THE TEAM

BOARD OF DIRECTORS

Georges J. Antoun, Chairman

Georges J. Antoun is the Chief Commercial Officer of First Solar, Inc. Previously he was a Venture Partner at Technology Crossover Ventures and served as the Head of Product Area IP & Broadband Networks (PAIB) for Ericsson. He joined Ericsson when Ericsson acquired Redback Networks where he had. Before joining Redback in August 2001, Mr. Antoun spent the preceding five years, from July 1996 to August 2001, at Cisco Systems Inc., where he served as a Vice President of Worldwide Systems Engineering and Field Marketing, a Vice President of Worldwide Optical Operations and Vice President of Carrier Sales. Mr. Antoun holds a BSc in Engineering from the University of Louisiana and MSc in Information Systems from NYU Poly.

Kevin R. Weiss. P.E., Chief Executive Officer  – Director

Mr. Weiss is a co-founder of Byogy and has led the company since its inception in 2006. Mr. Weiss started JMH Weiss, a Civil Engineering and Land Development firm in the San Francisco Bay area in 1995 where he was Chairman and CEO for 20 years. During this time, he took the company from startup to a successful enterprise that designed and developed more than 3,000 infrastructure projects in both public and private sectors on a national basis. During his engineering tenure he has been at the forefront of environmental and sustainable business practices from co-developing regulations for the Chesapeake Bay Act in the mid 1980’s to designing the first Gold LEED building in California for the Hewlett Foundation.Mr. Weiss’s knowledge of sustainable and environmental design and processing has enhanced his abilities to be at the forefront of renewable energy implementation. He has held numerous leadership positions by providing seminar discussions for both the private sector and local government environmental agencies on sustainable practices. Mr. Weiss is a licensed professional engineer and holds BS degrees in Civil Engineering, Physics, and Math from Penn State University.

Daniel L. Rudnick – Vice President; Director

Mr. Rudnick, is a co-founder of Byogy with 25 years of broad experience as a trial lawyer and business owner in farming and ranching in California, including a background in the wind-power and bio-energy business. He has practiced business law and civil litigation from 1983 to-date. Mr. Rudnick has served as general counsel from 2000 to 2006 for a large pharmaceutical distribution company involved in the animal health products industry. Daniel received a B.S. in Agricultural Business Management in 1979 from the California Polytechnic Institute of San Luis Obispo, and a J.D. from the California Western School of Law in 1983. He did postdoctoral work in 1983 while attending the McGeorge School of Law program in International Business Transactions and Tax in Europe.

Scott Marshall – Director

Mr. Marshall has 30 years of networking and telecommunications experience in product and architecture strategy, engineering management, product development and executive leadership. He has served on the boards of more than a dozen companies including ACC, sold to Ericsson, Vienna Systems, sold to Nokia, Extreme Packet Devices, sold to PMC Sierra and Solantro Semiconductor, sold to Huada. He also served on the boards of ITRC, TRIO and CITO Ontario Centres of Excellence. He is currently a director of Rockport Networks, a provider of high-performance data center switching systems. Mr. Marshall most recently held the post of Senior Vice President of Engineering, Product Management and Business Development with Redback Networks. His responsibilities included technical and product leadership as well as business partnerships. Previously, Mr. Marshall was a Group Vice President of Cisco Systems with responsibility for multiple business units, including Dial Remote Access Servers and Concentrators, DSL, Cable, Wireless, Multi-service Switching, Voice over IP and Integrated Access Devices. Mr. Marshall served as President and Chief Executive Officer of optical start-up Ceyba Corporation and Executive Vice President of Research and Development of Newbridge Networks as well as in various senior product management and engineering roles at Newbridge, Mitel and Nortel. Mr. Marshall was born and raised in Toronto and received a BASc in Electrical Engineering from the University of Waterloo.

Chuck Erickson – Director

Mr. Erickson previously served as the Executive Director of the Software Business Cluster, the Director of the Environmental Business Cluster (Green focus) and the CEO of the US Market Access Center (US market entry focus). During his tenure in the Incubators he assisted over 150 companies in achieving market entry and assisted in raising over $750,000,000 in growth capital. Mr. Erickson has also recently served on the Board of Directors for the National Business Incubation Association (NBIA). Since 2002, Chuck has been active as a presenter, coach and troubleshooter for the NBIA serving incubators in Estonia, Finland, Egypt, China, Russia and Panama in their efforts to improve performance and turn failing operations into successful ones. He has been a presenter on incubation in Russia, Azerbaijan, Japan, Germany, China, Panama and Colombia in addition to many venues in the United States. Mr. Chuck Erickson has brought 7 teams to top prize-winning positions in the 6 years of the competition. Prior to 1996, Mr. Erickson was President and CEO of an important network security company and guided the company through a major restructuring and rebirth. At the end of 1995 the Company had a valuation in excess of $200,000,000. Mr. Erickson holds a BSEE from Illinois Institute of Technology

