Serial Conversation: Bill Joy
Senior Partner
Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers
Issam Dairanieh
US Director Alternative Energy Ventures
BP
Monty Cleeves
Founder, President, and Chief Technology Officer
Pinnacle Engines
Jigar Shah
Chief Executive Officer
Carbon War Room
Richard E. Riman
Professor of Materials Science and Engineering
Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey
Stewart Brand
President, The Long Now Foundation
Co-Founder, Global Business Network
Daniel Shugar
Chief Executive Officer, Solaria Corporation
Jay F. Whitacre
Professor, Carnegie Mellon University
Chief Technology Officer, Aquion Energy
Compass Summit, a forum for true interaction and exchange, examines some of today’s most pressing problems through the lens of global citizenship, recognizing that human ingenuity is an unlimited resource. Guided by NPR’s Ira Flatow, an intimate group of some of the of the world's best thinkers and doers convened along the rugged Palos Verdes coastline on Oct 23-26, 2011 at Terranea Resort to engage in meaningful conversation, ask questions, and challenge ideas -- we invite you to join in the conversation.
Bio
Stewart Brand
Stewart Brand is co-founder and president of The Long Now Foundation and co-founder of Global Business Network. He created and edited the Whole Earth Catalog (National Book Award), and co-founded the Hackers Conference and The WELL. His books include The Clock of the Long Now; How Buildings Learn; and The Media Lab. His most recent book, titled Whole Earth Discipline, is published by Viking in the US and Atlantic in the UK.
Monty Cleeves
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.
Issam Dairanieh Ph.D.
Issam Dairanieh is the Global director for BP Alternative Energy Venture team. Alternative Energy Ventures is a strategic investment group within BP's Alternative Energy business. Issam leads the team that invests in renewable power generation, energy efficiency, energy storage, Biofuels and Carbon Management.
Since its establishment in 2007, the team made over 20 investments. Prior to moving to Alternative Energy in 2006, Issam spent 8 years with the new business development division at BP Chemicals where he conducted product and application development as well as technical service and commercial development. Issam has B.S. degrees in Chemistry as well as Chemical Engineering and completed his MS and Ph.D. at the University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign.
Bill Joy
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."
Richard E. Riman
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
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.
Daniel Shugar
A solar industry pioneer, Mr. Shugar has spent over twenty years advancing the renewable energy industry. Mr. Shugar has vast experience commercializing technology, specifically with PowerLight and SunPower. Prior to Solaria, Mr. Shugar served as President of SunPower Corporation, Systems, following the merger of SunPower with PowerLight Corporation. As President of PowerLight, he led at various times Sales, Marketing, Business Development, Project Design, Supply Chain, Construction, Customer Service, Manufacturing, and R&D. During his tenure, Mr. Shugar oversaw revenue growth from less than $1 million to over $800 million and was responsible for the completion of 500 projects serving commercial, industrial, and utility clients worldwide.
Mr. Shugar has invented various PV system applications, holds multiple U.S. patents and has published over 50 technical papers. Prior to the PV industry, Mr. Shugar worked for the Pacific Gas & Electric Company, where he managed PG&E's Solar Projects group. He began his professional career for PG&E in electric transmission planning and substation operations.
Mr. Shugar is a director on the Board of the Sierra Club Foundation, Array Converter Inc., and PV Evolution Laboratories. Mr. Shugar holds a B.S. in electrical engineering from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, and an M.B.A in finance from Golden Gate University, California.
Jay F. Whitacre Ph.D.
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, president and co-founder of the Long Now Foundation, describes how the National Ignition Facility has almost created a nuclear fusion reaction with net energy output that will drastically alter the energy game.
Process by which nuclear reactions between light elements form heavier ones, releasing huge amounts of energy. In 1939 Hans Bethe suggested that the energy output of the sun and other stars is a result of fusion reactions among hydrogen nuclei. In the early 1950s American scientists produced the hydrogen bomb by inducing fusion reactions in a mixture of the hydrogen isotopes deuterium and tritium, forming a heavier helium nucleus. Though fusion is common in the sun and other stars, it is difficult to produce artificially and is very difficult to control. If controlled nuclear fusion is achieved, it might provide an inexpensive energy source because the primary fuel, deuterium, can be extracted from ordinary water, and eight gallons of water could provide the energy equivalent to 2,500 gallons of gasoline.
