Board of Directors
SiCortex’s Board of Directors bring a wealth of business and technology experience to the board room and plays an active role in advising and supporting the management team.
Albert DaValle, Jr.
Partner, JK&B Capital
Albert has over 23 years of experience within the communications industry. Prior to joining JK&B, he was Vice President of Engineering and Construction for Ameritech. In that role, Albert was responsible for Ameritech's annual $2 billion capital program and leading Ameritech's engineering organization charged with responsibility for all network design and engineering, technology development and network construction. Prior to this assignment, he held a series of jobs with increasing responsibility in the areas of technology development and engineering within Ameritech, all involving the specification, selection and implementation of new technologies (e.g. ISDN, SS7, IN, AIN).
Albert also worked at Belgacom in Brussels (the national telecommunications company in Belgium). At Belgacom, he was the Vice President of Technology, where he was responsible for network planning/design, technology/product selection and introduction and product development. In addition, he was on the board of directors for Proximus (the cellular GSM market leader in Belgium). Prior to Ameritech, Albert worked at Sprint where he was a Senior Planner on the team that designed the architecture and topology for the Sprint national fiber network.
Albert earned a Bachelor of Science in Electrical Engineering from Purdue University, where he was recently appointed to the School of Engineering Advisory Board. He also earned a Masters in Management from Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management.
Bob Metcalfe
General Partner, Polaris Venture Partners
Dr. Robert M. Metcalfe joined Polaris in 2001, after having had three careers in technological innovation before becoming a venture capitalist:
While an engineer-scientist (1965-1979), Bob helped pioneer the Internet. In 1973, at the Xerox Palo Alto Research Center, he invented Ethernet, the local-area networking (LAN) standard on which he shares four patents. Now, 35 years later, about 350 million new Ethernet ports are shipped annually.
While an entrepreneur-executive (1979-1990), Bob founded 3Com Corporation, the billion-dollar networking company where at various times he was Chairman, CEO, division general manager, and vice president of engineering, sales, and marketing.
While a publisher-pundit (1990-2000), Bob was CEO of IDG's InfoWorld Publishing Company (1992-1995). For eight years, he opined about the Internet in an InfoWorld column read weekly by half a million information technologists.
Bob graduated from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1969 with two bachelor degrees, in electrical engineering and in industrial management. He received a master’s degree in applied mathematics from Harvard University in 1970. In 1973, he received his Ph.D. in computer science from Harvard, where his dissertation was Packet Communication.
John Mucci
Co-founder, SiCortex, Inc.
John Mucci brings more than 30 years of technical, executive, and entrepreneurial expertise to SiCortex. His extensive work in the computer industry has consistently demonstrated innovative thinking and leadership. From supporting computer art to playing an important role in the wildly successful VAX computer penetration into the scientific arena, John has demonstrated a knack for recognizing and leading innovation while anticipating and understanding what drives the technological market.
Prior to co-founding SiCortex, John held several key executive roles at Thinking Machines Corporation, whose Connection Machine family paved the way for applying MPPs to important commercial and scientific challenges. Prior to Thinking Machines, John held a number of senior executive positions at Digital Equipment Corporation. Following his tenure at Thinking Machines – and with the goal of promoting a broader use of scalable parallel computing – John co-founded two startup companies – TopicalNet, Inc. (formerly Continuum Software, Inc.) and, most recently, SiCortex.
John has a B.S. from Pennsylvania State University, an M.S. and Ph.D. from Carnegie-Mellon University, and completed the Stanford Business School's SEP program.
John A. Rollwagen, Chairman
Business Advisor
Since 1993, John Rollwagen has been an investor and business advisor specializing in information technology. He has served as a principal of Quatris Fund, an affiliate fund of St. Paul Venture Capital, formed to create, seed and mentor early-stage entrepreneurial ventures.
Until January 1993, John was chairman and chief executive officer of Cray Research, Inc. the leading supplier of supercomputers worldwide. In that role, he was well known for maintaining an environment of creativity and teamwork and for setting the strategic direction of the company. During his tenure, first as president beginning in 1977 and then as chairman starting in 1981, he led Cray Research from a start-up operation with less than 100 people to a highly profitable and internationally respected Fortune 500 company with annual revenues in excess of $800 million and more than 5,000 employees in 21 countries.
John was a founding member of the Computer Systems Policy Project (CSPP), an organization of chief executive officers of the 12 leading computer systems companies in the U.S. created in 1989 to identify and advocate industry positions on trade and technology policy. In 1987, he was appointed by President Reagan as a member of the Advisory Committee for Trade Policy and Negotiations (ACTPN). He was reappointed to this position by President Bush.
John earned a master’s degree in business administration from the Harvard Business School and a bachelor of science degree in electrical engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He is a recipient of the MIT Alumni Award for Distinguished Corporate Leadership, and has been honored by the University of Minnesota Institute of Technology for his contributions to the university’s electrical engineering and computer science programs. In 1992, he was the recipient of an honorary doctor of humane letters degree from Hamline University.
Bill Seifert
General Partner, Prism VentureWorks
A technology investment team leader, Bill is focused on next-generation network and telecommunications technologies. Bill is an accomplished entrepreneur with over 25 years of experience in the data communications industry. Prior to joining the firm in 1998, he was the founder and CEO of Agile Networks, Inc., acquired by Lucent Technologies.
Bill also founded and served as CTO of Wellfleet Communications, a networking technologies pioneer, which merged with Synoptics to form Bay Networks. He was a founding member of Interlan, which produced one of the industry's first successful Ethernet controllers for mini and microcomputer systems. Micom Systems acquired Interlan in 1985.
Bill received a B.S. in Electrical Engineering and an M.S. from Michigan State University.
Bill Strecker
Partner, Flagship Ventures
Prior to joining Flagship, Bill served as Senior Vice President, Technology & Corporate Development and CTO of Compaq Computer Corp. Before that, he was with Digital Equipment Corporation for 28 years in various executive and senior technical positions, most recently as SVP Corporate Strategy & Technology and CTO.
Bill is a member of the National Academy of Engineering and a Fellow of the Association of Computing Machinery (ACM) and has received the Institute of Electrical & Electronic Engineers (IEEE) W. Wallace McDowell Award for outstanding contributions to the Computer Art. He is a past board member of CMGI, holds 16 U.S. patents, and is the author of numerous technical publications. In addition to his role at Flagship, Bill is Chief Technology Officer at Interactive Supercomputing, a Flagship portfolio company.
Bill holds a PhD, MS, and BS in Electrical Engineering from Carnegie Mellon University.
Chris Stone
President and CEO, SiCortex
