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Thursday, May 7, 2020, 2 pm – 3 pm
Topic:
Innovative Technology Solutions through COVID-19 and Beyond (Part 2)
Featured presenters:
Patrick Thompson, CEO, EmiSense Technologies, LLC
Katia Paramonova, CEO & Founder, Centrly
Brian Thurston, Senior Advisor, Blue Box Air
Moderated by:
Scott Kitcher, President & CEO, Sustain SoCal
Please join us for our next Community Teleconference, held each Thursday at 2 pm.
In this upcoming teleconference, Sustain SoCal Board Member Patrick Thompson and Sustain SoCal members Katia Paramonova and Brian Thurston will present examples of existing and evolving innovative technology solutions that have applications for pandemic-created issues and a post-pandemic “new normal” set of priorities, procedures, etc. Below outlines each presenter’s more specific set of discussion points:
Mr. Thompson will be addressing COVID-19’s Impact on Global Air Quality Management. The highest numbers of the COVID-19 are occurring in densely packed city centers with the highest levels of Particulate Matter. People around the world have had stark demonstration of air quality improvements during lockdown. There is popular pressure to keep air pollution as low as possible as vehicle and other combustion emissions resume around the world. The world now perceives the need for low-cost universal monitoring to enable assessment of actual air pollution sources and active management (geofencing, gross polluter identification, etc.) His firm, EmiSense, has pivoted to integrate low-cost PM sensors with low-cost telemetry solutions, working with a Chinese pilot program run by Tsinghua University.
Ms. Paramonova will be discussing The New Age of Data-Driven Networking. Her firm, Centrly, is a tech company developing an online platform where companies can explore their industry’s network to uncover opportunities. Centrly aggregates data about companies and organizations in a given field and how they are related to each other (e.g. supplier relationships). It them allows the users to either efficiently search for what they’re looking for, e.g. IoT solution distributor in CA, or explore the data in network graph form to discover unexpected “unknown unknowns”. These discoveries can be new joint venture or research collaboration partners, large account sales leads, or ways to get ahead of competition. The company’s platform can accelerate the rate of technological progress by helping companies get their products or solutions out to market more quickly.
Mr. Thurston will discuss Blue Box’s evolving role in a post COVID-19 world. The firm provides heat transfer coil enzyme treatment for HVAC systems and has created a secondary disinfection protocol in direct response to COVID-19 which is now being implementing for customers in markets across the country.
Sustain SoCal invites it members, strategic partners and guests to dial-in to our weekly Community Teleconference. Held each Thursday at 2 pm Pacific time, these informal interactive discussions are led by Sustain SoCal members and address strategies and solutions within our recovery and beyond as they relate to energy, supply chain management, transportation, water, human capital management, agriculture, smart cities, cybersecurity, waste stream management, Community Choice Aggregation (CCA), cleantech economic development, ESG and impact investing and more.
To participate in this week’s teleconference, please pre-register at your earliest convenience. Each upcoming teleconference will require a separate registration.
Sustain SoCal looks forward to having you join us for this Thursday’s weekly Community Teleconference.
Registrants will receive the dial-in teleconference phone number and an access code a few days before the dial-in event. For questions or assistance in registering, please Contact Us
About the Sustain SoCal Community Teleconference Series:
These informal interactive discussions are led by Sustain SoCal members and address strategies and solutions within our recovery and beyond as they relate to energy, supply chain management, transportation, water, human capital management, agriculture, smart cities, cybersecurity, waste stream management, Community Choice Aggregation (CCA), cleantech economic development, ESG and impact investing and more.
About the Presenters:
Patrick Thompson is a serial entrepreneur, currently serving as CEO of EmiSense, developer of the PMTrac® particulate matter sensor. He also serves on the board of Aromatica, a cleantech startup providing air quality solutions to the California wine industry. EmiSense was acquired by CoorsTek in 2014. Prior to EmiSense, Mr. Thompson founded Innovate! Technology, a leader in exhaust-gas sensors (acquired by Dover Corporation in 2009). Prior to Innovate, Mr. Thompson was a founder of InterWorks Computer Products, a supplier of modular VOIP subsystems for internetworking equipment vendors (acquired by Sanmina in 2000). Prior to InterWorks, Mr. Thompson was a founding employee and VP of Operations at New Media Corporation, a supplier of laptop peripherals, including sound, ethernet, and memory card products (acquired by AMP/Tyco in 1994). Mr. Thompson graduated from UC Berkeley in 1990.
Katia Paramonova is CEO and Founder of Centrly. Katia has lived and worked across the globe, from the US to Russia, Switzerland, India, and Ghana. Although her official education is nuclear engineering (third generation), she has worked in a variety of fields including rural electrification, higher education management, and warehouse robotics. Catalyzing collaborations has been her bread and butter, including projects around forging cooperation between the US and Russian nuclear engineers, establishing a community among European young energy professionals (YES-Europe, which is in its 4th year of operation and just ran a 150+ person Climathon last weekend), and now taking this to the next level, with a data-driven solution at Centrly. She received her BS from MIT in Nuclear Engineering and then an MS in Energy Management from EPFL (Switzerland). Hobbies include jigsaw puzzles, traveling, improv, and coffee.
Brian Thurston currently works as a Senior Advisor for Blue Box, focusing on sustainability, growth strategy, business and partner development. His background is in business development and consulting – utilizing innovation and technology to build multi-disciplinary networks to attack big problems at scale. Brian holds a MS from Johns Hopkins University in Environmental Science and Policy, and a BA in English from the University of Southern California.