Keynotes
9:00 am – General Wesley Clark – Wes ran for President in 2004 and commanded our forces in the EU during the 90s. He is one of the most knowledgeable people on nanotechnology in the military in the world and a friend of the firm for many years. If you’re interested check this video for a really wild nano-military story, or just google the word “metamaterials”, “Institute for Soldier Nanotechnologies”, or other sites for more details:
9:30 am – Ruth Goldway, Chairman of the US Postal Regulatory Commission - Ruth is one of the government’s top leaders in green fleets, as the US Postal Service controls an awful lot of vehicles. If we were to get fleets like the US Postal Service to go green it would have an outsized impact on nextgen transportation infrastructure. Ruth will talk about how we take advanced technologies from the labs to the real world.
10:00 am – Matthew Daus – Matt is the immediate former Commissioner of the New York City Taxi & Limousine Commission and now is heading up his transportation practice at Windels Marx where he advises cities, states, companies and others on green transportation issues.
11:30 am – Bob Prieto, Senior Vice President, Fluor – Bob is responsible for strategy in Fluor’s Industrial & Infrastructure Group, and focuses on the firm’s largest and most complex worldwide projects. Fluor is one of the two or three largest market cap construction and infrastructure companies in the world. Bob has keynoted two other events for us, and is one of our most popular speakers. Bob also sends me the most interesting email links every month or two, and here is the latest he sent me, regarding Fluor’s work on carbon capture technologies
1:00 pm – Woody Clark – Woody is at the Milken Institute, and was the coordinating lead author of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which shared the 2007 Nobel Peace Price with Al Gore for their work on waking the world up to these “inconvenient truths”. We’re hoping that Woody will bring his Nobel Prize and I’m hoping that he lets me wear the award around my neck for the website pictures.
1:30 pm – Alain Kaloyeros, College of Nanoscale Science at Albany – Alain basically spearheaded and built Albany Nano, which has turned SUNY Albany (my alma mater) into the world’s leading center for nextgen semiconductor technologies. Under Alain’s leadership, the CNSE has grown from a concept to a vibrant driver of economic development, and has grown from the leader in nextgen semiconductors to now build key centers of excellence in energy, healthcare, and other emerging technologies.
2:30 pm – George Thompson, Intel – George is one of the most strategic thinkers in the world on nanotechnology, and was one of the key people involved in the first discussions between government and industry when the first plans were put in place for the National Nanotechnology Initiative, which really kicked off the US government’s commitment to lead the world in the nano-sciences.
4:00 pm – Alan Ginsberg, Chairman, TechCity Properties – Alan is one of New York’s leading real estate executives and is the Chairman and Founder of TechCity In one of the most significant transactions in New York State’s Hudson Valley, Mr. Ginsberg purchased the TechCity campus from IBM in February 1998. The 2.5 million-square-foot complex, built by IBM over a span of nearly 40 years, employed 7,000 employees at its peak and was an economic mainstay of the region. Since then, Mr. Ginsberg has taken a key role in the revitalization of the Hudson Valley, working to restore the thousands of jobs that were lost in recent years. Today, TechCity is a national model for large scale green redevelopment. He has taken bold steps to restore the land beneath the 260-acre site, and to convert the complex to an environmentally friendly office and light manufacturing center.
Speakers
Nanoink makes Dip Pen Nanolithography tools for fabricating MEMS and other nanoscale devices. The company about.html completed a $65 million financing in October, led by Lurie Investments, and has been launching new products and building their international partnerships at a rapid clip. James Hussey is the CEO of Nanoink.
Algenol Biofuels is an Industrial Biotechnology Company commercializing the use of hybrid algae to make ethanol, and high-value organic green-chemicals directly from carbon dioxide, water and sunlight. The company’s first product is ethanol, which is made with its proprietary DIRECT TO ETHANOL® process. The company has received a $25 million grant from the US Department of Energy to build a pilot-scale, 100,000 gallon/year, integrated, Direct to Ethanol biorefinery. Phase I of the project is complete and the commercial biorefinery is expected to be operational in 2011. Paul Woods is the CEO of Algenol Biofuels
Infinia Corp is the developer of the PowerDish, which combines the Stirling engine, which generates energy through temperature differences between gases in separate chambers or compartments, with a solar collector that resembles a large old satellite TV dish, to produce electricity. The company, backed by Paul Allen and Vinod Khosla, has snapped up $11.5 million in new equity financing out of a round that could bring in as much as $75 million over time, according to a regulatory filing. JD Sitton is the CEO of Infinia Corp.
