David Grant
Chief Executive Officer
David Grant founded, built and successfully sold two high tech start-up companies. Most recently, Mr. Grant’s company, Tamar Technology, developed multiple, sub-micron measurement technologies for the semiconductor, MEMS, disk drive, and flat panel display industries.
At Tamar, Mr. Grant served as CEO, until it was bought by Rudolph Technologies in 2013. The measurement sensors developed by Tamar have since been integrated into Rudolph production systems at technology leaders such as Intel, Applied Materials, Freescale and numerous other semiconductor manufacturing facilities.
Previously, Mr. Grant founded Sight Systems, a machine vision company, which was acquired by Zygo, a precision optics and instrumentation manufacturer. There he served as Vice President until 1999, when he left to pursue further entrepreneurial ventures including starting Tamar Technology.
David Grant received his degree in Physics from UCLA and was a member of UCLA heavyweight crew. Mr. Grant has received six patents and authored numerous papers.
Chun-Han “Matt” Lai, PhD
Battery Scientist
Dr. Lai is currently the Technology Development Manager of Battery Streak Inc. Prior to joining the company, he has worked in various R&D labs, including NCTU, BASF, and UCLA.
His research career dated back to 2006 in NCTU, where he received his B.S. and M.S., patented a facile fabrication of cylindrical photonic crystals and studied their fundamental physics. Then, he joined BASF Taiwan Ltd. as an engineer working on functional chemicals for the semiconductor industry. In a year and half, he and his colleagues successfully screened and identified several polymer additives and largely reduced plating time from hours to minutes.
At UCLA, his research focused on sol-gel derived porous oxide for hydrogen generation and pseudocapacitor materials for energy storage. By studying fast-redox electrochemistry, he later earned his Ph.D. under the guidance of Prof. Bruce Dunn and developed several high-rate devices that can be fully charged within 60 seconds.
His experience has shown a successful track record in the field of electrochemistry by extending his interests from versatile electrolytes, electrode designs to the entire electrochemical systems. He has authored numerous papers and been working as a part-time reviewer specifically in the field of electrochemistry and energy storage.
Danny Robertson, PhD
Battery Scientist
Dr. Danny Robertson is a Battery Scientist at Battery Streak, Inc., where he focuses on material- and cell-level improvements to the company’s technology.
Prior to joining BSI, Danny completed his Ph.D. in the group of Professor Sarah Tolbert at UCLA. His graduate work focused on synthesis and advanced characterization of fast-charging battery materials.
In addition to his work on energy storage, Danny has technical experience across a variety of different areas of materials chemistry, including heterogeneous catalysis, magnetic devices, and electron microscopy.
He is the recipient of a number of awards and fellowships, including an NSF Graduate Research Fellowship and a UCLA Dissertation Year Fellowship, and is a member of the Phi Beta Kappa Honor Society.
Dan Alpern
Vice President Marketing & Communications
Dan is an experienced leader with a successful record helping start-ups to the largest national organizations.
Dan served the US Navy for 19 years on Active Duty and as a civilian Marketing Director.
His success in a wide variety of markets including B2B (distributed energy, erosion control, waste and recycling, storm water, construction) and B2C (television, magazines, and social media) offers a refreshing perspective to new and emerging markets.
Mark Bonney
Financial Advisor
Mr. Bonney brings more than 35 years of senior financial and operational experience with middle-market high tech companies in the U.S. and abroad. Mr. Bonney most recently served as President and Chief Executive Officer of MRV Communications, Inc. (NASDAQ: MRVC) from December 2014 until its sale in August 2017 and as a director of MRV Communications, Inc. from April 2013 to August 2017.
Mr. Bonney has served as a Director of Zix Corporation (NASDAQ: ZIXI) since January 2013 and serves as a member of the Audit Committee and the Nominating & Corporate Governance Committee.
Mr. Bonney also serves as a Director of Community eConsult Network, Inc., a not-for- profit corporation engaged in medical consultative services, and is Chairman Emeritus of Community Health Centers, Inc. Mr. Bonney has held senior financial and management roles at Black & Decker, Zygo Corporation, Axsys Technologies, Inc., American Bank Note Holographics, Inc. and Direct Brands leading up to Chief Financial Officer, President and Chief Executive Officer.
In addition to his current directorships he has served as a director of Axsys, American Bank Note Holographics, Threecore, Inc., ASearch LLC and Sigma Designs. Mr. Bonney also founded and served as former Chairman of the Angel Investor Forum. Mr. Bonney holds a BS in Business Administration from Central Connecticut State University and an MBA in Finance from the University of Hartford.