EXPANDED KEY TEAM

Fernando Corrêa, Vice president Business Development, Latin America

Formerly, Co-founder and Managing Partner, Nusa Internet Publica, a Kiosk founded in 2004 for worldwide internet payment processing throughout Brazil that operates 2,000 public internet terminals in 14 cities. Prior to Nusa Internet Publica, Fernando was CFO of OptilGlobe do Brazil, Ltd. Optiglobe built and operated two of the largest data centers in Sao Paulo and Rio de Janeiro with investments of $140 million dollars over three years. He was also Director for Proman Electronica Ltda., one of the largest telecom companies in Brazil. Its core business is engineering and project management for cellular and telephone companies. He has joint ventures and partnerships with major equipment makers such as Lucent, Nortel, Nokia, etc., and he is a Sr. Associate at Booz, Allen & Hamilton, New York where he helps management and technology consulting combining domain expertise in defense, intelligence, and civilian government with strong capabilities in strategy, and organization, analytics, technology and operations.
Fernando has an MBA from The Wharton School of Business at The University of Pennsylvania, an M.S. in Economics from the University of Paris, a law degree from Pontifícia Universidade Católica do RGS – Porto Alegre, RS, and a B.S. in Economics from Universidade Federal do RGS – Porto Alegre, RS.

Thomas W. Casey, Vice President, Operations

Thomas W. Casey has more than 50 years’ experience in power generation and aviation propulsion businesses, both commercial and military. Mr. Casey spent most of his career with General Electric, retiring as Vice-President and General Manager of GE’s Aircraft Engine and Aerospace Operations in Latin America based in Rio. After retiring from GE, Casey represented United Technologies’ Pratt and Whitney and International Aero Engines Divisions in Latin America, 1993-2008. He is a Graduate of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Troy, New York, holding a BEE Degree.

Professor Kenneth Hall, Distinctive Technical Adviser

Professor Hall joined Texas A&M University at Qatar in April 2011. Texas Engineering Experiment Station (TEES) Division Director-Texas A&M University at Qatar, he presides over TEES activities in Qatar. As Associate Dean of Research and Graduate Studies, he directs the newly established graduate program and the research program including soliciting new research opportunities. Before joining Texas A&M at Qatar, Professor Hall held positions at Texas A&M University that included: Associate Vice Chancellor of Engineering. He is a Regents Professor and holds the Jack E. & Frances Brown Chair. He earned his BSc at the University of Tulsa, his MSc at the University of California (Berkeley) and his PhD at the University of Oklahoma.

Dr. Mahmoud El-Halwagi; Distinctive Technical Advisor

Dr. El-Halwagi is the McFerrin Professor of Chemical Engineering at Texas A&M University and serves as technical advisor to Byogy. He currently leads the engineering team responsible for process integration and optimization work that led to the development of Byogy’s “Direct Path” bio-refining process. He, along with Dr. Hall and Dr. Spriggs, is an inventor of this technology. Dr. El-Halwagi is recognized internationally for his pioneering contributions in the field of process integration. His main research interests include process design, operation, integration, and optimization. He has served as a consultant to a wide range of chemical, petrochemical, petroleum, pharmaceutical and metal finishing industries. He is a recipient of many awards including the National Science Foundation Nation Young Investigator Award, numerous teaching awards within the College of Engineering at TAMU, the Mortar Board Favorite Educator Award, the Birdsong Merit Teaching Award, the Fred H. Humphrey Award, and the AIChE Sustainable Engineering Forum Research Excellence Award. He has a BS and MS from Cairo University and a PhD from the University of California, Los Angeles, all in chemical engineering.

Simon Williams, Previous Director and Strategic Advisor

Mr. Williams currently serves as CEO of CyberAdapt, a ransomware technology company. Previously he was CTO and Head of Products for GroundCntrl, Inc. a Silicon Valley based startup that builds Business Intelligence Solutions for Enterprises leveraging mobile devices, cloud computing and big data analytics. Prior to this role Mr. Williams served as an executive on several Silicon Valley start-ups including Redback where he was instrumental in overall company strategy. Mr. Williams holds a BSc in Electrical Engineering from Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario Canada.

Kevin Denuccio; Previous Director and Strategic Advisor

Mr. Denuccio previously served as President and Chief Executive Officer of Violin Memory, Inc. Prior to joining Violin, Mr. DeNuccio served as a co-founder of Wild West Capital LLC, a venture and technology consulting firm he co-founded in July 2012. Prior to that, he served as Chief Executive Officer of Metaswitch Networks Ltd., a telecommunications hardware and software company, from February 2010 until June 2012, when he transitioned to a director position on the Metaswitch Networks’ board of directors. Mr. DeNuccio served as Chief Executive Officer of Redback Networks Inc., a provider of edge routers, from August 2001 until its acquisition by Ericsson in January 2007. From 1995 to 2001, he held a number of executive positions at Cisco Systems, including senior vice president of worldwide service provider operations. Prior to joining Cisco, Mr. DeNuccio was founder, president, and CEO of Bell Atlantic Network Integration, a wholly owned subsidiary of Bell Atlantic (now Verizon Communications). He has also held senior management positions at both Unisys Corporation and Wang Laboratories network integration and worldwide channel partner businesses. Mr. DeNuccio previously served on numerous public and private boards of directors including Redback, JDS Uniphase Corporation, KPMG consulting (BearingPoint), Netpliance (TippingPoint) Byogy Renewables, and Salesnet. He currently serves on the board of directors of Calix, Metaswitch Networks, and Northeastern University. He earned a master’s degree in business administration from Columbia University and a bachelor’s degree in Finance from Northeastern University.

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