Dr. Devanand Shenoy is a Program Manager for the Microsystems Technology Office at DARPA. Dr. Shenoy joined DARPA in August of 2005 from the Naval Research Lab (NRL) in Washington, DC. Dr. Shenoy's interests are in exploiting novel concepts based on new materials and/or device architectures for revolutionary electronic and photonic microsystems. At DARPA, he developed and is managing programs in the following areas: Standoff detection of explosives (RIEDAR); Devices based on non-linear optical (NLO) materials for RF photonics and sensor protection (MORPH); Curved focal plane array for wide field of view sensing in the VIS-NIR-SWIR bands (HARDI), Spin based memory (STT-RAM), and an E-Field Detector (E-FED). He is currently working on a new program to develop Non-Volatile Logic devices.
Dr. Frank Chen is a scientist at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory at the University of California. He is on the Editorial Board of Nanotoxicology, the first journal fully dedicated to nanotoxicity. Dr. Chen's main interest is in nano-bio hybrid structure for biosensors, clinical imaging, and nano-bio interaction. He is also the first to use a quantitative biology approach to decipher the health impact of nanomaterials at the molecular level. Dr. Chen's study on nanotoxicity was highlighted in the Washington Post. He is the organizer of the Chinese Nanosafety Committee, serves on the organizing committee of the Nanotoxicology Conference (U.S. and Europe), and is one of the founding members of the Berkeley Nano Roundtable. He is also adjunct professor at Fudan University, Zhejiang University in China, and chief founder for a new nanomedicine institute in Jiangsu, China.
Paul Gagliardo is the Manager of Innovation for American Water (ticker AWK), one of America's leading water companies. Paul is well known throughout the United States, in Europe and Asia for his defining work on indirect potable reuse as a scheme to supplement the potable water supply in San Diego, California . He has pioneered the efficacy testing and use of new technologies in businesses that vary from energy conservation, hazardous waste remediation, solid waste resource recovery, water treatment, wastewater treatment, contaminant monitoring and strategic planning. He has authored over fifty technical papers on subjects ranging from low and high pressure membrane systems, monitoring systems, UV disinfection systems, strategic planning and watershed management. He has given presentations on five continents and in ten different countries and has been the invited keynote speaker on multiple occasions.
Paul Schulman is the Senior Vice President, Marketing for A. Schulman & Co (ticker SHLM), a leading international supplier of high-performance plastic compounds and resins, which are used as raw materials in a variety of markets. Paul joined A. Schulman in October of 2008 as Senior Vice President of Marketing. He was previously with Core Molding Technologies, a Columbus, Ohio-based custom designer/molder of reinforced composite products where he served for the past year as Vice President, Marketing and Sales. Previously, he was with Avery Dennison, a global manufacturer of pressure-sensitive adhesives and consumer products. In five years with the company, he rose to Business Manager, Industrial, with responsibility for a newly created business. Earlier, Boulier advanced through a series of positions of increasing responsibility during a 17-year tenure with NOVA Chemicals in Pittsburgh.
Serious Materials is the leading provider of high-tech products and services that reduce energy usage in the built environment, the largest contributor of CO2 worldwide. Kevin Surace, CEO of Serious Materails, and Inc. Magazine’s Entrepreneur of the Year, is on a mission to drive energy efficiency in the built environment, bring green jobs and manufacturing back to the US, and bring innovation to industries that had long lost it. As CEO of Serious Materials, Kevin leads the company in its mission to reduce energy usage of the world’s largest contributor, our buildings. Solexant is a well funded start-up developing third generation thin film PV technologies which dramatically increase solar cell efficiency and reduce manufacturing costs, therefore enabling the commercialization of solar modules that generate electricity at competitive rates without depending on government subsidies. Using printable nano-material technologies exclusively licensed from leading universities, Solexant's flexible solar cells harvest energy from the entire solar spectrum.
Solexant was founded in 2006 by Dr. Damoder Reddy along with scientific founders and scientific advisory board members Prof. Paul Alivisatos of U.C. Berkeley, Prof. Paras Prasad of SUNY Buffalo and Prof. Sue Carter of U.C. Santa Cruz. The company announced in June the $41.5 million first close of a Series C financing round following the successful completion of a 2MW pilot line operating at the company’s headquarters. Dr. Reddy, the CEO of Solexant, will represent the company.
