Dr. William Bies
Dr. Bies (Bill) is responsible for the technical analysis of FirstLink’s projects and works with the other consultants to identify promising new technologies. His first experience with the FirstLink team was as an intern in 2006.
Bill’s primary responsibilities at FirstLink are to serve as the lead consultant on the scientific and technical component of its projects. This involves reviewing patents, interviewing the inventors and validating the technical potential of their intellectual property. Bill has also worked closely with the other team members to develop the stage-gate process for market valuation and financial valuation of the business opportunity presented by the technology, drawing on his MBA experience. FirstLink employs standard best practices in the industry in its approach to intellectual property valuation. Bill serves as a resource at every stage in the writing of the market analysis studies, which includes explaining the technology, checking quantitative information and reviewing the work in progress. He is responsible as well for formulating and executing the statistical models used as part of the analysis.
Before beginning his business studies, Bill spent three years as a postdoctoral fellow at Harvard University, where he performed research on quantum chaos theory with Eric J. Heller and on thermoelectric effects in anisotropic semiconductor materials with Henry Ehrenreich. The research was relevant for applications involving refrigeration and infrared night-vision devices. The projects involved computer-intensive calculations and extensive statistical analysis. Theoretical results were checked against experiment wherever possible. Teamwork was extensive and Bill supervised a graduate student on two research projects.
Bill holds a B.A. in Physics from Princeton University, Princeton, NJ; Ph.D. in Physics from Harvard University, Cambridge, MA and an M.B.A. in Finance from the Katz Graduate School of Business at the University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, PA.
