Rawand Rasheed brings a deep technical background. He is a PhD candidate at Rice University and has more than 3 years of experience at NASA, first as a graduate research fellow and then as a Life Support Systems Engineer. Rawand is a named inventor on the patent application for the Helix MICRA™ filter. Rawand also is part of Rice University’s inaugural cohort of innovation fellows, where he is training in business and entrepreneurship. Rawand holds several patents and has published his work on his filters in a top 5% journal (based on impact factor). Rawand recently won first place at the Napier Rice Launch Challenge for Helix Earth Technologies where he competed against 84 other startup companies.
Brad Husick is a seasoned entrepreneur who founded 3 successful tech companies (sale, IPO, privately held $1.5B) and early entered one company (IPO, $9B peak) in his career. Brad has a BA in Astrophysics from Rice University and an MBA from Columbia. He began his career at Apple and HP. With experience in startups, advertising, product marketing, business development, marketing, sales, and operations, Brad combines his technical know-how with business sense to build value. His interest in filtration and sustainability began when he worked for The Ocean Cleanup, filtering plastic from the Great Pacific Garbage Patch - a floating gyre of plastic larger than the state of Texas.
Dr. Daniel J. Preston directs the Preston Innovation Laboratory at Rice University conducting research at the intersection of energy, materials, and fluids. He is a recipient of the NSF CAREER Award, the ASME Old Guard Early Career Award, and the Energy Polymer Group Certificate of Excellence. His group’s recent work has been published in PNAS, Science Advances, Advanced Intelligent Systems, Advanced Science, and ACS Nano. His lab is funded by NASA, the National Science Foundation, and the Department of Energy, among other sources. Dr. Preston earned his B.S. (2012) in mechanical engineering from the University of Alabama and his M.S. (2014) and Ph.D. (2017) in mechanical engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Following his graduate degrees, he trained as a postdoctoral fellow from 2017–2019 at Harvard University in the Department of Chemistry and Chemical Biology prior to joining Rice University as an assistant professor in July 2019.
Dr. Nenad Miljkovic is a Professor of Mechanical Science and Engineering at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC). He has courtesy appointments in Electrical and Computer Engineering, and the Materials Research Laboratory. He is the Co-Director of the Air Conditioning and Refrigeration Center (ACRC), which is supported by 25 industrial partners. His group’s research intersects the multidisciplinary fields of thermo-fluid science, interfacial phenomena, scalable nanomanufacturing, and renewable energy. He is a recipient of the NSF CAREER Award, the ACS PRF DNI Award, the ONR YIP Award, the ASME ICNMM Young Faculty Award, the ASME Pi Tau Sigma Gold Medal, the CERL R&D Technical Achievement Award, the US Army Corps of Engineers ERDC R&D Achievement Award, the SME Young Faculty Award, the Bergles-Rohsenow Young Investigator Award in Heat Transfer, the ASME EPPD Early Career Award, and is an ASME Fellow.
Andrew Blair is Chief Operating Officer at Kensington Mechanical, a refrigeration contractor headquartered in Waltham, Massachusetts. Through his personal endeavors and career, he strives to bring his passion for the environment and sustainability to the forefront. Through volunteer and on-the-job initiatives, he has worked to adopt progressive strategies at his second-generation family HVAC business in the Boston area.
Andrew is a Lifetime Member of the Northeast Sustainable Energy Association (NESEA) and serves on the Advisory Board for Minuteman High School and Lynn Technical Institute HVAC. Andrew is a graduate Cum Laude of Harvard University with a BA in Economics and Harvard University Extension Studies in Sustainability.