Home Dialysis Plus is a Portland OR based company that has developed a portable kidney dialysis machine for home use, freeing patients from having to visit clinics several times a week for three-hour treatment sessions. In June, the company landed as much as $50 million in private investment to bring its kidney treatment to market, which was widely seen as an emphatic boost, not just to HD Plus but also to the state's entrepreneurial community and its fledgling medical technology and nanotechnology industries. Michael Baker is the CEO and co-Founder of HD+ and a serial entrepreneur with a number of successful projects in his portfolio
QM Power is the developer of a new magnetic circuit technology that revolutionizes the way manufacturers and customers design and use electric motors, generators and actuators. The Company is the first to simultaneously address the four major factors affecting electromagnetic device performance. The company has received numerous grants and awards, from entities including ARPA-E, NREL and NASA, to deliver prototypes for next generation systems allowing for 3X+ higher flywheel rotational speeds resulting in the storage of 10X+ the potential energy and, when needed, greater subsequent electricity generation than what is possible with alternative technologies. PJ Piper is the CEO of QM Power.
Lenny Poveromo is Director of Technology Development for Northrop Grumman's (ticker NOC) Integrated Systems Eastern Region. Mr. Poveromo has held leadership positions in the Advanced Composite community throughout his 38-year career. His technical contributions and involvement with professional societies have been significant to the Advanced Composites industry whose evolution his career has paralleled. He has authored over 30 technical papers, holds several patents, was awarded SPI's "Centerpiece Award", and was past Program and General Chairman of SAMPE's National Technical Conference and the Carbon Fiber Conferences.
Dr. Karl Heinz Strobl is the Vice President of Business Development for CVD Equipment (ticker CVV), having held this position since October 2007. CVD Equipment Corporation designs and manufactures a wide variety of process solutions incorporating temperature, pressure, gas delivery and related safety controls. The company's equipment is used globally for research, quality control and production across many industries including Alternative Energy, Nanotechnology, Optoelectronic, Semiconductor, and MEMS. Dr. Strobl holds over 14 Patents and earned an MBA from Boston University, a PhD from the University of Innsbruck in Austria through the Max Plank Institute in Garching, Germany, an M.S. from the University of Innsbruck, and an M.S. from the University of Padova, Italy.
Robert Miller is the CEO of Abakan, Inc. Abakan Inc. is a publicly traded company (symbol ABKI) which invests in and manages companies that have developed transformational surface modification solutions and technologies. Miami based, they are now the single largest shareholder in MesoCoat, an Ohio based nanotechnology materials science company, is fast becoming a world leader in metal protection and repair through their revolutionary “long life” coating and “high speed” cladding technologies. MesoCoat’s solutions have already been the recipient of three prestigious R&D 100 awards, a Technology Innovation Program Award (TIP) for 100 year life coatings by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), and the NorTech Innovation Award for high performance environmentally friendly coating materials. Robert has been working with early-stage companies for almost three decades and has participated as the principle investor in over fifty business ventures. In this capacity he has founded companies, listed numerous companies on the NASDAQ and Toronto Stock Exchange and variously worked full-time and consulted to numerous startups. He is one of the most experienced private investors in Miami, having raised over $400 million in early-stage investment capital.
Mark Iwanowski joined Trident Capital in 2005 as a Venture Partner and will be a Managing Director in Fund VII focusing primarily on CleanTech and Business Process Outsourcing. Mark has twenty-five years of experience successfully leading multiple global businesses in the high tech industry for both commercial and government customers. Mark was most recently Senior Vice President Global IT for Oracle Corporation. Prior to Oracle, Mark managed a Systems Integration, ASP and Outsourcing business for SAIC.
Michael L. Miller is a Managing Director of Perseus. Prior to joining Perseus in 2005, Mr. Miller was the Managing Partner of Mill Consulting Group, an investment banking boutique that specialized in assisting small and medium sized enterprises in the identification and execution of strategic capital formation and M&A transactions. He served as one of four partners at Swiss Life Private Equity Partners AG in Zurich, Switzerland during 2002 and 2003. Mr. Miller was Vice President and Group Head of Principal Investments at Enron North America in Houston, Texas, where he focused on investments in new energy technologies and built a portfolio that included three companies in which Perseus was a co-investor. He founded and led UBS Capital GmbH, the Frankfurt-based private equity investment unit of the Union Bank of Switzerland Group in Germany. Mr. Miller started his career in the Mergers and Acquisitions Department of Salomon Brothers, Inc. in New York City and Frankfurt, Germany. Mr. Miller is a member of the Boards of Directors of the following Perseus portfolio companies: Baumot AG, Deutsche KWK Holding GmbH, Puralube, Inc., and Seismic Equipment Solutions II, LP. Mr. Miller is also an advisor and mentor to the Energy Program of the Houston Technology Center.
Michael Masters is the Portfolio Manager for Masters Capital Management, one of the earliest and most active investors in nanotechnology. In 2005, Masters Capital Management announced a partnership with Wilbur L. Ross Jr. to focus on investments in early-, mid- and late-stage companies employing nanotechnology – enabled products and solutions.
