Dr Tim Willis* +44 (0)7714 759035 Flexpansion University of Edinburgh 2 Buccleuch Place Edinburgh EH8 9LW

Founder - Tim Willis Tim has spent much of the past two decades in teaching, study and research in Computational Linguistics, interspersed with some sales and marketing. His doctoral research was on the methods people employed in abbreviation, in order to inform a system for automatic abbreviation expansion, initially aimed at computer users with motor disabilities. This led to the Flexpansion system, which has a much wider potential user group - people for whom typing is in any way slow, for instance due to inexperience, or because they are using a small keyboard on a handheld device. He holds a BA in Linguistics and Phonetics (Leeds University), and an MSc in Cognitive Science and Natural Language (Edinburgh University), and has passed his PhD in Informatics (Edinburgh), for which he is currently finishing his corrections. He has also been a research assistant at Leeds University and Lancaster University, where he worked on building and annotating three large databases ('corpora') of English language, analysed in high detail. Tim has experience in project and team management, and has worked in sales for a web design company in Cumbria. He also dealt with the correspondence and merchandise for a succesful band in the 1990's, which produced some great anecdotes. Tim enjoys white-water kayaking ('terrifying but exhilarating'), climbing and snowsports. He has also done a couple of stand-up comedy routines in front of audiences of a hundred ('just terrifying'). EPIS Academic Host - Michael Clouser Mike is an Associate with the Edinburgh-Stanford Link, which he joined in mid-2004. He runs the Link's Tech Entrepreneur courses, manages the Link's company-student intern programmes, and hosts several networking events throughout the year. Mike's teaching background and experience includes entrepreneurship and management courses at Lynn University in Boca Raton, Florida, and management courses for eCornell, a spinout of Cornell University. Previously he worked for Silicon Valley venture capital firm Dot.Edu Ventures, whose academic founders were early investors in Google. At Dot.Edu he sourced seed funding deals and arranged follow- on rounds. Mike also served as CEO of Cornell- based Student Agencies Inc., during which time he helped incubate six companies, including Blackboard (IPO'd) and Jump, which was bought by Microsoft. Mike's entrepreneurship experience includes founding four companies (research and software) and he also serves as advisor to Pardee Games a US-based games company that designs and markets the CHEBACHE range of board and online games. Mike holds an MBA and BSc, both from Cornell University. Currently he is pursuing his PhD. in entrepreneurship and innovation from the School of Management and Economics at the University of Edinburgh. *passed, awaiting approval of final corrections