Executive Board

Magaly Drant runs the Office of the CTO and the Engineering Operations Department at ServiceNow, reporting into the CTO and EVP of DevOps. ServiceNow provides enterprise cloud computing solutions that define, manage, and automate services for enterprises worldwide. Magaly focuses on scaling the technology organization to support the growth: from angles as varied as executive relationship with our largest customers, talent acquisition and development strategy, engineering processes development and automation, implementation standards definition and adoption, and technical architecture. In previous roles, she has contributed to and ran software engineering teams (platform and applications development) across a variety of technical stacks. Born and raised in France, Magaly graduated with a master's degree in General Engineering from Ecole Centrale de Paris.

Shariqa is the Director for Enterprise Software at Cubic Transportation Systems (CTS). CTS provides technology solutions for public transit companies across the world enabling the evolution of urban mobility, making cities more connected, accessible, and sustainable for all residents and commuters.

Shariqa focuses on executing and evolving the roadmap for enterprise software supporting transit agencies. Her chief responsibilities include scaling the technical organization, setting the development strategy, building engineering processes and technical architecture supporting growth. Her leadership style is characterized by a focus on collaboration, transparency, and fostering a culture of innovation and excellence.

Born and raised in India, Shariqa got her undergraduate degree from BITS Pilani. She is passionate about the role of public transit and its impact on sustainability in the future of our cities.

Shariqa is a mentor and advocate diversity in tech, actively promoting initiatives that support the career development of women and underrepresented groups in STEM fields.

Hugo Romero is the VP of Engineering - Head of Product Security for Advanced Micro Devices (AMD). He spearheads a team with the mission to design state of the art security into AMD products, manage security incidents and partner with customers to ensure products built with on AMD platforms are secure. 
 
Prior to Joining AMD, Hugo spent 24-years at Qualcomm. His tenure began while he was still a student at UCSD. He joined as a summer intern and was offered to stay on part time during the school year. Hugo has a broad skillset in software and hardware development. After leading multiple teams through successful product launches, Hugo was invited to join the Qualcomm Government Solutions Group, where he led the development of secure communication devices that included IOT devices, Mobile Devices, Small Cells, and Core Networks. It is during this assignment where Hugo became passionate about device security.
 
Hugo graduated from the UCSD CSE department with a degree in Computer Engineering. As a student, he was very active and passionate in promoting STEM in the Hispanic community.  In his senior year, he was the president of the UCSD chapter of Society of Hispanic Professional
Engineers (SHPE).

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Analog/RFIC product development experience (DC to 10 GHz) for wireless communication and optical applications

Track record of bringing multiple cutting-edge RFICs from concept to the industry’s highest volumes in production with top tier mobile device OEMs

Alex Schafgans is Head of Development and Engineering at ASML San Diego, the global leader in EUV photolithography tools used in the production of advanced logic and memory. Schafgans is responsible for Development and Engineering of the EUV Light Source, the key enabling technology driving the worlds most advanced semiconductor production. Over his 13-year tenure at ASML, Schafgans was focused on leading EUV light source power scaling activities from 10W through 500W, resulting in the successful introduction of EUV for High Volume Manufacturing. Most recently, Schafgans oversaw engineering execution across most EUV Source technology areas, ensured the performance of all worldwide EUV sources met or exceeded customer expectations, and drove knowledge creation to solve the most persistent and challenging performance problems facing the EUV source products. Alex is a graduate of UC San Diego, with B.S, M.S. and Ph.D. in Physics.

Dr. Sur serves as Vice President, Business Development at ATA Engineering, Inc. and brings more than 20 years of experience to the ATA team. ATA is an engineering consulting firm that provides innovative solutions through test-and analysis-driven design by focusing on the engineering needs of manufacturers in addressing their cost, quality, and time-to-market challenges for mechanical and aerospace systems. Prior to ATA, Dr. Sur was a senior research scientist in the Naval Hydrodynamics Division at SAIC (now Leidos), where she was the principal investigator for research and development contracts with U.S. naval customers. Prior to SAIC, Dr. Sur began her career as a member of the technical staff in the Thermal and Propulsion Engineering Section at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Dr. Sur received her Ph.D. and M.S. degrees in Mechanical Engineering from the California Institute of Technology and her B.S. degree in Mechanical Engineering from Pennsylvania State University.

