Wharton DC Innovation Summit Opens

WASHINGTON, DC--(Marketwired - April 26, 2016) -  The Wharton DC Innovation Summit opens today, with the "Fathers of the Internet" as strategic keynotes. The full 2-day event provides rare access to top Wharton Business School professors, key opinion leaders and unique networking in Huddle Zones.

Raise your IQ 

The Wharton DC Innovation Summit offers its participants unparalleled dialogue with the "Fathers of the Internet" Vint Cerf and Bob Kahn. Their US Presidential Medal of Freedom, the National Medal of Technology, the Turing Award, the Japan Prize, the Marconi Prize and Queen Elizabeth II Engineering Prize -- all honors reflect their 40-year status as innovation icons. Their work on the TCP/IP protocol created the first Internet message traffic, a step they enhanced thru their crucial role in the government and privately funded expansion of the Internet, leading to today's daily innovations in ecommerce.

The Summit also features keynotes from innovation leader and Google Brand Evangelist Gopi Kallayil, top US health opinion leader Susan Dentzer, and Chris Surdak, rocket scientist and author on Big Data.

With over 40 spotlight sessions, well over 100 speakers and the multi-disciplinary approach used by Wharton and UPenn faculty to produce creative results, conference attendees will walk away motivated with fresh ideas and ready-to-apply learning for their team and individual projects.

As always, Summit participants have unique networking options: They'll hear keynoters and opinion leaders sharing unique guides on the tough road to innovation. They also enjoy special networking and extended Q&A conversation periods in the "Huddle Room" (after each session). By design, this Summit offers unmatched, rich moments for engaging with peers, speakers and fellow innovators.

A session for everyone

Wharton DC is proud of its culture of inclusion and reflects this in the diverse keynote and workshop agenda across two full days, with twin special receptions, one at the British Embassy. Spanning every key industry, from life-sciences to high-tech, urban innovation to emerging technologies, these Wharton keynotes and panels pinpoint crucial questions that are top-of-mind in innovation's growing ecosystem. Topics (a selection): corporate and social responsibility and impact investing, crowd funding and venture funding, cybersecurity and HIT, biopharma and mobile health, and entrepreneurship (with a session dedicated to youth). Through this inclusive approach, the Wharton DC Innovation Summit helps drive innovation at every level.

Connect, engage and collaborate

The full Wharton DC Innovation Summit -- in a rich array of sessions -- offers not just Huddle Zones to deepen personal interactions at the conference. It has a smorgasbord of connecting activity: Through in-session meetings, post-panel "huddles," a networking workshop and options to engage many at twin receptions (including the British Embassy), the Summit has reworked the traditional idea of "conference networking." This is "connecting" at a new innovative level. It gives professionals, executives and teams generous time to build their networks in these timely moments. "Innovation gets threaded through the whole agenda," as one 2015 participant put it. Alan Schlaifer, Summit Chair, adds, "We expect record attendance due to our unique headliners and dozens of industry and government opinion leaders."

About the Wharton DC Innovation Summit: http://whartondcinnovation.com/

About Wharton DC: http://www.whartondc.com/