Robert Wilburn

Robert Wilburn
Raleigh, North Carolina

A native of Washington, D.C., Robert has lived in Boston, Palo Alto, London, and most recently, North Carolina. He enjoys teaching and helping students to grasp new concepts.

After graduating from the College of William and Mary with a degree in Religion, Robert went on to study theology. Armed with these degrees, Robert confounded his friends by founding a computer vision company with some graduate students at Stanford. Their dream was to let people watch Monday Night Football with “video-game functionality”. Unfortunately, after several years of living the California dream, Robert sadly found himself selling the company’s office supplies on Ebay!

Since then, Robert has spent most of his career helping organizations commercialize new technologies. He is particularly interested in the communication gap between scientists and business managers, and has developed a collaborative assessment model to help drive commercialization efforts. Robert has worked on commercialization efforts in fields as diverse as RFID, opto-electronics, nanotechnology, and software.

Robert currently runs a start-up company in the area of prediction markets and global forecasting. He is very interested in the power of collective intelligence (or at least, he likes the idea of other people making him smarter!).

Robert scored 760 on the GMAT and was a Sloan Fellow at London Business School. While studying in London, he became a big fan of Premiership soccer and fish and chips. In his spare time, Robert likes to play soccer, bike, eat and travel.

“Robert was very responsive to emails sent outside of class time. He was also willing to answer questions and address student concern.”

“Robert had a positive attitude, willingness to help, and a strong knowledge of the material.”