Robert Balderas has more than 25 years of leadership experience in both academia and the biotechnology industry. As a corporate scientist, site manager and marketer in the field of biotechnology he has contributed to the growth in both Pharmingen and BD Biosciences. Robert has championed multiple key successful product launches and is recognized for his success in growing sales and profits. His experience in academic medicine accompanied by his strategic approaches as the VP of Research and Development is reflected in increased efficiencies within the Clinical and Research product development programs. Robert Balderas's track record of business process improvements is based on his expertise obtained while working at The Scripps Research Institute in the labs of Frank Dixon and Argyrios Theofilopoulos. He is known for his ability to motivate his technical staff, diagnosing impediments in product development programs, building his efforts and focused on both product execution and career development of his staff as well as integrating functional programs across other business operations. In addition his scientific experiences, Robert also received an MBA from the University of San Diego. Additionally, Robert also serves on the editorial board of Clinical Proteomics, has been involved with several business acquisitions (and lead two industrial/academic initiatives with CANVAC and the NCI).

John Black is the SVP, Strategy at Brain Corp.  He is primarily focused on establishing and enabling partnerships for new robotic products and applications based on BrainOS technology.  He joined Brain Corp as VP of Engineering in 2015 to lead the development and commercialization of the first fully autonomous floor scrubber, since then the fleet has reached more than 25k robots with over 10 million hours of commercial operation!  He received his BSME from Carnegie Mellon University and a MSME from Oakland University, and is a certified Functional Safety Engineer (TÜV Rheinland).

Reza Nejabati is currently leading quantum research activities in Cisco, spearheading development and execution of both short-term and long-term quantum research roadmaps. He leads a dynamic team of quantum and network scientists, encompassing both experimentalists and theorists, and collaborations with prominent academic groups and industries. Additionally, he is leading the development of Cisco's Quantum Research Lab, an innovative facility dedicated to advancing quantum networking research. Prior to joining Cisco, Reza served as a Chair Professor of Networks and Head of the High-Performance Network Group in the Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering at the University of Bristol, UK. His research focus and expertise lies in the realms of Quantum and Classical network infrastructure for the Future Internet. Beyond research, Reza enjoys skiing, listening to classical music and collecting classical vinyl.

Vijay Pujar is Principal Technical Fellow and Discipline Lead, Materials and Processes at Collins Aerospace, a unit of Raytheon Technologies. He has over 20 years of experience leading advanced composites and manufacturing technology development for commercial aerospace and military applications. Vijay received his undergraduate degree in Ceramic Engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology, Varanasi, India, and his Masters and Ph.D. in Materials Science and Engineering from Case Western Reserve University.

Ken has over 20 years of experience as a technology leader, working for some of the largest global tech companies. Ken's experiences span Enterprise Network Innovation, Service Chaining, SDN, Internet Scale and Branch Office Routers, Data Center Switches, Security, Wan and Application Optimization, Server Load Balancing and Wireless LAN technologies. 

In leading the OTCO Research Office (ORO) he primarily focuses on ensuring that the company is well aware of emergent technology inflections and the potential impact to the company. This work has led to exploration in a myriad of future impact technologies such as Quantum computing, Carbon Nanotube Memory, Heterogeneous computing acceleration and virtualization, to name a few.

He is an accomplished speaker at many industry events, on a wide range of topics.

Ken achieved Distinguished Engineer at Cisco, has 60 granted patents and a several more patents pending.

Eric Takeuchi currently serves as the Vice President of Strategy & Business Development and Deputy General Manager for the DRS Daylight Solutions line of business of Leonardo DRS. Daylight is a world-leading manufacturer, specializing in the commercialization of semiconductor lasers and photonics systems for broad market applicability, including Life Sciences, Biopharma, Scientific Research, Aerospace & Defense, Semiconductor Manufacturing, Space Communications and Quantum Information Sciences. While at Daylight, he has been responsible for identifying and capturing new business opportunities, establishing product and technology roadmaps and executing go-to-market strategies. He has accumulated more than 25 years’ experience in both technical and business management in the photonics industry. During this time, he has held leadership positions in R&D, product development, product management and business development. He has authored or co-authored several peer reviewed technical articles and has been named as co-inventor on several U.S. patents.

