Date: Tuesday, October 18, 2022
Time: 3:30 – 4:50 pm
Location: VBCC – L1 Ballroom 3
Panelists:
Brad Ack, Executive Director & Chief Innovation Officer, Ocean Visions
Matthew Eisaman, Co-Founder Ebb Carbon, Associate Professor Stony Brook University
Marty Odlin, Founder & CEO, Running Tide
Dr. Simon Freeman – Program Director, Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E)
Nikhil Neelakantan, Program Manager, Ocean Visions Launchpad Program
Abstract:
The climate crisis will be one of the most important challenges humanity will face this century. While the action agenda has long focused on reducing emissions, it is clear now that this will have to be coupled with massive drawdown of the CO2 already in the atmosphere. A new industry to do this will ultimately have to be built.
The ocean safely holds more carbon than any other part of the biosphere. As the largest carbon sink, it must be much better understood, and likely employed, to accelerate the safe removal and storage of more atmospheric carbon. While the ocean has enormous potential for carbon dioxide removal (CDR), and there are several emerging technologies and innovations, it will take significant scaling of research, technology development, investment, and enabling national and international policies to determine whether ocean-based CDR can be deployed at the massive scale needed to achieve net-zero targets. Engineering will be one of the most critical needs. This session brings leaders across disciplines, including practitioners to outline the critical priorities with a focus on engineering challenges and opportunities.
Moderator:
Brad Ack, Executive Director & Chief Innovation Officer, Ocean Visions
Brad Ack’s conservation career has spanned 30 years and work in tropical forests, high deserts, temperate rain forests to extensive work throughout the global ocean. Brad has worked for both government and NGOs at senior levels. Brad currently serves as Executive Director and Chief Innovation Officer for Ocean Visions. Previously Brad served as Senior Vice President, Oceans at WWF-US; Regional Director-Americas for the Marine Stewardship Council; and Executive Director of the Puget Sound Recovery Program in the State of Washington. He directed conservation programs for the Grand Canyon Trust and started his career in Latin America working on sustainable development around protected areas.
Dr. Simon Freeman, Program Director, Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E)
Dr. Simon Freeman serves as a Program Director at the Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E). His focus at ARPA-E is on maritime energy and environmental sensing technologies. Freeman previously worked as a civilian oceanographer for the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory and the Naval Undersea Warfare Center Division Newport. Freeman was Principal Investigator in the development of inflatable and bioinspired soft robotic systems for underwater vehicle and sensor design, new signal processing methods for acoustic sensing, detection and environmental exploitation, and pressure-tolerant technologies to enhance our access to the seabed. Freeman earned a B.E. with Honors in Mechanical Engineering and a B.S. in Marine Science from the University of Auckland, New Zealand, and a Ph.D. in Oceanography from Scripps Institution of Oceanography.
Speakers:
Matthew Eisaman, Co-Founder Ebb Carbon, Associate Professor Stony Brook University
Matthew Eisaman has spent the last decade developing technologies that capture CO2 from the air using the natural ocean-atmosphere equilibrium. He is the CTO and Co-Founder of Ebb Carbon, as well as an Associate Professor at Stony Brook University. Matt received an A.B. in physics from Princeton, and a Ph.D. in physics from Harvard. Matt was a member of the research staff at Xerox PARC from 2008-2011, and a physicist at Brookhaven National Lab from 2011-2014. Since 2014, Matt has served as a technical advisor at X, The Moonshot Factory (formerly Google X).
Marty Odlin, Founder & CEO, Running Tide
Marty Odlin is the Founder and CEO of Running Tide, a global ocean health company. A systems engineer and 4th generation fisherman, Marty founded the company in 2017 after seeing the devastating implications of climate change on his own community. Running Tide designs and deploys cutting-edge diagnostics and comprehensive interventions that rebalance the carbon cycle, decarbonize global supply chains, restore marine ecosystems, and revitalize coastal communities. Proudly headquartered in Portland, Maine, Running Tide is scaling worldwide in partnership with leading investors, companies, scientific institutions, and governments.
Nikhil Neelakantan, Program Manager, Ocean Visions Launchpad Program
Nikhil Neelakantan is the Program Manager for the Ocean Visions Launchpad program, where he works with startups working on ocean-based carbon dioxide removal. He comes to Ocean Visions after founding a startup in India that provided small and medium sized businesses with access to formal sources of credit. Prior to that he worked as a business manager at Capital One. Nikhil started his career working as a process engineer in the semiconductor industry and also worked at a nanotechnology startup. Nikhil has a MBA from the University of Oxford, a MS in Materials Science and Engineering from Purdue University and a B.Tech from Indian Institute of Technology-Madras.