Meet the Experts
Each year we are so blessed to have the support of our local community members. Our subject area experts have devoted the 2-3 weeks prior to the event to working with our students on their ideas through email exchanges and online meetings. Our judges will be watching video presentations, meeting with our advancing teams, and taking on the difficult task of scoring their work to determine our winners. All our industry volunteers provide valuable feedback and support to our students. We could not hold this event year after year without the participation of our volunteers and we want to thank them all immensely for the time they dedicate to our students. Thank you! Thank you!
Please note that volunteers are listed in no particular order.
Stacie Manuel, LLNL
Mechanical Engineer
Judy Zavadil, DSRSD
Former Director of Engineering, Retired
Blaise Cordier, Chevron
Project Quality Manager, Jack St. Malo Stage 4
Jordan Etten, Chevron
Well Site Representative
Doug Henson, Sandia Nat'l Labs
Director Emeritus
Paul Schaffer
Roche Diagnostics
Sunil Agrawal, Willow
Senior Director of Data Architecture & Data Engineering
Niro Wijesekera, Roche
Senior Manager, Software Engineering Delivery
Daniel Pelletier
Daniel is currently a freelance software developer, specializing in Discord bot development. He previously served 8 years in the Army as a Senior Signals Intelligence Analyst.
Lauren Ayala, Nuro
Lauren is currently a Technical Project Manager at Nuro. Prior to this, she has worked for the national labs focused on system security. She holds a Master's degree from UC Berkeley in Information and Cybersecurity and a Bachelor's of Technology from Capella University in Information Technology.
Dale Dougherty, Make
DALE DOUGHERTY is the leading advocate of the Maker Movement. He founded Make: Magazine in 2005, which first used the term “makers” to describe people who enjoyed “hands-on” work and play. He started Maker Faire in the San Francisco Bay Area in 2006, and this event has spread to nearly 200 locations in 40 countries, with over 1.5M attendees annually up until COVID-19 hit. He is President of Make: Community, which seeks to nurture and grow the worldwide community of makers through publications, events and online resources. Dougherty is the author of “Free to Make: How the Maker Movement Is Changing our Jobs, Schools and Minds” with Adriane Conrad.
Sree Vakil, Enclique Inc.
Sree Vakil has 20+ years of experience building software enterprise solutions in the valley. As founder, she is currently bootstrapping Enclique - a development platform for the youth in our community. She has a Master's degree in Computer Science, and worked at Microsoft before starting her current venture. Her passion involves working with the youth and enabling them to build a better tomorrow. She volunteers at Dublin schools and Open Heart Kitchen.
Kathleen Morse, Yosemite Space
Ms. Morse has a passion for space and innovation. After completing a post doc at Stanford, she worked at Lockheed Martin Advanced Technology Center and explored the use of advanced materials (such as nanomaterials and metamaterials) for use in space. Starting in 2012, she started her own company - Yosemite Space, exploring challenging problems such as prototyping electronics and optical elements for use in spacecraft. In her free time, she enjoys flying, hiking, star gazing, and kayaking.
Christos Kampouridis, Inflammatix
Christos received his BS/MS in Mechanical Engineering from UCLA and has worked on medical device development for the past 5+ years (autoinjectors, infectious disease testing). He is currently working at a late stage startup designing, building, and managing development of hardware and software for a novel point of care instrument that will inform patients if they have a viral/bacterial infection and the severity of the infection.
Chloe Applegate, LLNL
Chloe Applegate joined Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory as a systems analyst in 2018 after receiving a Ph.D. from Georgia Institute of Technology in Civil Engineering. She leverages a background in researching critical infrastructure interdependencies to develop tools and frameworks to support all hazards risk assessment, interdependency analysis, and cybersecurity recommendation development for sponsors within the Department of Homeland Security and Department of Energy.
Jim Berry, Robot Garden
Jim Berry is a computer technology enthusiast with a passion for innovation. Jim has degrees in Electronic Engineering and Computer Science. He is currently one of the leaders at Robot Garden, a Tri-Valley community makerspace located at the Livermore Airport. Jim is the main instructor of 3D printing, laser cutting & milling systems in the Robot Garden Makerspace. He is also currently working to develop a workforce development program focused on fabrication technologies.
Mithra Singam, Workday
Mithra works as a senior Mobile Engineer and holds a master's degree in Computer Science. He has been working on developing mobile apps (IOS & Android) for last 9 years.
Kirk Kohler, Workday
Kirk is a Product Manager who works collaboratively with teams leveraging data & experimentation in solving users' problems. He is strong mentor, individual contributor, and manager; and has been an Active Angel Investor for the past 4 years.