Mr. Takeuchi holds a Bachelor’s degree in Electrical Engineering and Master’s degree in Applied Physics, both from the University of California, San Diego.

Ronald (Ron) Pearlstein is executive director and head of the Thin Film Solutions technology organization in EMD Electronics, which is a part of Merck KGaA, Darmstadt Germany. As the business technology manager, he is responsible for leading the research and technology efforts for the business and ensuring that they are aligned with all of the stakeholders’ needs.  The technologies spanned by this business include deposition materials used for ALD, CVD and Spin-on films. Dr. Pearlstein joined Air Products and Chemicals in 1989 where he conducted research in the Corporate Science and Technology Center and in the Electronics Technology organizations.  Before taking on his current role, he was the leader of groups responsible for product development of new organosilicon and organometallic molecules and for ALD applications research. Ron was born in Philadelphia in 1962.  He received bachelor’s degrees in both Chemical Engineering and in Chemistry from the University of Pennsylvania.  In 1984 he received a Ph.D. degree in Inorganic Chemistry from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

fJscaler Inc. is solving the problem of enabling the lowest energy consumption per transferred bit of information by applying the highest modulation frequency (currently ~135GHz) to both electrical and optical communication links. My team is solving the design problems as well as the high-volume production test challenges by applying digital calibration techniques to deliver precise analog high frequency performance.

Prior to founding fJscaler Inc. in November 2022, Jan Filip has worked at Maxim Integrated Products Inc./Analog Devices Inc. as Distinguished Engineer and later GM for over 22 years. He has been shaping the direction of the optical communication industry for over 32 years.

His devotion to optical communication field is reflected in the master thesis from Technical University of Ilmenau in Germany (1993/94): "Monolithic Integrated Circuit for Clock and Data Recovery from a 10Gbps NRZ signal using a 0.4um bipolar process with NPN's transit frequency of 25GHz"

The speed of innovation driven by AI demands is significantly faster than the development of new SiGe, BiCMOS and CMOS processing nodes. Fundamental design engineering skills do matter a lot when the transit frequency is no more than 3 times higher than the frequency of interest.

Warfighter focused engineering and design is the mantra that Sumner continually promotes as the CEO of Fuse.  His time in uniform, as a SPAWAR project manager, and as a part of the commercial design industry fuels a unique approach to rapid prototyping and an intense focus on transition of technology to operational use. Fuse applies the best practices of commercial Design Thinking to military and government systems engineering, and Sumner pushes hard every day to keep the Fuse team intensely focused on the warfighter.

As a Naval Aviator Sumner learned the importance of agility when leading air crews, maintenance teams, and detachments through deployed flight operations.  As a project manager at SPAWAR Sumner developed an understanding of systems engineering processes behind Navy and Joint technology solutions.  Now, Sumner leads Fuse in designing and developing state of the art, intuitive, networked C4I solutions that are focused on the user.

After graduating from the U.S. Naval Academy Sumner went on to graduate first in his class from flight school and flew H-46 helicopters through two deployments with the HC-11 Gunbearers out of San Diego.  Staying in San Diego, Sumner took a position leading the SPAWAR Systems Center Pacific airborne networking team where he built a small group of visionary engineers that delivered secure, multi-level IP network connectivity to over six type-model-series aircraft including E-2C, EP-3, P-3 AIP, P-8, Triton and others.  Sumner was a plankowner of the Joint Tactical Edge Networking working group, and while at SPAWAR he won three ONR Rapid Technology Transition projects, co-wrote the technical plan for the $70 million CABLE Joint Capability Technology Demonstration, transitioned two airborne networking programs from projects into Programs of Record, and earned an Exemplary Achievement Award.

Sumner earned an MBA from The University of Southern California, and transitioned from the government to the commercial design world to work as Director of Business Development at RKS Design, an internationally recognized strategy development and product design firm with over 60 global awards. At RKS Sumner came to appreciate the value of human centered design and the Design Thinking approach.

