Envia Systems is a lithium-ion battery materials leader
working to fuel the electric and hybrid car revolution.

Atul Kapadia
CEO of Envia Systems, Chairman of the Board

Atul Kapadia serves as the Chairman and CEO of Envia Systems. He was the founding investor and Board Member of Envia Systems, Afara Web Systems (SUNW: 2002) and Auroranetics (CSCO: 2001). In addition, he co-led the investment in Cornerstone-On-Demand (CSOD) and served on the Board of Directors of Tealeaf Technologies, Lumension Technologies, and Zenprise. He also led investments in Oncomed, AMEC and Apigee. Atul served as the Chairman and CEO of Maple Optical Systems and worked in sales and general management roles at Cadence Design Systems and ArcSys (IPO: 1995). Atul started his career as a microprocessor design engineer at Sun Microsystems working on the leading-edge Spitfire chip that became the core of Sun’s SPARC business. Atul received his MBA from Stanford Graduate School of Business where he was a Dean Arjay Miller Scholar and was a top ranked Biomedical Engineering graduate from the University of Bombay.

Dr. Sujeet Kumar
Co-founder and CTO of Envia Systems Inc.

Dr. Kumar is founding CEO of Envia Systems Inc. Previously, he served as Director of Technology for Nanoexa. Prior to that, Dr. Kumar worked as a senior scientist for Greatbatch, leading the development and scale-up of nano-crystalline silver vanadium oxide cathode material for high rate lithium batteries. He has also served as principal scientist at Nanogram Devices Corporation (NDC), where he developed battery components used in implantable medical devices, and as a project manager at NDC where he led several energy storage photonics device projects. His inventions related to laser pyrolysis and aerosol delivery systems revolutionized the synthesis of nano-materials having complex compositions. Dr. Kumar has a Ph.D. in Materials Science from the University of Rochester and is the inventor of over 40 patents.

John Walecka
Founding Partner, Redpoint Ventures

Mr. Walecka is a founding partner of Redpoint Ventures. Prior to founding Redpoint, he was a general partner with Brentwood Venture Capital. At Redpoint, he works closely with entrepreneurs to build industryleading companies in emerging clean-tech and technology sectors, and he is highly interested in innovative business models built around deep intellectual property. Mr. Walecka also works with software infrastructure and security products for the enterprise market, and his focus includes enabling semiconductor components for the consumer market. He is actively involved with several leading clean-tech companies including Intermolecular, SiOrah, and Envia. Earlier in his career, he worked for Hewlett Packard and the Stanford University Smart Product Design Laboratory. He received B.S. and M.S. degrees in Engineering from Stanford, and an M.B.A. from Stanford’s Graduate School of Business.

Hideki Nakagawa
Asahi Glass Company

Mr. Hideki Nakagawa is a Senior Manager at AGC, America, Inc. Prior to that, he was Director, Business Development at AGC Asahi Glass Co., Ltd. He received his Bachelor’s and Master’s in Engineering from Kyoto University.

Takashi Morishita
Asahi Kasei

Mr. Takashi Morishita serves as General Manager of Asahi Kasei Corporate VC since in 2006. Prior to that he has involved in join business alliance with Peregrine Corporation based in San Diego for development of high-performance RF CMOS devices using Silicon on Sapphire technology. He has over 20 years of experience in engineering directly involved with energy and clean technologies, semiconductors and U.S.- Japan business development activities with a focus on initiating strategic alliance with hi-tech start-ups. He received his Ph.D., MS and BS in Chemical Engineering from the Tokyo Institute of Technology.

Purnesh Seegopaul
Partner, Pangaea Ventures

Dr. Seegopaul has worked with advanced materials for over 25 years, directly involved with energy and clean technologies, nanotechnology, semiconductors, thin films and coatings, catalysts, powder metallurgy, and manufacturing technologies. Prior to Pangaea, his senior management and technology positions covered manufacturing scale-up and commercialization of nanomaterials at Nanodyne, technology management and business development activities in North America at Umicore and engineering and quality management at Materials Research Corporation. He has collaborated with both academic and industrial research groups on various advanced materials development programs, served on the advisory boards of the Marcel-Dekker Encyclopedia of Nanoscience and Nanotechnology and many advanced materials and clean tech conferences, published widely and has nine US patents. He received his Ph.D. degree in Chemistry from the University of New South Wales in Sydney, Australia and completed his post-doctoral fellowship at the University of Delaware.

Jon Lauckner
CTO, General Motors and President, GM Ventures

*Mr. Lauckner was named GM Vice President and President, General Motors Ventures, LLC, effective July 1, 2010. Prior to this appointment, he held the positions of Vice President of General Motors Global Product Planning since August 2009 and Vice President of Global Program Management since May 2005. He is a member of the GM Senior Leadership Group and had a key role in developing the Chevrolet Volt extended-range electric vehicle. Mr. Lauckner joined General Motors in 1979 and held a number of positions in product engineering and product development during his career, including international assignments in South America and Europe from 1992 to 2005. Mr. Lauckner received a bachelor of science degree in mechanical engineering from the University of Michigan in 1979. He earned a master of science degree in management from Stanford Business School in 1990 through the Sloan Fellowship program and attended the GM-Harvard Senior Executive Program in 2001.

*Board Observer