Team
Professor Alan D. Feinerman is an emeritus professor of biomedical, electrical, materials, mechanical, and urology departments at the University of Illinois Chicago (UIC). He earned his Ph.D. in physics from Northwestern University. Dr. Feinerman's research interests are the development of ultra-low thermal conductivity insulation, enhanced heat transfer, and microfluidics for laboratory on a chip and medical devices. Dr. Feinerman was the director of UIC’s Nanotechnology Core Facility (NCF) from 1998 until 2005. During this period the NCF grew from serving a few UIC departments to being one of the leading MEMS/Nano user facilities in the Midwest. Dr. Feinerman was the 2011 UIC Inventor of the year and the 2013 UIC Innovator of the year. He has served continuously as a mentor to startups in mHUB’s MedTech, Energy Tech, and Water Tech accelerators since 2021.
Dr. David W. Yarbrough, (PhD Georgia Tech - 1966) PE, is an engineer with R&D Services, LLC, a testing and consulting company located in Tennessee. He retired in 2002 as professor and chairman from the Chemical Engineering department at Tennessee Technological University. Dr. Yarbrough also served as a Research Staff Member (part time) at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory from 1979 to 2011. He is a Fellow and Board Member of the International Thermal Conductivity Conference (ITCC), a Fellow and Past President of the Tennessee Academy of Science, a Fellow of the American Society for Testing and Materials (ASTM). He has received two association awards, a 2009 R&D 100 Award as a member of a team of four, the Thermal Conductivity Award from the ITCC and lists more than 200 publications and presentations.
Professor Michael McNallan, Professor CME, UIC, He earned a Ph.D. in Metallurgy and Materials Science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and has over 35 years of experience teaching materials science and engineering, including courses on corrosion, thermodynamics, ceramic materials and transport phenomena. His research interests are in high temperature materials chemistry with applications in corrosion and tribology. He will oversee synthesis of the VIP core and investigate envelope corrosion. Dr. McNallan and Dr. Feinerman share laboratory space and research interests in VIG and VIP design, casting, and other material processing issues, and have submitted several grants together.
David Stucker, Photon Prime, has over 40 years laser welding and ablating a variety of materials. He will be responsible for the laser welding and trimming of stainless steel foils. David Stucker and Alan Feinerman are co-inventors of a patent pending technique that allows 100+ layers of copper or aluminum foils to be welded together which is essential when building large capacity batteries.
Steve Wallace, Advisor. Experienced Materials Scientist with 40 years' experience in porous ceramics, specializing for the last 20 years in the manufacture, technical sales, testing, characterization and improvement of vacuum insulation panels VIPs while working, first at NanoPore, then at Kevothermal until they closed in 2023.