Sumner started Fuse Integration with a vision to deliver exceptional results for the user through application of Design Thinking processes, blended with DoD systems engineering, Agile development, and rapid prototyping.  Fuse has grown to a team of over 85 personnel since being founded in 2010, and now provides products and engineering support to Navy, USMC, USAF, and Army customers.  The Fuse team is over 40% veterans and includes a blend of operational experience and technical expertise in multiple engineering disciplines.  Fuse has been recently awarded multiple Phase III SBIR contracts, one of which was awarded in less than two years from project kickoff.

Lawrence Woolf is a technical fellow at General Atomics (GA) Aeronautical Systems, Inc. in San Diego. He received a Ph.D. in low temperature condensed matter physics from UCSD in 1980 and a BA in physics from Rutgers College in 1975. Woolf joined GA in 1982 after a post-doc at Exxon. He has been project manager or lead scientist for over 50 programs involving the design, development, and/or production of a variety of advanced materials. He is the author or co-author of 73 scientific publications in materials physics and energy conversion systems, holds 24 patents, and is a Fellow of the American Physical Society (APS).

He is also President and Chair of the Board of the GA Sciences Education Foundation, where he initiated the GASSSS program that has catalyzed the involvement of over 1,000 employees in K-12 STEM education outreach, brought the Chapter One nationwide tutoring program to GA, and has managed the disbursement of over $1,000,000 in funding to STEM non-profits. He has developed many educational modules, materials, and posters and has given over 100 workshops to teachers and students. He was curriculum advisor/technical reviewer for multiple Lawrence Hall of Science FOSS middle school modules and for the BSCS Science: An Inquiry Approach integrated high school curriculum. He developed partnerships between GA and UCSD that has led to financial support for undergraduate research in the Schools of Physical Sciences and Engineering, as well as mentoring and technical interactions.

He has been a member of 21 NSF education-related committees, ranging from elementary science education to national laboratory reviews. He has been involved in many APS education committees and activities, including the Forum on Education (as chair), Second Graduate Education in Physics Conference, APS Excellence in Physics Education Award selection committee, and Phys21 and Effective Practices for Physics Programs (EP3) national task forces. He is currently a member of the APS Committee on Education (as past chair), the EP3 Editorial Board, the US member of IUPAP Working Group 16 on Physics and Industry and a Member-At-Large of the NAS U.S. Liaison Committee for IUPAP.

Dr. Ali Arsanjani is Director of Cloud Partner Engineering at Google Cloud, building strategic partnerships through co-innovation with Google’s largest partners, ISVs and GSIs . He specializes in AI/ML and Data/Analytics to enable customers and partners to run on, integrate with and build upon the Google Cloud Platform for AI/ML and Data/Analytics use-cases that explore and extend the cutting edges of innovation. Pushing against the boundaries of market trends and anticipating what is on the horizon, He integrates current needs with future trends and defines tech strategy that integrates with product management to lead the direction of Google AI and Analytics.

Previously he was the Head of Machine Learning, WW Tech Leader, for AWS AI/ML Specialist Solution Architects . As Chief Principal AI/ML Architect he defined technical strategy for AI/ML Services, Leading the Technology Sector for SaaS, Software, ISVs and Internet-- AWS largest customer segment-- he created solutions that span multiple scenarios into reference architectures and patterns. Also Ali led a specialized research team of Applied Scientists, engineers and product managers for cutting edge prototyping in AI focusing on Neuro Machine interaction, NLP and Graph Neural Networks.

From 1998-2018, Ali was IBM CTO Analytics & Machine Learning & IBM Distinguished Engineer, 

Dr. Arsanjani is an Adjunct Professor of Computer Science teaching Machine Learning in the Master’s Program for San Jose State Univ and previously taught at UC San Diego.

Scott Weldner is an engineering and business leader with a broad range of experience with a diverse set
of technologies and commercial, government and military market spaces. He is currently the Senior VP
of Engineering for HM Electronics, Inc. based in Carlsbad, California. HME is a diverse group of
companies that creates audio and wireless communications products for a variety of niche markets.
Prior to HME, Scott was the VP of Engineering at L3 Communications Linkabit division and president of
his own company based in Rochester, NY, which was acquired by The Titan Corporation in 2002. Over
the course of Scott’s career, he has consistently delivered innovative, high revenue generating products.
Scott holds a B.S. in Electrical Engineering from Clarkson University.

