author (with Wolfgang Zuckermann) of the award winning The Mews of London. Barbara is former Cultural Affairs Officer at the British Embassy, Washington DC. Barbara and I.J. live in Houston, TX and actively pursue interests in the arts, sciences, ecology, and studies of the human mind.



The written contents of this website are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 License. Copyright 2007 by Ilkka J. Ikavalko. Some rights reserved. This means you can share the content on this website with others and use it noncommercially, but you must attribute the content to me and the specific URL on this site where the content is published. If you would like other rights to this material, please contact me at: ijikavalko | at | live.com.



 Links:

Benoit Mandelbrot: 1924-2010



On LinkedIn

MIT Artificial Intelligence Lab
Kurzweil AI

Nassim Taleb's Notebook

Rice Alliance

EPS Software Corp.

CODE Magazine

VFP to .NET Conversion

Science & Reason

Money Tree VC Report

Finland Trade Centers

VTT Experts Finland

U.S. Exim Bank

USRBC (US-Russia Business Council)

Cam Harvey's Fin'l Dictionary

CyberMedia India

Seeking Alpha / India

Amis du Monde Diplo (in French)

The Tibet Society

The Basye Vortex

Pascal's Machine (about.com)