Aurangzeb Khan, Jabra
Mr. Khan is the Senior Vice President of Intelligent Vision Systems with Jabra. With over 40 years of experience in the technology industry, he has successfully launched four start-ups and consults with Citius Consulting Group, working to develop new technology ventures as an angel investor and advisor.
Lloyd Dickinson, Barclays Global Investors
Lloyd is a retired Program Analyst and Computer Programmer, worked in Aerospace and Banking. He has also taught after school robotics programs and STEAM classes for the Robot Garden maker space.
Paul O'Flynn, Workday
Paul holds a B.S. in Computer Science from the University College Cork. He is currently a Principal DevOps Engineer and have been working as a software developer or manager for over 20 years.
James Morehead, Google
James is currently a Google Product Manager with the Search team. James also spent 6 months working with NY State as a Google.org Fellow supporting NY State's COVID-19 Technology Task Force. James was selected to be the City of Dublin's Poet Laureate in June 2021. https://www.linkedin.com/in/morehead/
Gajendra Verma, Chevron
Gajendra S. Verma is the Manager of Engineering Projects and Alterations with Chevron Shipping Company (CSC) LLC, responsible for CSC's new constructions, shipyard, major retrofits, alterations project and technology. He graduated in marine engineering and joined the CSC international fleet of tankers as Junior Engineer. Sailing up to rank of Chief Engineer on board very large crude carries (VLCC) and then to Engineering Superintendent, he was responsible for technical management of CAPSPL Smax and Amax fleet and CSC's VLCC fleet.
Joshua Price, JMP Projects LLC
A graduate of the first class of engineering academy students at DHS (c/o '14), Josh earned degrees in Mechanical Engineering and Molecular & Cell Biology at UC Berkeley (B.S., B.A. '18) and in Biomedical Informatics at Stanford (M.S. '22). He has worked for three years in the biotechnology industry, first as a software engineer at the CRISPR company Synthego and now as an independent contractor/consultant. He will be pursuing a PhD in Bioengineering at Harvard beginning in August 2022, where he will research computationally-driven approaches to engineering immune cells and tissues for next-generation therapeutics.
Girish Krishna, Genentech
Girish Krishna is a patent owner, an Innovative and emerging technology business leader who creates, develops, and refines strategy to align with positive business outcomes. Girish Krishna has nearly 25 plus years of experience in technology management and advices several startups globally for adoption of emerging technologies. Girish setup and ran the innovation hub for Ernst and Young and conducted several hackathons and drove several product development projects within the innovation center.
Samuel Lee, LLNL
Samuel Lee is versatile, technically astute engineer with a creative mindset for innovating solutions from ideation to implementation, creating value in industries including biomedical and energy. He has skills in manufacturing, test method development, and design. He has co-founded 2 startups (though they were not continued) MyHomePT, physical therapy compliance, and SanTronics, hand hygiene compliance.
Josh Robles, LLNL
Josh is a veteran of the US Army and has been a Mechanical Designer at the lab for 2 years. He creates 3D CAD and Technical Drawings for mechanical parts/assemblies for large electro-mechanical projects.
Ben Zhu, LLNL
Ben is a theoretical and computational physicist working at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. He holds a MS degree in Applied Science (Engineering) and a PhD degree in Physics.
Robin Basham, EnterpriseGRC Solutions
Owner EnterpriseGRC Solutions, President, ISC2 East Bay, Certified Information Systems Security (CISSP), Audit (CISA), Governance (CGEIT), and Risk (CRISC), Robin is a GRC & Cloud Cybersecurity trailblazer. Her industry experience includes running companies and departments that supply services in the compliance management of systems, policies, processes, and data, for SaaS, Finance, Life Science & Healthcare, Banking, Education, Defense, and High Tech. Some positions held include Sr. Director or VP Enterprise Technology for multiple advisory firms, running two governance software companies, Unified Compliance and ISMS Sr. Program Manager at Cisco, and donating substantial time to supporting social platform security working groups in the hopes of furthering safer elections and social democracy.
Michael Ford, LLNL
Michael is currently a postdoctoral researcher at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, working on a wide range of projects related to scintillators and additive manufacturing. Following his undergraduate degree in chemistry, he earned a PhD in materials from the University of California, Santa Barbara. Over his career, he's worked with research teams in Santa Barbara, Munich, Yokohama, Pittsburgh, and now Livermore. At Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, he is a member of the Abilities Champions Employee Resource Group, which promotes the inclusion of interns and employees with physical, pyschological, developmental, and neurocognitive differences as valuable contributors to the laboratory's mission.