Philippe Lesage is the Vice President and General Manager of Print Microfluidics Specialty Printing and Technology Solutions (SPTS) Business within HP Inc’s Printing group. The HP SPTS business sells original equipment manufacturers (OEM) components based on HP Thermal Inkjet and Microfluidics technologies for their own specialized industrial solutions including mail, postage, product identification, life science automation, etc. and Lesage is responsible for the P&L and all aspects of this business, including sales, marketing, operations, research and development.

Philippe Lesage has been with HP for more than 25 years in positions such as Head of Specialty Photo Printers and Product Marketing Director for Cloud Services. He was also part of the founding team who invented, launched and scaled Instant ink (HP’s ink monthly subscription) to millions of paying subscribers.

Lesage has been living in San Diego since 2022. He holds a Master of Science from Ecoles Nationales Supérieures des Mines.

Dr. David Chow, is the Chief Scientific Officer at HRL Laboratories, LLC. He received
his Ph.D. in Applied Physics from the California Institute of Technology in 1989. He has
authored or co-authored more than 200 technical papers and holds more than 30 patents.
Dr. Chow served as the Director of the Microelectronics Laboratory at HRL from 2005 to
2017. During that time, the Microelectronics Laboratory developed state-of-the-art GaN
MMIC and power transistor technologies, heterogeneous integration technologies, mixed signal
integrated circuits, and millimeter-wave subsystems.

Bill Whitmarsh is Vice President of Engineering for the Hughes Technology Center in San Diego. This group has been responsible for development of satellite and terrestrial terminals for many years. Successes include technology development and equipment supply for the Thuraya mobile satellite system, for Inmarsat BGAN systems, for Lightsquared, Globalstar, Onstar and for XM radio. Hughes San Diego is currently deploying terminal technology and chipsets for the Mexsat and Globalstar satellite systems. Prior to joining HNS in 1996, Bill was a Technical Manager for Securicor in the UK where he had let the development of narrowband SMR radio equipment based on the MPT 1327 standard. This included both mobile and base station solutions using a highly linear amplifier technology which enabled much improved spectral efficiency. Bill was a founder member of LMT, which later span off to become Software Radio Technologies. During the late 1980s, Bill researched narrowband radio technologies and amplifier linearization at Bristol University in the UK. He earned Bachelors and Masters degrees in 1985 and 1986 respectively and his PhD in 1991. Bill holds four patents and has published a number of academic papers.

Eric Sun is the Director of Engineering at Intuit, serving as the accountable leader for Identity and Access Management (IAM). In this role, he spearheads a team whose mission is to enable seamless access to Intuit's suite of products while intelligently enforcing security controls to protect customer data at scale. Under his leadership, the team also facilitates integration with Intuit acquisitions and builds external partnerships that bring added value to Intuit's customers across all product lines. Prior to his current position, Eric led the Growth, Retention, and Experiences Platform team for TurboTax for several years, overseeing numerous successful product launches. 

Eric earned his bachelor’s degree in computer engineering from UC San Diego, graduating from the Jacobs School of Engineering.

Dr. Osama Haddadin is an L3Harris Senior Fellow and the Division Chief Technologist at Broadband Communication Systems (BCS) Sector in Salt Lake City. He has over 20 years of industry experience in digital signal processing for wireless communications, geophysical exploration, and medical imaging. His current interests include distributed autonomous systems, adaptive and array signal processing, and inverse problems. Osama’s current responsibilities at L3Harris include the promotion and development of advanced technologies and system architectures, technology roadmaps, IP management, and university engagement. 

Osama holds a Ph.D. degree in Electrical Engineering from the University of Michigan, an M.S. in Electrical Engineering from the University of Utah, a B.S. degree in Electrical Engineering and a B.S. degree in Computer Science from the University of Utah. His Ph.D. research focused on signal and image reconstruction and inverse scattering problems.

Elizabeth Wheeler is a Deputy Division Leader in the Materials Engineering Division and the Deputy Director of the Center for Bioengineering at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. She holds a bachelor’s degree in chemical engineering from the University of California at Davis and a Ph.D. in chemical engineering from Stanford University. She began her career at LLNL as a post-doc working on optics for use in the National Ignition Facility (NIF) prior to joining the Center for Micro and Nano Technology where she began working on inter-disciplinary research. She has been involved with and lead efforts in bioinstrumentation for biosecurity applications at LLNL for 20+ years. Her research interests focus on integrating biology and engineering to yield new platforms or flexible devices for Homeland Security or medical applications. She has worked on numerous multidisciplinary teams that have field tested technology developed at LLNL. Currently she also serves as the chair of the Lab-Wide Laboratory Directed Research & Development committee.

