Mounir Alafrangy
Commercial LEO Economy Enabler | NASA Analog Astronaut (Photo: Hope Byrd)
Mounir Alafrangy is a distinguished leader in space technology and innovation, with over two decades of experience in advancing the frontiers of space exploration. He has held pivotal roles, including serving as the Commercial Innovation Manager and Technology Lead for the International Space Station (ISS) National Laboratory. In this capacity, Mounir directed the Technology Advancement and Applied Research initiatives under the ISS National Lab’s Research Announcement (NLRA). His efforts in engaging the global science and engineering community have successfully identified and funded groundbreaking space-based R&D projects.
Mounir's expertise extends into the private sector, where he served as the Space Exploration Lead for a private company, spearheading cutting-edge innovation initiatives. His work in developing and demonstrating ML/AI prototypes at prominent space-specific conferences has positioned him at the forefront of technological advancements in the industry.
Jag Alexeyev
Jag advises firms on ESG investing, sustainability, and climate strategies. He has been a consultant to asset management executives for more than two decades, enabling business expansion and product innovation. Most recently, he served as Head of ESG Insights for Broadridge Financial Solutions. Previously, he founded Impactvesting LLC, a research consultancy focused on sustainable investments and global fund distribution.
He also collaborated with the Global Footprint Network on their Finance for Change initiative, leading a working group of institutional investors to develop carbon footprint methodologies in sovereign debt. In addition, Jag advised FFI Solutions on developing solutions to reduce carbon and stranded asset risks in investment portfolios.
Earlier in his career, Jag was head of global research and consulting at Strategic Insight, a fund intelligence provider that was acquired by Institutional Shareholder Services (IIS), which is now majority-owned by Deutsche Börse Group. He earned a Bachelor’s degree in Economics from Harvard and a Master's degree in International Relations from the London School of Economics.
Chibueze Amanchukwu
Neubauer Family Assistant Professor
Chibueze Amanchukwu is a Neubauer Family Assistant Professor in the Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering at the University of Chicago, a faculty affiliate in the Data Science Institute, and a joint appointee at Argonne National Laboratory. His research is focused on enabling long duration electrical (batteries) and chemical energy storage for a sustainable energy future. His team is especially interested in modifying electrolyte and ion solvation behavior to control electrochemical processes occurring in batteries and electrocatalytic transformations such as carbon dioxide capture and conversion. They couple data science, computation, synthesis, and characterization to holistically understand ion transport in electrolytes and control interfacial reactions for efficient and cheap long duration storage. He has been named a “Talented Twelve” by Chemical & Engineering News (C&EN). His work has been recognized with the NSF CAREER Award, DOE Early Career Award, Google Research Scholar Award, Camille-Dreyfus Teacher-Scholar Award, ECS-Toyota Young Investigator Fellowship, CIFAR Azrieli Global Scholar Award, and the 3M Nontenured Faculty Award. He obtained his PhD in chemical engineering as a NDSEG Fellow at MIT and was a TomKat Center Postdoctoral Fellow at Stanford University.
Mehrdad Arjmand
Director of Engineering, Renewance
Mehrdad Arjmand is the Director of Engineering at Renewance, where he leads innovative software and hardware product development to provide life cycle services for the electric mobility and energy storage industries. Previously, he co-founded NovoMoto, a startup that provides energy access to sub-Saharan Africa through solar power generation and battery storage, electrifying over 2,000 households. Mehrdad holds a Ph.D. in Engineering Mechanics from the University of Wisconsin, Madison, with a research focus on next-generation semiconductor materials for applications in computer transistors, sensors, and lasers. His diverse expertise encompasses leadership and innovation, making him a passionate entrepreneur dedicated to using technology to mitigate climate change.
David Chang-Yen
Senior Principal Research Scientist, AbbVie
David Chang-Yen is a Senior Principal Research Scientist at AbbVie, where he has been a member of the SPaRCS (Specialized Research in Chaotic Systems) group for 15 years. During his tenure at AbbVie he has developed many systems in support of Discovery Research projects, including automated prep systems for NMR spectroscopy, custom medicinal chemistry exploration platforms, and high-throughput mass spectroscopy sample delivery. Prior to AbbVie, David cofounded Wasatch Microfluidics (now Carterra Bio) out of the University of Utah where he received his Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering.
Junhong Chen
Crown Family Professor
Junhong Chen is currently Crown Family Professor of Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering at the University of Chicago and Lead Water Strategist & Senior Scientist at Argonne National Laboratory. He also serves as the Science Leader for Argonne’s presence in the City of Chicago (Argonne in Chicago). Prior to coming to Chicago, Dr. Chen served as a program director for the Engineering Research Centers program of the US National Science Foundation (NSF) and the director of NSF Industry-University Cooperative Research Center (I/UCRC) on Water Equipment & Policy (WEP). He founded NanoAffix Science LLC to commercialize real-time water sensors based on 2D nanomaterials. Dr. Chen received his Ph.D. in mechanical engineering from University of Minnesota in 2002 and was a postdoctoral scholar in chemical engineering at California Institute of Technology from 2002 to 2003. His current research focuses on nanomaterial innovation for sustainable energy and environment. Dr. Chen has published nearly 300 journal papers and has been listed as a highly cited researcher (top 1%) in materials science/cross-field by Clarivate Analytics. He is an elected fellow of National Academy of Inventors, Royal Society of Chemistry (RSC), and the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME).
