Dr. ir. Frank Gielen has extensive experience with R&D in the telecommunication and software technology sector as well as in raising venture capital, university-industry collaborative research and spin-off creation. He held a number of technical and management positions in the software industry. He started as a software architect with AT&T Bell Labs in the USA and was director of software technology at Alcatel. In 1998 he joined Tellium, a US based start up company in optical network technology, as the VP of Software Engineering. Tellium had a successful IPO on NASDAQ in 2001. He returned to Europe in 2001 as the CEO for Tellium EMEA. Today he is professor of software technology entrepreneurship at the University of Ghent. Since 2010 his is the Director of the Incubation & Entrepreneurship at iMinds, the leading digital incubator and business accelerator in Flanders.
The iStart incubation program of iMinds is recognised as one of the 25 best University Business Incubators worldwide and is ranked 7th in Europe. (UBI index). iMinds supports the higher education institutes in Flanders with a dedicated student entrepreneurship program.