Sumit Tandon has a BE in Electrical Engineering from Jadavpur University, India, and an MS in Electrical Engineering from the University of Texas at Arlington. He has been at MathWorks for over 14 years, and is a part of a global team that partners with academic and research institutions around the world with a focus on student and research success. In his current role, he leads a group of engineers and scientists that support higher-ed and research institutions in Western US & Canada, and Latin America.

BS in Computer Science from UNC-Chapel Hill 2002

Masters in Computer Science (Communications Networks) from UC-San Diego 2004

10 years at Amazon across various teams including Ordering, Fulfillment by Amazon, and Messaging Middleware for FireOS.

7 years at Facebook across Video and Voice Chat and Messaging Infrastructure.

Justin earned his B.S. in Mechanical Engineering from UC Santa Barbara and his M.S. in Materials Science and Engineering from UCLA. He is also a California licensed Professional Engineer in Mechanical Engineering. Justin has been at NAVAIR for the last 11 years working within the Structures and Materials Departments. He is currently the NAVAIR, Fleet Readiness Center Southwest (FRCSW), Materials Engineering Department, Composites and Corrosion Division Lead. He is also the FRCSW site liaison to UCSD and the Office of Naval Research, Office of Research and Technology Applications, site manager.  

Takeshi Nakano is President of Nitto Denko Technical Corporation.

He is promoting development activities at Nitto‘s research laboratory in the US, which is responsible for basic technology development and new material searches.

These are related to the eight core technologies defined by Nitto: "adhesion," "optics," "circuit formation," "thin film formation," "separation," "porous formation,” “drug delivery,” and “oligo synthesis.”

One of his roles is to build a collaboration system with academia in the United States to discover a new core technology, the ninth.

Nakano-san joined Nitto in 2011, and some of his past roles within the company include development manager for lithium-ion batteries and fuel cells, functional adhesives, optical films, and new separation and porous technologies.

In addition to technology development at the Corporate R&D division, he has experience in product development in the business divisions.

Larry Stullich is the San Diego Director of Systems Engineering for Northrop Grumman Mission Systems. In this role, he is responsible for ensuring successful program execution by providing the engineering oversight, talent development, career management, process control, design vision and engineering tools required to be best-in-class now and in the future. Larry received his BSEE and MSEE from the University of California San Diego and an MBA from George Mason University. He is a member of Phi Beta Kappa and Tau Beta Pi. He is a Veteran of the US Navy, having served as a Reactor Operator on a Fast Attack Nuclear Powered Submarine.

After studying mechanical engineering, art and mathematics at UCSD, Dan spent 20 years as a design engineer before founding NOVO Engineering, which he has managed for the last 17 years. He is an inventor on 65 US patents in such fields as medical device, life science, industrial equipment, security systems, outdoor displays, action sports and eyeglasses. Early career experience at Hewlett Packard opened his eyes to how talented engineers, enlightened management practices and a well-equipped R&D facility combine to create an innovation and problem-solving powerhouse. Dan has endeavored to recreate that same atmosphere of performance and comradery at NOVO. Dan now focuses on mentoring younger design engineers and managers and ensuring that NOVO remains true to the principles of engineering excellence and customer service. 

Damon Valenzona is the Chief Executive Officer at PickTrace and he graduated from UCSB with a Masters in Computer Science. PickTrace creates harvest and workforce management software for the Agriculture market. It is a remote Series B startup that came out of Y Combinator in 2015. Engineers at PickTrace are customer oriented and love creating game changing software for growers. 

An Mei Chen is Vice President of Engineering at Qualcomm, Inc., where she leads advanced technology and ecosystem development and strategy.  Joined Qualcomm in 2001, An Chen holds 450 plus worldwide patents and over 20 peer-reviewed papers including several book chapters and has led cross-functional teams in innovation, design, and productization of wireless communication systems.  Ms. Chen also oversees Qualcomm Technology Licensing’s university collaboration in technology areas of advanced wireless, semiconductor, multimedia, and machine learning.  An Chen received her B.S., M.S., and Ph.D. degrees in electrical & computer engineering from the University of California, San Diego.

