TeaM

Lars Wood, CSO, Co-Founder, Director

  • As AI and semiconduptor pioneer, co-founder, chief scientist at deep tech companies, Lars leads the development and innovation of revolutionary technologies.

    He is inventor of the patented MASEC semiconductor circuit element building blocks and chips technology held by ACE, and other technologies including the Octopus Neural System (ONS) AI. ONS is a new AI category that requires no training, is self-unbiased, and is purely analog (using no computer arithmetic). ONS is 1000X faster than machine learning yet uses a tiny fraction of the electrical power of these systems.

    Lars is responsible for the first DoD large scale patented machine learning technology that resulted in a $1B AI project and creation of a company division to service the contract. He founded and directed a $50M corporate AI DoD laboratory and his patented algorithmic accelerators were the first to make ANN machine learning practical.

    With over 4 decades of experience in diverse orthogonal research, development and innovation, Lars has made groundbreaking commercial contributions to the fields of AI, supramolecular “smart molecule” drug discovery, FPGA computing, and III-V optoelectronic computing. He has a passion for integrating knowledge and methods from different domains, such as physics, genomics, and lateral thinking, to create novel and impactful solutions that can enhance human life, capabilities and shareholder value. He is the primary inventor on multiple patents, is published in the first FCCM IEEE journal, and is recognized as a tech visionary and an AI pioneer by industry.

Lisa Wood, CEO, Co-Founder, Director

  • Lisa has been a deep tech entrepreneur for decades and is also a former big business media veteran. She co-founded, funded and managed tech startups with novel IP (patents issued, pending). Industry experience involves semiconductors, artificial intelligence, life sciences and agrochemicals with DuPont and biopharma companies for over a decade, and prior to that was in media as a Fortune/BusinessWeek top revenue producer. In 2016 she also founded COGNITIVE WORLD with Peter Fingar, including its think tank with Vint Cerf as its first member, and its FORBES editorial contributor group.

Ron Shon, Director

  • To come.

Chuck Brooks, Advisor, Cybersecurity

  • Chuck Brooks’ thought leadership activities and writings on cybersecurity have helped shape the public policy debate as he is respected in industry, in the Federal Government, academia, global communities, and on Capitol Hill. He brings service expertise from the public sector, academia and industry. He serves on a variety of boards, many of them philanthropic, and brings substantive knowledge in cybersecurity in government that has benefited the public, commercial and not-for-profit sectors.
Chuck, a leading evangelist for cybersecurity, is a featured speaker at numerous events and conferences, has written dozens of articles on cyber tech and policy in publications such as Forbes, Huffington Post, The Hill, Federal Times, Gov Tech, Government Security News and many others.

    Chuck is a pioneer in social media with a global following and has brought significant attention to cyber issues from his frequent posts and commentary on LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, FedScoop, and other social media. He also owns and operates several high profile groups on LinkedIn that are active in cybersecurity and homeland security discussions. He is one of the original “plank holders” at the Department of Homeland Security, has worked on Capitol Hill, taught homeland security at Johns Hopkins University and has advised several organizations including the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, The Cyber Resilience Institute, and is a member of the AFCEA Cybersecurity Committee. Chuck also serves as Chairman of CompTIA’s New and Emerging Technologies Committee, and as a Christian Science Monitor Passcode Influencers Panel member on Information Security. He is on the Board of Advisors for CyberTech, and on the Board of Directors at Bravatek, and the Cyber Resilience Institute, and is an advisor to The Center for Advancing Innovation. He has a BA from DePauw University and an MA from the University of Chicago, and has a Certificate in International Law from The Hague Academy of International Law, Netherlands.

Alex Kiselyov, PhD, Advisor, Life Sciences

  • Alex Kiselyov has 30 years of experience developing both systemic and local therapies to treat cancer, neurodegeneration with specific focus on Huntington’s and Parkinson’s diseases, cardiovascular/metabolic and neuromuscular disorders. His expertise spans all aspects of early and late-stage drug discovery and development, target identification and validation, screening and optimization of active agents including small molecules and biologics, structure-based drug discovery and early clinical development. Alex has keen interest in modern platforms for accelerated drug discovery including RNAseq, TruSeq™,‘omics’, biophysics based screening (crystallography, NMR, fragment based SPR, thermal), high content/phenotypic screening, cell-based disease modeling and therapeutic potential of stem cells and stem cell-based progenitors including the satellite cells. Alex has interfaced w/regulatory agencies including the FDA. He has contributed to the development of multiple marketed drugs and late-stage clinical programs exemplified by Erbitux™, Motesanib™, Veliflapon™ and Tominersen™.

    Alex’s current focus is to build multidisciplinary teams and to develop platform and therapeutic approaches aimed at personalized treatment of life-threatening diseases. His other interests include multi-modal targeted therapeutic treatment of chronic and rare/orphan diseases, modeling and treatment of chronic disorders, signaling networks, immunology/physiology interface using stem cells and origins of Life and chirality as well as biological & chemical diversity. Alex authored over 180 peer-reviewed papers and over 60 awarded patents and patent applications. Alex is also a member of the Scientific Advisory Board for the Alzheimer’s Drug Discovery Foundation (ADDF, New York). He holds an Adjunct Professor of Pharmacology position at SUNY Downstate Medical Center in New York.

