Management Team
Matthew Silver, Founder & CEO
Matt has over ten years of experience at the intersection of entrepreneurship, engineering design, and innovation strategy. At Cambrian Innovation he has been director of several government-funded grants and successfully executed corporate and investment partnerships with local and international firms. Prior to co-founding Cambrian, Matt co-founded Intelligent Action Inc., an MIT spin-out providing strategic decision-making capabilities based on patent pending simulation algorithms he developed during his masters work at MIT. Matt was previously a consultant to industry on early-stage innovation and Staff Research Scientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He received a PhD from MIT supported by the National Science Foundation’s Program on Emerging Technologies, and has two masters degrees from MIT in Astronautical Engineering and Technology and Policy. Matt received a bachelors degree from Williams College in 2001. When he is not helping to run Cambrian, Matt can be found surfing the refreshing waters of coastal New England, practicing guitar, or planning ski-weekends in Colorado and Europe.
Mr. Justin Buck, Co-founder & CTO
As co-founder and CTO of Cambrian Innovation, Mr. Buck is a bio-engineer with significant industry and academic experience. He is inventor of Cambrian’s sensor platform and Principal Investigator of our National Science Foundation sensor project. Prior to joining Cambrian Innovation, Mr. Buck worked at Washington Group International as a chemical process engineer in the oil and gas division. Justin also has experience in plant operation and improvement engineering under Dow Chemical Company. At the Colorado School of Mines, he worked with membrane filtration units for secondary treatment of domestic wastewater. Mr. Buck has been co-investigator on a range of projects at Cambrian ranging from genetic engineering of electrogenic bacteria to liter-scale microbial fuel cell design. In his prior life Mr. Buck was a full time soccer player, beginning in the Montanna Olympic Development Program and continuing through his starting role in the nationally ranked division II Uni. Colorado Program. Mr. Buck will graduate with a PhD in Biological Engineering from MIT in 2011, where he is also a Graduate Research Advisor.
Dr. Patrick Kiely, Vice President of Research & Development
Dr. Patrick Kiely is an environmental microbiologist with 9 years experience in environmental molecular microbiology. After the completion of his BSc (Hons) degree in Microbiology in 2000 (University College Cork, Ireland), he carried out PhD studies investigating novel genes in Pseudomonas aeruginosa involved in microbe-host interactions. His post-doctoral research was carried out in Pennsylvania State University where he published a series of papers focused on identifying novel exoelectrogenic bacterial isolates and the characterization of exoelectrogenic microbial communities. By making changes to bioelectrochemical system (BES) architecture he was integral in work involving the production of various valuable by-products including hydrogen and methane. Collaborations with the Harbin Institute of Technology (China) and with public and private partners in Canada resulted in the improvement of BES performance and a novel method for characterizing exoelctrogenic communities. He gained experience in scale-up BES technology by managing on site operations over a 1 month period for the first pilot-scale microbial electrolysis cell (Oakville, Napa Valley).
Scientific and Business Advisors
Mr. Ken Morse
Ken Morse was a co-founder of six high-tech companies, together with MIT friends and classmates, co-founding managing director of the MIT Entrepreneurship Center, and a member of President Obama’s council on innovation.
To read Mr. Morse’s full bio click here.
Dr. David Miller
Dr. Miller is a founder and Executive Managing Director of Clean Energy Venture Group. An engineer by training, he brings 18 years of technology startup management experience and 10 years of seed stage investing experience. He is on the board of directors or advisory board of several clean energy companies, including Azima DLI, Next Step Living, and IntAct Labs and has been a volunteer mentor to several others. He is also a research affiliate at MIT’s Sloan School of Management.
To read Dr. Miller’s full bio click here.
Dr. Bruce Logan
Kappe Professor of Environmental Engineering, Department of Civil & Environmental Engineering, Penn State University. Dr. Logan is a leader in the science and engineering of bio-electrochemical systems.
Dr. Jeffrey Hoffman
Former Astronaut, Professor of the Practice of Engineering, Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Mr. Ian Bowles
Ian Bowles is an advisor, investor and entrepreneur in clean energy. He is Managing Director of WindSail Capital Group, an investment firm focused on secured lending to clean tech services businesses, and Managing Director of Rhumb Line Energy LLC, an advisory firm focused on business development in clean energy. He is also Senior Director at the Albright Stonebridge Group, a global strategy firm led by former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright based in Washington, D.C. Mr. Bowles serves on the board of the Museum of Science. He is and has been an advisor or director for numerous venture capital-backed clean energy companies.
To read Mr. Bowles’ full bio click here.