Dr. James Klausner is a co-founder of the long duration energy storage company, RedoxBlox and
currently holds the role as Executive Chairman. He also holds the position of MSU Foundation Professor
at Michigan State University. He is formerly Dean of Engineering at UAE University (2021-2022), formerly
the Director of the Fraunhofer USA Midwest Research Center (2022), and is formerly a Department Chair of Mechanical Engineering at Michigan State University (2016-2021). He formerly served as Chair of the ASME Heat Transfer Division (2011-2012). He serves on the board of directors for the American Society of Thermal Fluid Engineers and the International Titanium Association Foundation. For three and a half years he served as a Program Director at the U.S. Department of Energy Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E). Prior to that he held the Newton C. Ebaugh Professorship in
Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering at the University of Florida (1989-2015). He received his Ph.D. degree in 1989 from the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. He has made substantial fundamental contributions to understanding the dynamics of boiling heat transfer systems. He has made many fundamental and applied research contributions in high temperature thermochemistry, waste heat and solar driven desalination, and high heat flux phase-change heat transfer. Dr. Klausner has authored more than 175 refereed publications and is the author of more than ten patents and four provisional patents. He is a Fellow of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers and the American Society of Thermal Fluid Engineers. He is a recipient of the ASME Heat Transfer Division Memorial Award and the 75th Anniversary Award.

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Dawei Huang received BS from Tsinghua University and MS from UCSD. He has 20+ years experience in VLSI design from architecture to production and has 36 issued patents. Currently, he is Senior Director of Engineering at Sambanova Systems. His responsibilities include system and IO architecture, ML model performance and solution. 

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Magaly Drant runs the Office of the CTO and the Engineering Operations Department at ServiceNow, reporting into the CTO and EVP of DevOps. ServiceNow provides enterprise cloud computing solutions that define, manage, and automate services for enterprises worldwide. Magaly focuses on scaling the technology organization to support the growth: from angles as varied as executive relationship with our largest customers, talent acquisition and development strategy, engineering processes development and automation, implementation standards definition and adoption, and technical architecture. In previous roles, she has contributed to and ran software engineering teams (platform and applications development) across a variety of technical stacks. Born and raised in France, Magaly graduated with a master's degree in General Engineering from Ecole Centrale de Paris.

Christopher Barngrover is a Technical Fellow at Shield AI, where he leads the Architecture Group responsible for ensuring the architectural integrity and design correctness of the Hivemind product suite. He has over 20 years of experience in autonomous systems, with deep expertise spanning command and control, sensor fusion, machine learning, and computer vision.

Prior to joining Shield AI, Christopher spent 12 years at the Naval Information Warfare Center (NIWC, formerly SPAWAR Systems Center Pacific), where he contributed to the autonomy and supporting software ecosystems for a diverse range of unmanned platforms—including ground, underwater, and surface vehicles.

Christopher holds a Ph.D. in Computer Science and Engineering from the University of California, San Diego, with a research focus on robotic perception. He also earned dual B.S. degrees in Computer Science and Mathematics from Purdue University.

Dr. Singh is currently working as Director of Business Management at Solar Turbines, A Caterpillar company. He is responsible for the new project execution and oversees a global team. He joined Solar Turbines as Field Engineer in Dubai, following which he has held various positions of increasing responsibility globally. Recently he was deputed in Singapore where he was responsible for Solar’s customer services Business in Asia Pacific. Upon his return to San Diego, he was appointed Director of Engineering Operations.

Dr. Singh received his PhD and MS in Mechanical Engineering from the University of California, San Diego (UCSD), a BS Degree in Instrumentation & Control from Pune University, MBA in Information Systems from South Gujarat University. He has also participated in the Executive Leadership Program at Thunderbird School of Management and received a degree in Brand Management from Disney Institute. His research interest is in the field of Hybrid Power Systems leveraging multiple distributed energy sources like solar, wind, gas turbines, battery storage, etc. He has published articles in engineering journals and presented his work in numerous technical conferences.  He has also participated in numerous funded grants.