Wayne Delker
Crown Family Professor
Wayne has spent more than 30 years in business leading innovation organizations and developing innovation processes, capability and culture. He retired in 2015 as Senior Vice President & Chief Innovation Officer of The Clorox Company, serving as the company's chief technical and innovation executive. During this time Clorox achieved a record level of growth from innovation and was recognized as an innovation leader.
Prior to joining Clorox, Delker spent 14 years with General Electric in various R&D and engineering roles, concluding with General Manager and Director of Technology for GE Silicones.
More recently he was the Executive Director of the Fung Institute for Engineering Leadership in the College of Engineering at UC Berkeley. This role builds on a lifelong passion on how to bring together engineering expertise, innovation skills and leadership to solve world problems and prepare people for future careers in science and engineering management. He was also co-leader of the nonprofit start-up VentilatorSOS, whose mission is to modify and supply donated medical equipment to developing countries to help save lives during the COVID pandemic.
He currently serves as the President of the Advisory Board of The Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering at the University of Chicago and as co-founder of the Sciente and Engineering Leadership Alliance whose mission is to develop leadership and high-performance teaming educational programs for STEM students in higher education.
A native of Pennsylvania, Delker holds a BS in Chemistry from the University of Chicago and M.S, M.Phil and Ph.D. in Chemistry from Columbia University.
Daniel Holz
Professor
Daniel Holz is a professor at the University of Chicago in the Departments of Physics, Astronomy & Astrophysics, the Enrico Fermi Institute, and the Kavli Institute for Cosmological Physics.
Holz is a member of the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) collaboration; his research focuses on black holes, gravitational waves, and cosmology. He has received a National Science Foundation CAREER Award, a Quantrell Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching, and as a member of LIGO received the Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics and the Gruber Prize. He was selected as a Kavli Fellow of the National Academy of Sciences and is an APS Fellow.
Holz is Chair of the Science and Security Board of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, and in this role helps set the time of the Doomsday Clock. Holz is also founding director of the UChicago Existential Risk Laboratory (XLab), an interdisciplinary effort focused on understanding and mitigating existential risks, including nuclear war, climate change, and AI-fueled disinformation.
Johan Joseph
Business advisor
Johan Joseph is a senior business advisor across business consulting, ventures and capital raising. He currently works with start-ups to post-start-up firms to accelerate formation and scale business operations with mature organizations in the areas of business transformation and innovation, and he also focused on capital raising in the private credit/debt space.
He most recently was a senior partner at Grant Thornton serving as lead advisor to the US financial services industry and has consulted on a variety of issues spanning go-to market strategy, organic/inorganic growth and operating improvements. His primary focus area is "operationalizing" strategy that have included executing on many transformational, change programs. He also serves as an advisor at Northwestern’s McCormick School of Engineering’s Nuvention program – an entrepreneurship and innovation program for students seeking to launch start-ups.
Elizabeth Koprucki
Operations Manager, Chicago Materials Research Center
Elizabeth Koprucki is the Operations Manager of the Chicago Materials Research Center, an NSF-funded Materials Research Science and Engineering Center. Previously, she designed UChicago’s Polsky Center Fab Lab and ran it for nine years, creating its training curriculum, hiring its team, and mentoring hundreds of entrepreneurs and researchers through the prototyping process.
Before coming to UChicago, they worked as a maker professional at the Ancona School, the Art Institute, and the Chicago Public Library’s Maker Lab. They have given talks at the International Symposium on Academic Makerspaces and Construct 3D, and were the Science/Maker Guest of Honor at WindyCon 2021.
Theodore (Ted) Krause
Chemical Sciences and Engineering Division, Argonne National Laboratory
Theodore (Ted) Krause is a Chemical Engineer and Theme Leader for the Catalysis and Energy Conversion Group in the Chemical Sciences and Engineering (CSE) Division at Argonne with 37 years of experience. As theme leader, he manages R&D activities in fuels cells, catalysis, and high throughput/combinatorial materials and process development. He currently serves as the Laboratory Relationship Manager to the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy (EERE) Hydrogen and Fuel Cell Technologies Office (HFTO). He holds a PhD degree in Chemical Engineering from the University of Delaware and is a registered Profession Engineer in the State of Illinois.
Jennifer “Vern” Long
CEO World Coffee Research
Vern Long is the Chief Executive Officer of World Coffee Research (WCR). WCR unites the global coffee industry to drive science-based agricultural solutions to urgently secure a diverse and sustainable supply of quality coffee today and for generations to come. In close collaboration with the WCR Board and member companies, Dr. Long and the WCR executive leadership team are harnessing the collective power of the coffee industry to deepen public and private investment and engagement in coffee R&D in response to the significant innovation gap in coffee agriculture. A plant breeder by training, Long has over 25 years of experience in global collaborative crop improvement and seed systems initiatives aligning public sector and industry goals. She is deeply motivated by the transformative power of agricultural R&D to achieve the coffee industry’s sustainability priorities. A dual citizen of Canada and the U.S., she holds a Ph.D. in plant breeding from Cornell University.