Sanjit Singh Dang, PhD, Advisor

  • Sanjit has been a successful Venture Capitalist, Corporate Executive, Board Member, Speaker and Writer in Silicon Valley for almost two decades. He is currently the Co-Founder and Chairman of U First Capital. They provide Venture Capital as a Service to Corporations by bringing Startups, University IP, etc in the Corporate's specific areas of interest (dedicated model). Prior to that, he was at Intel Capital where he led Venture Capital investments in Enterprise Software. He has been an Investor and on the Board of several companies, including True Fit (AI for eCommerce, Raised $100M), Reflektion (AI recommendation for eCommerce, Raised $42M), Helpshift (AI-driven Customer Service, Raised $38M) and Enlighted (Smart Lighting, Acquired by Siemens in 2018). He is also an investor in Mirantis (Cloud Computing, raised >$100M), GoodData (SaaS Business Intelligence, raised over $100M) and Arcadia Data (Big Data 2.0, Raised $26M).

    ​Sanjit has been on US Govt's Tech/Innovation Policy Advisory team. He is on Advisory Council of UN’s World Artificial Intelligence Organization. He has also been on University of California President's Innovation Council. Sanjit has the fastest Engineering PhD from University of Illinois (2yrs 9mo after undergrad), which he received in 2000 with top research awards. He also attended the VC Executive program at Haas School of Business, UC Berkeley. He’s an invited Speaker at several top conferences, eg SURGE/WebSummit, Venture Summit West, TiECon, Collision, ShopTalk, McKinsey Leadership Summit, Silicon Valley Open Doors, Global AI conference, etc. He’s a mentor at Stanford and Berkeley’s Entrepreneurship programs.​

    Sanjit has over a decade of Exec leadership experience in Product Design, Business Development and Strategy across several domains: Big Data, Natural Language Processing, 3D Camera/Apps, Supply-Chain Analytics and Flash Memory. He has managed $2Bill/year accounts and executed >30 partnership deals in $100M-$2Bill range. Always striving to be ahead of the curve, Sanjit worked on Big Data Analytics before industry created the term 'Big Data'. Similarly, he launched 2 online courses during graduate school in 1999 and published iconic papers on learnings, way before the MOOC revolution started.

Dan Conway, PhD, Chief AI, Ethics Officer

  • Daniel Conway, Ph.D., is an analytics and AI journeyman. His Ph.D. is in Operations Research from Indiana University. Dan has served on the faculty of Notre Dame, Indiana, Northwestern, Iowa, Florida, Virginia Tech, South Florida, and Arkansas. Dan serves on several blockchain standards boards. In addition to university faculty roles, he has consulted for dozens of companies, including Cisco Systems, Deere, AIG, Consulate Healthcare, and other organizations with interest in information security.

Doug Lenat, PhD, Advisor, AI (Deceased)

  • Douglas B. Lenat, Ph.D., is one of the pioneers of Artificial Intelligence. He received his PhD in Computer Science from Stanford University investigating machine learning. Dr. Lenat was a Professor of Computer Science at Carnegie-Mellon and Stanford. He was awarded numerous honors including the bi-annual IJCAI Computers and Thought Award (the highest honor in artificial intelligence), is a Fellow of the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence (AAAI), a Fellow of the American Academy for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) and a Fellow of the Cognitive Science Society.

    Dr. Lenat founded the Cyc Project in 1984 to address the limitations in symbolic logic-based expert systems and neural net-based machine learning, an area of research he named “ontological engineering.” He is the CEO of Cycorp Inc., a company focused on commercializing “ontological engineering.”

    Dr. Lenat has authored over one hundred publications primarily in the areas of machine learning, automatic program synthesis, knowledge based systems, representation, and automated inference. He is an editor of the Journal of Automated Reasoning, Journal of Learning Sciences, Journal of Applied Ontology, Journal of Applied Artificial Intelligence, and the Springer Artificial Intelligence series of books. Dr. Lenat is the only individual to have served on the Scientific Advisory Boards of both Microsoft and Apple.

Jayshree Pandya, PhD, Advisor, Risk Mgm

Jacob Warthen, Sr. ONS Engineer

  • Jacob Warthen is a dedicated software engineer with a Bachelor's degree in Computer Science from the University of San Francisco (2023). Currently working at ACE and contributing to the advancement of AI through our work on the innovative Octopus Neural System (ONS) Category IV AI. Jacob is enthusiastic about the transformative potential of AI and is dedicated to driving its evolution.

  • Jayshree Pandya (née Bhatt), Ph.D., currently serves as the Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Risk Group LLC. In addition, she serves in the C-Suite of leading emerging technology startups, actively applying her scientific background to designing futuristic systems.

Brian Clarke, Risk Management

  • Brian has extensive experience in large and multi -lines insurance as well as ‘safety’ in General Contracting and Construction Management. Brian is the Chair of the Industry Advisory Council for Central Washington University’s Safety Health Management Program. He and his late wife Betsy established the “Brian and Elizabeth Clarke, ASSE Student Section Endowment at CWU” and he is a “Distinguished Alumni for the College of Education and Professional Studies.” Brian is a founding Board member for the Construction Industry Crime Prevention Program. He’s been a speaker and has presented across the USA and Western Canada and has published various safety related articles and is a contributing author of the “Construction Safety Management and Engineering” textbook(s). Brian has received numerous awards in Risk Management, and for “Excellence in Innovative Risk Management Techniques and Processes in the Construction Industry.” Brian has also taught Safety Standards and Law classes. He is actively involved with the American Society of Safety Engineers and has served on the Board of Directors.

    Brian is Founding Member of GEWllc a National Safety and Risk Management consulting company. He also co-founded HEILL Safety Solutions, a CA based risk management/safety consulting company specializing in high tech EHS. Brian is a graduate of Central Washington University, Bachelor of Science in Occupational Safety and Health.