Jay F. Whitacre

Jay F. Whitacre
Professor, Carnegie Mellon University
Chief Technology Officer, Aquion Energy

Dr. Whitacre received a Ph.D. from the University of Michigan in 1999. He held various positions at Caltech and JPL before taking his current Professorship at Carnegie Mellon in 2007. There he develops functional materials systems and performs economic/environmental impact assessment for energy technologies. His early work at CMU resulted in the conception of a novel scalable energy storage device. In 2008 he founded Aquion Energy, a company that has since garnered over $40 M in funding. He is currently on leave from CMU to serve as full time CTO for Aquion as it scales a pilot manufacturing plant in Pittsburgh, PA. Professor Whitacre has over 50 peer–reviewed papers and patents.

Stewart Brand

Stewart Brand
President, The Long Now Foundation
Co-Founder, Global Business Network

Stewart Brand is president of The Long Now Foundation and Co-Founder of Global Business Network. He created and edited the Whole Earth Catalog and co-founded the Hackers Conference and The WELL (Whole Earth ‘Lectronic Link). His books include The Clock of the Long Now, How Buildings Learn, and The Media Lab. His latest book is titled Whole Earth Discipline: An Ecopragmatist Manifesto. Mr. Brand graduated in Biology from Stanford and served as an Infantry officer in the U.S. Army.

Richard E. Riman

Richard E. Riman
Professor
Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey

Richard Riman is a distinguished Professor of Materials Science and Engineering at Rutgers. His research focuses on ceramic manufacturing methods providing sustainable solutions to significant technological and environmental problems. His research spans photonic, biomedical, electronic and structural fields. Professor Riman also has entrepreneurial interests, most recently founding Solidia Technologies, a company providing green construction materials for buildings and infrastructure. He holds a B.S. degree in Ceramic Engineering from Rutgers and a Ph.D. from MIT in Materials Science and Engineering. He is the recipient of many prestigious awards including those from NIH, NSF, ALCOA, DuPont, Johnson & Johnson and the American Ceramic Society.

Jigar Shah

Jigar Shah
Chief Executive Officer
Carbon War Room

A renowned visionary, Jigar Shah is committed to renewable energy and sustainable solutions that enable prosperity beyond the carbon economy. As CEO of the Carbon War Room, Jigar is dedicated to identifying business-as-usual practices and replacing them with low-carbon solutions. Prior to the Carbon War Room, Jigar founded SunEdison in 2003. Under his leadership, SunEdison revolutionized the solar industry by introducing a business model to sell solar as a service. The transformation to solar power service agreements is responsible for turning solar services into a multi-billion dollar industry. Jigar is also an expert on energy project finance, changing energy policy, working with entrenched stakeholders, and convincing individuals to embrace energy technology. He works closely with entrepreneurs, policymakers, and investors around the world to develop, incubate, and implement sustainable solutions. Jigar holds a BS in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Illinois, Champaign-Urbana, and an MBA from the University of Maryland. Jigar sits on the boards of SB NOW and Greenpeace USA.

Monty Cleeves

Monty Cleeves
Founder, President, and Chief Technology Officer
Pinnacle Engines

Monty has a thirty-year career in the semiconductor industry, but his passion has always been engines and engine efficiency. His career spanned engineering and management at Fairchild/National Semiconductor, Cypress Semiconductor, Candescent, and Matrix—ultimately becoming CEO of Kovio. Over the course of his career, he has been granted more than eighty-five patents and currently has more than eighty applications pending. In August of 2007, he refocused his career when he founded Pinnacle Engines to commercialize his ideas for bringing significant efficiency improvements in internal combustion engines to consumers. Monty earned his bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering from the University of Santa Clara in 1973.

Bill Joy

Bill Joy
Senior Partner
Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers

Bill Joy joined KPCB in 2005 as a Partner in KPCB’s Greentech Practice. He helped develop KPCB’s strategy for addressing the twin problems of climate change and sustainability. Joy was previously a founder and Chief Scientist of Sun Microsystems.

Before co-founding Sun, Joy designed and wrote Berkeley UNIX, the first open source operating system with built-in TCP/IP. In 1995 he installed the world’s first citywide WiFi network in Colorado. His many contributions were recognized in a FORTUNE cover story that called him the “Edison of the Internet.”