Felix Lu
PME Director of Corporate Engagement
Felix Lu is the Director of Corporate Engagement at the Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering and has been in this type of role for about a decade. He spent the previous decade in industry. He trained as a semiconductor materials scientist receiving his PhD from UC San Diego, worked at the Boeing Satellite Development Center in the Technology Qualification Group, co-founded a startup company in North Carolina making high performance MEMS array devices for steering laser beams for an early niche quantum computation experiment, and in a variety of academic staff roles including course instructor for analog circuit courses, cleanroom staff, and outreach coordinator. He has worked and lived in Southern California, North Carolina, Wisconsin, and moved to Chicago in 2018. His current role includes strategic and tactical roles, playing the long game of building robust partnerships with companies seeking talent, community outreach channels, STEM projects, and translation of emerging technologies.
Nadya Mason
Dean, University of Chicago Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering
Nadya Mason is the dean of the Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering (PME) at the University of Chicago. She specializes in experimental studies of quantum materials, with a research focus on the electronic properties of nanoscale and correlated systems, such as nano-scale wires, atomically thin membranes, and nanostructured superconductors. Her research is relevant to applications involving nanoscale and quantum computing elements.
Before becoming dean of PME, Mason was the Rosalyn S. Yalow Professor of Physics at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, where she directed the Illinois Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology and also served as founding director of the Illinois Materials Research Science and Engineering Center (I-MRSEC).
Ryne Montoya
PhD candidate, PME
Ryne Montoya is a PhD candidate in the Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering. He works in the lab of Professor Jeffrey Hubbell, working on polymer chemistry for immunology and biomaterials applications. Prior to joining the PME in 2022, Ryne earned a BS in Chemical Engineering from Northwestern University. Ryne conducted undergraduate research experiences in polymer synthesis within the lab of George Whitesides at Harvard University and heavy-metal chemistry within the Radiochemistry and Nuclear Material Processing Team at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory.
Ryne is the recipient of a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship, a GEM Full PhD Fellowship, a PME Scholars Fellowship, and an HSF Scholars Award. He currently serves as the Vice-President of the University of Chicago’s chapter of the Society of Hispanic Professional Engineers (SHPE) and works for the Research and Innovation Team within the SHPE National organization as a Data Science Fellow. Within both roles, he works to enhance higher education opportunities within the Chicagoland community and across all 280+ SHPE Chapters in the U.S. and its territories.
Jon Quick
CFO of Launchpad.build
Quick is the CFO of Launchpad.build. Prior to joining Launchpad, he was the CEO of two successful technology companies; a venture capitalist at a $4.5-billion venture fund; and a consultant with Bain & Co. He is a charter member of the C100, a contributor for the World Economic Forum, a proud dad of three, and a lover of hockey who has represented his country internationally.
Stuart Rowan FRS
Barry L. MacLean Professor for Molecular Engineering Innovation and Enterprise
Stuart Rowan earned his B.Sc. (Hons.) and PhD in Chemistry from the University of Glasgow. His post-doctoral work began in the Chemistry Department at the University of Cambridge, where he later became a Research Associate of Girton College, and culminated at the University of California, Los Angeles. Rowan was the Kent Hale Smith Professor in the Department of Macromolecular Science and Engineering at Case Western Reserve University before joining the University of Chicago in the Department of Chemistry and Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering in 2016. In 2018 he became the Barry L MacLean Professor of Molecular Engineering and in 2021 he became the Director of the University of Chicago’s Materials Science and Engineering Research Center (MRSEC).
Rowan won the American Chemical Society Mark Scholar Award, the Morley Medal, the National Science Foundation CAREER Award, and the CWRU School of Engineering Research Award. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry, and the American Chemical Society. He is currently the Editor-in-Chief of ACS Macro Letters, published by the American Chemical Society, and a member of the editorial advisory boards of the Journal of Polymer Science, Chemical Science, the Journal of Macromolecular Science, and Pure & Applied Chemistry.
Sarah Tinsman
Program Director for Inclusive Innovation in the UChicago Office of Civic Engagement
Sarah Tinsman currently serves as the Program Director for Inclusive Innovation in the University’s Office of Civic Engagement. In her role, she is responsible for convening and activating partners in the sciences, engineering, technology, and community to support business diversity, youth entrepreneurship, STEM education, and urban research on Chicago’s South Side.
Ajay Vonkarey
Technology Partner and Advisory Board Chair; President, Alpha Sirius, Inc.
Sustainability professional with a proven track record of success in driving sustainability initiatives and ESG strategies across diverse industries. Entrepreneur and founder with expertise in IT/software solutions tailored for sustainability and environmental stewardship. Passionate speaker and board member dedicated to advancing sustainable business practices and climate change mitigation.
