BA-SID Professional Person Spotlight

Dr. Burton Lee

Dr. Burton H. Lee, Ph.D. MBA – Managing Director, Innovarium Ventures ; Adjunct Lecturer, European Entrepreneurship & Innovation, Center for Design Research, Mechanical Engineering, Stanford University (2022-2009).

Based in Silicon Valley, Dr. Burton Lee wears diverse hats that span industry, academia and policy across Europe, Asia, Latin America and Washington DC. His thirty years professional experience in advanced technologies and regional economic growth are anchored in foundational competencies in innovation ecosystems, product design, startup/corporate venture investment, innovation sociology and culture, aerospace engineering and artificial intelligence.

Dr. Lee currently serves as Managing Director of Innovarium Ventures, a senior advisory services firm that specializes in the assessment, design and execution of innovation, science and venture investment programs for technology-driven organizations. Recent industry clients include Embraer S.A. (Brazil), SK Hynix (Korea), HELLA GmbH (Germany), Statoil (Norway), De Beers Group (South Africa), LVMH (France), UniCredit Bank (Vienna), Lyse Energy AS (Norway), and the Deutscher Industrie- und Handelskammertag (DIHK). Selected government clients include Business Upper Austria, Science Foundation Ireland, the European Commission (Horizon2020, DG CONNECT, DG GROWTH, DG RESEARCH), Sofia Tech Park, the Gdansk Metropolitan Authority (Poland), as well as the NSF, NIH and NASA in Washington DC. 

As a former member of Stanford’s Engineering faculty, he designed and directed the weekly seminar and lecture series on European Entrepreneurship and Innovation during 2009-2022, with sustained financial support from European government and industry partners. Lee is today considered a leading Silicon Valley expert on the European innovation ecosystem, with extensive experience advising European corporations, family-owned enterprises, industry associations, universities, regional and national governments, the European Commission, investment funds, accelerators, think tanks and techparks.

Dr. Lee also has previously served as a Visiting Professor|Scientist at numerous European and Israeli Engineering and Business Schools. Salient university appointments include: Technion (Israel), University of Zagreb (Croatia); TU Braunschweig (Germany), TU Dortmund, Bergische Universität Wuppertal, TU Graz (Austria), Institute of Science and Technology Austria, Trinity College Dublin (Ireland), NUI Galway (Ireland), Riga Technical University (Latvia), Czech Technical University (Prague), University of Stavanger (Norway), Ruhr-Universität Bochum, and the University of Munich (LMU).

Burton’s corporate, startup and engineering experience includes co-founder, management and research roles at Space Angels Network, Daimler Labs (Esslingen DE, automotive diagnostics/AI), Hewlett Packard (semiconductor equipment diagnostics), General Electric Corporate R&D Labs (Niskayuna NY, hydrogen systems strategy) and NASA (re-entry systems, Space Shuttle thermal protection systems, Space Station telerobotics).

Dr. Lee holds a Ph.D. in Mechanical & Electrical Engineering (minor) (Stanford); an MBA in Finance & Entrepreneurship (Cornell); and a dual A.B. in Physics and Economics (Brown). His Ph.D. research investigated Bayesian Network-based methods to encode engineering design models for re-use in downstream failure diagnosis AI models that describe complex technical systems.

Dr. Burton H. Lee’s Linkedin