Nathan S. Lewis

Nathan S. Lewis
George L. Argyros Professor of Chemistry
California Institute of Technology

Dr. Nathan Lewis, Professor of Chemistry, at the California Institute of Technology since 1991 is serving as Principal Investigator for the Joint Center for Artificial Photosynthesis, the DOE’s Energy Innovation Hub in Fuels from Sunlight, and, the Beckman Institute Molecular Materials Resource Center. Dr. Lewis received his Ph.D. in Chemistry from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He has published over 300 papers, is Editor-in-Chief of Energy & Environmental Science, and has supervised over 60 graduate students and postdoctoral associates. His awards include the Princeton Environmental Award and Michael Faraday Medal of the Royal Society of Electrochemistry.

J. Charles Fox

J. Charles Fox
Program Director
Oceans Five

Fox serves as the Program Director of Oceans Five, an international funders collaborative dedicated to ocean conservation. He served formerly in several senior government positions at federal and state levels, including the Secretary of Natural Resources in Maryland and the Assistant Administrator for Water at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. Fox previously directed the international marine conservation programs for the Pew Charitable Trusts and worked with several nonprofit organizations including the Chesapeake Bay Foundation, Friends of the Earth, American Rivers, and the Environmental Policy Institute. He lives in Annapolis and enjoys sailing.

Fabien Cousteau

Fabien Cousteau
Third Generation Explorer, Environmentalist and Filmmaker

Fabien Cousteau is a third generation explorer, environmentalist and filmmaker. He co-launched Natural Entertainment, which is working on numerous projects related to explorationand environmental awareness through television and other media. Living a childhood dream of “becoming a shark”, Fabien orchestrated a three year long project resulting in an extensive expedition to study the much feared great white shark in his innovative and unique shark shaped submersible. The result was a primetime show on CBS entitled “The Mind of a Demon” ( http://www.cbs.com/specials/shark/ ). In 2006, Fabien once again partnered with his father, Jean Michel Cousteau, and sister Celine to complete a three year multi hour series for PBS called Ocean Adventures (www.pbs.org/kqed/oceanadventures). Topics explored ranged from the Grey whale migration of the west coast of the Americas to the magical coral spawning of the Caribbean to diving with squadrons of goliath groupers to the ghost ships of the Great Lakes. Additional hours cover exotic places such as the Amazon, Samoa, Christmas Island, Papua New Guinea, the Arctic and many other wonders of nature. The most recent expeditions covering the topics of Belugas, Orcas and man started airing on PBS in April of 2009. Fabien keeps his personal life similarly involved in projects like his new initiative to actively involve the public in undersea restoration initiatives coupled with government protection of the restored areas. Deeply concerned about the well-being of future generations, he is on the board of the New York Harbor School (http://www.newyorkharborschool.org/) where he volunteers his time to empower youth about the water world. Being part of the Water Innovation Alliance (http://www.waterinnovations.org/), Fabien brings attention about water issues to business executives in order for them to make better, more informed decisions. Believing that the visual medium are the best way to reach and entrance the masses he lends his support as a board member to the Blue Ocean Film Festival (http://www.blueoceanfilmfestival.org/). Fabien also partners with outside initiatives such as Save Bimini (http://www.savebimini.org) in an effort to impassion people into changing the tide of current events that threaten to blindly destroy the environmental wealth of our future generations. His most recent, and perhaps most ambitious, endeavor is creating a new foundation committed to educating the public on the alarming need to restore our marine habitats. The Plant-a-Fish Initiative will spearhead public education programs as well as guiding large environmentally sensitive corporations with a genuine commitment to making the world a healthier place for mankind. An active writer, he is currently working on a children’s book trilogy. Fabien has been seen on network television, the Oprah Winfrey Show, and as a regular guest/contributor to NBC’s Today Show. Additionally, he is a sought after speaker at a variety of foreign and domestic environmental and water conferences.

J. Carl Ganter

J. Carl Ganter
Managing Director
Circle of Blue

J. Carl Ganter is co-founder and director of Circle of Blue, the internationally recognized center for original frontline reporting, research, and analysis on water resource issues. Ganter is an award-winning photojournalist, reporter, and broadcaster widely credited with helping to shape the multimedia journalism era. He serves on the World Economic Forum Global Agenda Council on Water Security and the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars Navigating Peace Water Working Group. He earned his MSJ in investigative and magazine writing at Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism after graduating with honors from the University’s American Studies Program.