COMPANY

Dr. Nakata was formerly the CEO and CTO of Kai Medical (FDA cleared noncontact vital signs monitors), Vice President of Engineering at Verifone (secure electronic payment systems), Vice President of Worldwide Engineering at Interwave Communications (portable cellular base stations) and Senior Vice President of Operations and Engineering at GWCom (wireless internet). His claim to fame is meeting Steve Jobs in the late 1990’s and giving him a wireless internet access device (iPhone0) that may have planted the seed for the iPhone. He has traveled extensively for business to Europe, Japan, Taiwan, Singapore, South Korea and has visited China 26 times to establish strategic and manufacturing partnerships and to manage engineering teams and product launches.

Dr. Nakata is a serial entrepreneur and teaches innovation and entrepreneurship classes, including the Design Thinking methodology and is certified to teach the Lean Launchpad curriculum (Lean Startups). He is an Assistant Professor of Engineering Innovation at Hawaii Pacific University where he teaches electrical engineering and MBA strategy classes, and has taught business and engineering courses at the University of Hawaii at Manoa. He also taught Marketing Management, Engineering Ethics and Leadership, and Digital Signal Processing courses at Kettering University Online. He is also a Visiting Professor at Ritsumeikan University in Japan during the summer where he teaches IoT Innovation and Smart Transportation Innovation courses. Dr. Nakata holds a PhD in Electrical Engineering from the University of Hawaii at Manoa, an MBA from The Wharton Business School, a Master of Science in Electrical Engineering/Computer Science and a Bachelor of Science in Electrical Engineering, both from MIT.