Blue Tech: Is Water’s Dry Spell Over?

Leal has just completed a book exploring the solutions to the world’s impending water crisis. She co-authored the book with Harvard’s Engineering Professor Peter Rogers. They combine their managerial and academic backgrounds to provide their prescription for the crisis. The book Running Out of Water (published by Macmillan) was released in late August 2010.Prior to the fellowship, Leal ran the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission (SFPUC). The SFPUC delivers water to 2.5 million customers in the San Francisco Bay Area and also provides hydroelectric and clean renewable power to the Bay Area and California Central Valley communities.

Leal earned a B.A. in economics and a J.D. from the University of California, Berkeley. She is a member of the District of Columbia bar, the Advisory Board of the Department Civil and Environmental Engineering at UC Berkeley and is an Associate of the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences at Harvard.

Aaron Mandell co-founded Oasys Water, Inc. in 2008 where he currently serves as President and CEO.  His business career began as the co-founder of GreatPoint Ventures, an early stage venture creation firm, and since then has expanded to the founding of several cleantech/energy companies including GreatPoint Energy (coal gasification), Coskata (waste-to-fuels), and Altarock (enhanced geothermal power).With a devoted interest in the water industry and a technical background in groundwater hydrology and environmental engineering, Aaron has had the opportunity to work with and learn from two world-renowned water scientists; Dr. George Pinder, regarded as the father of groundwater modeling and Dr. Gideon Dagan, recipient of the 1998 Stockholm Water Prize.  Aaron obtained his B.S. and M.S. in Environmental Engineering from the University of Vermont and has held visiting scientist appointments at MIT and Tel-Aviv University.

Lee Ng is the Director of Venture Technology at Siemens Technology-to-Business Center based in Berkeley, California.

Dr. Ng joined Siemens Technology-to-Business Center in 2009 to fund innovative technology ideas and early stage startups. She leverages her experience to develop new technologies and launch new business ventures for TTB. Her current focus lies in industrial automation, drive technologies, water and energy. Before Siemens, Lee worked at Agilent Central Research Laboratories as the Business Director of New Business Creation.  Prior to that, she was at Hewlett Packard and Ampersand Ventures.

Lee holds a B.S. in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Texas at Austin, and M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in Materials Engineering from MIT, with minors in economics, finance, and strategy.

Chris Berkner has extensive experience in start-up management including business analysis and software development.  He founded AnalyViz, a 7-person consulting company that specialized in business intelligence dashboards.  His diverse client base included AIG, Pfizer, and Avery-Dennison.  Previously, he was Vice President of Systems and Programming Guinness Telli*Phone Corp., where he spearheaded the launch of the company’s first three products.For over 19 years, Chris has engaged his passion for green technology and renewable energy.  He has held a renewable energy research internship at Stanford’s Material Science Deapartment where he discovered a new method for controlling pore size in organic nanostructured materials for photovoltaics.  He also spent a summer at Princeton University studying the economic and environmental implications of Brazil’s biomass energy program.  Chris graduated with honors from UC Santa Cruz with a B.A. in Business Economics.  In addition, he has taken extensive coursework in chemistry and engineering at San Francisco State University and UC Berkeley.