The University of Arkansas at Little Rock Emerging Analytics Center will host a lecture on the pathway from innovation to entrepreneurship Friday, May 6.

Rudolph Darken will give his lecture, “Innovation, Entrepreneurialism, and Intellectual Property from a Technologist’s Point of View,” at noon, May 6, in the Engineering and Information Technology Building Auditorium.

Darken, a professor of computer science at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, California, will discuss the key elements of taking an idea from its conception to a commercialized product, with a particular focus on how this happens within universities.

The discussion will conclude with advice on what universities can do to encourage technical innovation and successful commercial ventures.

Darken is a former director of the Modeling, Virtual Environments, and Simulation (MOVES) Institute. He has served on advisory boards for the NASA Ames Research Center, the National Science Foundation, the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council, and several technology companies. He was also an associate editor of Presence Journal.

He received his bachelor’s degree in computer science engineering from the University of Illinois at Chicago and his master’s degree and doctorate in computer science from George Washington University. He is pursuing a law degree from Monterey College of Law and is expected to graduate in December 2016.