Yatin Mody
Financial Advisor
Yatin Mody is an experienced financial executive with over 30 years of progressive experience. Over the past ten years, Mr. Mody has advised or led the finance teams at multiple venture funded technology companies.
Prior to that, he was at Vitesse Semiconductor Corporation, a publicly traded semiconductor device manufacturer, where he served in various positions for more than 14 years.
His background includes significant experience in the financial and operational aspects of managing a technology company through various phases of its business cycle.
During his career, Mr. Mody has been responsible for negotiating, executing and integrating over 25 acquisitions of public and private technology firms. Mr. Mody began his career at Deloitte & Touche, where he worked for more than five years.
He is a graduate of the UCLA Anderson School of Management where he received an MBA, and of the Indian Institute of Technology, where he received a B.Tech. in Electrical Engineering.
Ray Milano, PhD
Technical Advisor
Dr. Ray Milano is a seasoned semiconductor professional who has spent his professional career developing compound semiconductor technology and products. In his tenure at Vitesse Semiconductor he held a variety of technical and management positions related to the development of analog and mixed signal circuits for optical interfaces.
He subsequently founded and was CEO of AmpTech, a venture-funded company focused on the development of InP transistors for cellular amplifier applications.
More recently, at Alta Devices, Dr. Milano led the technology and process development that led to the commercialization of thin film GaAs solar cells and related products with record-setting efficiency. He also provided general management oversight of the business and financial operations of Alta Devices. Milano has a Ph.D. EE from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
His career experiences span technology and business development, product creation, and operations.
David Marx, PhD
Technical Advisor
Dr. Marx is presently an Optical Engineer with the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, where he is part of the Roman Space Telescope-Coronagraph team and the coronagraph technology development team.
Prior to joining JPL, Dr. Marx was Principal Engineer with Rudolph Technologies, after its acquisition of Tamar Technology, where he was CTO for ten years. Dr. Marx’s creative work with Tamar and Rudolph included the invention, design, and commercialization of multiple sensors for the measurement of various features on silicon wafers.
His diverse career includes research and development in fiber optic components, sonar and radar signal processing, image processing, and optical disc memories.
Dr. Marx earned his bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering from the University of Pennsylvania, and his master’s and Ph.D. in electrical engineering from the California Institute of Technology.
Professor Bruce Dunn, PhD
Technical Advisor
Bruce Dunn is the Nippon Sheet Glass Professor of Materials Science and Engineering at UCLA. Prior to joining UCLA in 1981, he was a staff scientist at the General Electric Research and Development Center.
His research interests concern the synthesis of inorganic and organic/inorganic materials, and the characterization of their electrical, optical, biological and electrochemical properties. A continuing theme in his research is the use of sol-gel methods to synthesize materials with designed microstructures and properties.
His recent work on electrochemical energy storage includes three-dimensional batteries and pseudocapacitor materials.
He has published over 300 papers in his fields of research and has been awarded some 20 patents. Dunn has received a number of honors including a Fulbright research fellowship, invited professorships at the University of Paris, the University of Bordeaux, the University of Toulouse, Shinshu University and two awards from the Department of Energy for outstanding research in Materials Science.
He is a Fellow of the American Ceramic Society, the Materials Research Society and a member of the World Academy of Ceramics.
In addition to serving on the Board of Reviewing Editors at Science, he is a member of the editorial boards of Advanced Energy Materials, Solid State Ionics, Advanced Electronic Materials, ACS Applied Energy Materials and Journal of the American Ceramic Society.
Professor Sarah Tolbert, PhD
Technical Advisor
Sarah is a professor in the Departments of Chemistry and Biochemistry and Materials Science and Engineering at UCLA. Prior to joining the faculty at UCLA, she received a B.S. from Yale University, a Ph.D. from U.C. Berkeley, and was an NSF postdoctoral fellow at U.C. Santa Barbara.
Her research focuses on controlling nanometer-scale architecture in solution-processed nanomaterials to generate unique optical, electronic, magnetic, structural, and electrochemical properties. Her group specifically focuses on electrochemical energy storage (including both pseudocapacitors and batteries), solar energy harvesting, electrocatalysis, nanomagnetics, and new ultra-hard materials.
She also leads a program aimed at bringing nano-concepts to schools throughout the greater LA area. Professor Tolbert is the recipient of a number of awards and honors including the American Chemical Society R.A. Glen Award, Closs and Barrer Lectureships at the University of Chicago and Penn. State, respectively, an Office of Naval Research Young Investigator Award, an NSF CAREER Award, a Beckman Young Investigator Award, and a Sloan Foundation Research Fellowship.
She is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry, and serves on the editorial advisory boards of Chemistry of Materials, ACS Applied Materials and Interfaces, and Nanoscale Horizons.
