The Importance and Capabilities of IIT in the Chicago Technology Ecosystem
Description
What is IIT’s place in Chicago’s technology landscape?
Chris Gladwin, the award-winning Chicago entrepreneur, inventor, and vice chairman and founder of Cleversafe, will give his views on the topic in a lecture at IIT next week.
Gladwin presents “A View of the Importance and Capabilities of IIT in the Chicago Technology Ecosystem” on Thursday, Feb. 6, 12:45 p.m. to 1:45 p.m., Stuart Building, Room 111. All are welcome.
Cleversafe is a dispersed cloud storage technology company and a major employer of IIT students and alumni. It addresses petabyte-sized and larger storage issues with innovative technology – the company has been awarded more than 130 patents. Currently, Cleversafe is undergoing a growth spurt, doubling in revenues and customers for the past several years. It closed a $55 million round of equity funding in August, enabling the company to extend its rapid growth, expand into new market segments, and build its talent base across all functional areas.
Cleversafe won the 2013 CityLITES Rising Star Award from the Illinois Technology Association, was named one of the Top 100 Technology Companies in Chicago by Built in Chicago, and has received awards from InformationWeek, Bloomberg, and many other sources. Gladwin was a finalist for the Ernst & Young 2013 Entrepreneur of the Year Award.
A graduate in engineering from MIT, Gladwin has worked in such large corporations as Zenith and Lockheed Martin and managed several startups including MusicNow, acquired by Circuit City. He has more than 1,000 issued and pending patents related to dispersed storage technology.
Gladwin is a member of the IIT Board of Trustees, Computer Science Department advisory board, Chicago Innovation Awards, Chicagoland Entrepreneurial Center, and other organizations.