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Expert has started two early-stage cleantech companies over the past 10 years in the water treatment and building materials sectors, raising multiple rounds of venture financing and securing numerous government grants for both. He drove IP development, strategic partner identification and management, joint development agreements, product development, and manufacturing strategy. He also built financial models and conducted techno-economic analyses of various technologies. He sold the water treatment company in 2012 and the company in the building materials sector is now entering pilot scale production.

Expert has served as an investment advisor to a family fund based in San Francisco that focuses on investments in the resources space. This includes fields such as oil and gas, energy storage and production, water treatment, chemicals production, synthetic biology, advanced/nanomaterials, and life sciences. He has evaluated the technical and commercial potential of over 400 different companies over the past 5 years, and helped portfolio companies with various operational issues such as business model analysis and iteration, as well as go-to-market and intellectual property strategy.

Expert has industry experience in electronic materials processing, having worked for Intel Corporation as a Sr. Process Engineer in the area of plasma etching for CMOS logic device fabrication. He has also conducted research in the area of hot-wire chemical vapor deposition for thin-film amorphous, polycrystalline, and epitaxial silicon growth. The applications of this research were in developing cheap methods for silicon solar cell (photovoltaic) fabrication.

He has utilized a variety of microfabrication techniques such as photolithography, reactive ion etching, ion beam milling, plasma-enhanced chemical vapor deposition (CVD), low-pressure CVD, sputtering, and electron beam deposition. These techniques have been applied towards nanomaterial device fabrication.

Expert has worked with researchers in the development of chemical micro/nanosensors based upon carbon nanotubes and other one-dimensional nanomaterials. These sensors can be used for trace gas detection/analysis and biomolecule (pathogen) detection.

Expert has conducted research into nanomaterials (e.g., carbon nanotubes) for application in nanostructured membranes. He has fabricated nanostructured membranes that can be used for gas separations, reverse osmosis/nanofiltration, and biomolecule filtration.

Expert has extensive experience in the broad area of nanotechnology. His specific expertise lies in nanomaterials growth and processing, particularly carbon nanotubes (CNT). He has developed novel processes for carbon nanotube membrane fabrication, having published this work in high impact journals such as Science and Nanoletters. He has worked with researchers in developing carbon nanotube-based sensors for trace gas detection and protein detection. He is well-read in the nanotechnology literature, from applications in electronic devices (CNT transistors) to renewable energy (CNT-based photovoltaics, thermoelectrics).

Expert has worked in academia and national laboratories in conducting research into thin-film silicon growth for low-cost photovoltaics. He has also worked with industry partners in evaluating the suitability of transitioning development-stage film processing techniques into industrial manufacturing processes.

Expert has utilized a variety of chemical analysis methods towards detection of analytes such as explosives, narcotics, and biomolecules. He optimized an ion mobility spectrometry (IMS) system used routinely for airport screening for narcotics and explosives. He has also used electrospray mass spectrometry techniques that can be used for biomolecule detection (e.g., proteins). Another area of work has been laser ablation mass spectrometry for direct chemical analysis of solids with no sample preparation required; this has been applied towards isotope ratio determination.

Expert has built extensive IP portfolios and crafted IP strategy while at Lawrence Livermore National Lab and in the private sector with two startup companies he built from scratch, and has experience in licensing IP from national laboratories. He also has experience advising startups on the above issues.

He has assisted a law firm in conducting a survey of the patent landscape in nanomaterials synthesis.He has worked with venture capitalists in providing technical due diligence for proposed investments in the clean-tech space, including technology assessment, market analysis and business model selection.He has consulted with clients interested in understanding the possible failure modes of semiconductor process tools.