Dr. Singh is very passionate about the engagement between academia and industry, he is on the board of the Corporate Affiliate Program at UCSD, a Member of the Executive Advisory Board of the University of San Diego (USD), advises on various engineering and management programs including mentorship for incubators and accelerators globally. He is an active member of ASEAN business council. He lives in San Diego with his family. Coaching, meditation, golfing, and listening to classical music are a few of his hobbies.

Jason is the VP of engineering for Sony Home Entertainment & Sound and a 25-year veteran of the company.  His background is in Big Data having developed data modeling and trading software at JP Morgan and large distributed systems for IBM and FPL.  At Sony, his focus is on home entertainment products and global retail experiences.

James Williams is currently the VP of Innovation for Teradata. He is responsible for identifying key leading-edge academic research and innovations; for driving the ideation and innovation framework; and for technology evaluation for invention disclosures, alliances, and emerging technology trends. Prior to Teradata, James served as SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory (SLAC) Chief Information Officer and Director of the Computing Division for 5 years , as well as principle advisor to the Laboratory Director for Computing Operations and Scientific Computing Services. In addition, James worked at the NASA Ames Research Center for 14 years with his last role being CIO and was responsible for delivering the Nebula Cloud Computing platform that eventually became foundational to the OpenStack community. James also worked on the Columbia accident while he worked at NASA.

Jon is the Founder and CEO of Thrive Technologies, a bleeding-edge VR software start-up that is redefining how developers build and share their ideas and creations. Jon created Thrive with a vision of a flexible online framework that eliminates the hurdles faced in VR development today. With a Bachelor's Degree in Computer Engineering from the University of California, San Diego, and years of experience in VR and tech industries, Jon brings a wealth of technical skills and leadership experience to his role at Thrive. Jon believes that Thrive will play a major role in maturing VR technology and shaping the virtual landscape of the future.

Nik Devereaux is Head of Software Engineering for Viasat’s Global Networks and Technology business area, ensuring Viasat maintains excellence in engineering and remains an excellent place for engineers to work and thrive.  He received his Bachelors (2001) and Master's (2011) degrees from UCSD and remains very involved as an alum and ambassador for Viasat in the Jacobs School of Engineering and Halicioglu Data Science Institute.

Dr. Carl Kirkconnell is the Founder and President of Wecoso, Inc., dba West Coast Solutions (WCS), a product development company located in Huntington Beach, CA. The Core Technologies at WCS are Cryogenic Systems, Aerospace Electronics, and Space and Tactical Power, primarily for civil space and military applications. Carl founded West Coast Solutions in 2015, and his leadership team is made up of many of the same people he collaborated with during his 30 years of prior experience at Iris Technology, where he was the Chief Technology Officer, and Raytheon, where he departed in 2009 as a Senior Fellow.  Carl earned his undergraduate and advanced degrees from the Georgia Institute of Technology. As a graduate student at Georgia Tech he founded the GT Cryogenics Laboratory (GTCL), where he remains active as a collaborating researcher to this day.

Dr. Xiaodong Che is the Chief Technology Officer of the HDD Business Unit and senior vice president at Western Digital Corporation. His responsibility is to shape the magnetic recording vision based on long-term data growth and to serve in the Corporate Global Strategy and Technology team preparing for the disruptive innovation transitions in the foreseeable future.

In 2008, Dr. Che joined HGST. During Western Digital’s HGST acquisition, he led the technology strategy and roadmap consolidation. Prior to that, Dr. Che served Quantum Corporation as a recording technologist.

Dr. Che received his BA in Physics from Fudan University in Shanghai China in 1987, and his Ph.D. at UC San Diego in condensed matter physics under Prof. Harry Suhl in 1991. Afterward, he joined Prof. Neal Bertram’s magnetic recording group at the Center for Magnetic Recording Research as a post-doctor.  He has been actively involved in the development and innovation of magnetic recording storage technology in the last three decades. 

Sharon Gao has over 25 years of professional experience in the field of Data Analytics and Engineering. Graduated from U of Wisconsin - Madison with an MS in Computer Science. She started her career as a data practitioner and has served various technical leadership roles over the years. She has extensive experience working with cross-functional teams, divisional and C-Suites of leaders. At XIFIN she serves as a thought leader, coaching and ramping up the Advances Analytics and Data Engineering team.