Elaine Chen Email & Phone Number

Arlington, Ma, Us

Medford, Massachusetts, Us

As the Cummings Family Professor of the Practice in Entrepreneurship, I work with faculty members on curriculum development, design and teach courses in innovation and entrepreneurship, develop educational content and infrastructure, and expand educational offerings via partnerships with other schools and organizations within Tufts and beyond. I currently serve as the Faculty Director for the popular and rapidly growing undergraduate Entrepreneurship Minor, which reached 12% of the undergraduate population in 2023-2024. I co-teach and guest lecture on topics in innovation and entrepreneurship, market segmentation, primary market research, maker skills, product development, corporate innovation, translational research and commercialization, and the business of robotics.

Medford, Massachusetts, Us

As the Director of the Derby Entrepreneurship Center, I work with a talented team of staff members and volunteers to build and scale innovative co-curricular programs that help students, alumni and community members at Tufts develop an entrepreneurial mindset and skillset. Since being founded in 2021, our Center has seen double digit growth every year. Our Center serves not only Tufts students and alumni, but is also an active contributor to the Greater Boston student innovator ecosystem and beyond. We are part of a coalition of entrepreneurship centers within universities that collaborate in bringing in-person and virtual events to students all over the world.

Arlington, Ma, Us

ConceptSpring helps corporate leaders make their organizations more entrepreneurial via innovation consulting services and custom training programs. We work with corporations, non-profits, and government agencies across industry sectors, in the US and all over the world. Recent engagements include: • Helped an internal startup team build a new, innovation driven venture from the ground up at Amazon • Provided innovation process consulting services to a non-profit organization• Designed and delivered multiple corporate entrepreneurship training bootcamps to intrapreneurs at the International Monetary Fund

Boston, Massachusetts , Us

Cybernetix Ventures is a venture capital firm leading the way for investment into early-stage robotics, automation, and AI startups. Headquartered in Boston, the world’s epicenter for robotics innovation, Cybernetix connects its portfolio to the national and global robotics ecosystems, bringing unparalleled expertise to companies poised to make major impacts in sectors including advanced manufacturing, logistics/warehousing, architecture, engineering and construction, and healthcare/medical devices.

Cambridge, Ma, Us

I taught entrepreneurship, corporate entrepreneurship, primary market research and product development to engineering, MBA, EMBA and executive education students. Specific areas of focus include: Corporate Entrepreneurship, Disciplined Entrepreneurship, lean startup, customer development, and more.

Cambridge, Ma, Us

As a Senior Lecturer (since 2012), Entrepreneur-In-Residence (2015-present) and professional advisor (2011-2015), I help student entrepreneurs build their skillset through designing and teaching entrepreneurial courses and short-format workshops and bootcamps, implementing co-curricular programs, and 1x1 coaching. To scale our ability to serve more entrepreneurial students, I built the Entrepreneur's Knowledgebase from the ground up. I also played a key role in the development and launch of Orbit, the one-stop-shop on-line portal for MIT student entrepreneurs. In June 2016, I received the prestigious Monosson Prize for Entrepreneurship Mentoring from the MIT Sloan School of Management in recognition of my contributions to foster entrepreneurship education at MIT.

Boston, Massachusetts, Us

Served as the interim VP Engineering for LiveData, a hospital IT company, the leading provider of perioperative workflow solutions built to optimize surgery scheduling, improve operational efficiency, and increase patient safety. Coached and led the engineering team to transition towards Agile software development processes. Facilitated cross functional strategic planning sessions between engineering, product management, sales and senior leadership. Helped hire the next VP Engineering and stayed on as a strategic coach in product strategy.

Boston, Massachusetts, Us

Engineering and product development executive at Rethink Robotics. Led hardware and software development efforts that brought Baxter, a safe, teachable, affordable, and adaptable manufacturing robot, to market. Doubled the size of the engineering organization to over 50 full time team members in less than 2 years. Grew and nurtured the organization into a well-rounded, multi-disciplinary team, with a customer focused approach to product development.Rethink Robotics' IP was acquired by Hahn Group in 2019. The Rethink brand was relaunched in September 2024 with a new product line serving the same customers with different core technologies.

Newton, Ma, Us

Engineering and product development executive at Zeo, a startup company marketing a connected sleep measurement device in the consumer health and wellness space. Responsibilities included building and growing the engineering organization from the ground up, managing a Tier 1 Asian ODM partner, and managing all firmware, mobile and web software releases with in-house staff.

Co-inventor of core technologies behind the flagship product, the Zeemote JS1 Controller – a gaming controller for mobile phones. Led product management activities for hardware and software product lines. Supported research and development efforts. Supported IP strategy by writing invention disclosures, finalizing patent applications, drafting claim trees and crafting responses to office actions.Zeemote was acquired by Aplix in 2009.

As VP Engineering, led a multidisciplinary team of more than 30 mechanical, research, software and quality assurance engineers. Managed software development for FreeForm, an organic CAD desktop software application comprising over 1.5 million lines of C++ code with a custom voxel-based geometry engine. Oversaw the delivery of several hardware and software product releases. Managed a large patent portfolio. Also founded the research team which focused on technical research and advanced development activities in haptics and in computational geometry algorithms, and led technical product management activities in other roles.SensAble was acquired by Geomagic in 2012, which was acquired by 3D Systems in 2013.

Boston, Ma, Us

Project manager and mechanical and systems engineer in a product design consulting agency. Part of an award-winning research team that excelled in qualitative and ethnographic research techniques.Continuum Innovation was acquired by EPAM in 2018.

Led firmware and software efforts for haptics systems, including a force feedback joystick. Exos was acquired by Microsoft in 1996.

Master Of Science, Mechanical Engineering

Bachelor Of Science, Mechanical Engineering