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

Atul Kapadia
CEO

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, President & CTO

Dr. Sujeet Kumar is founding CEO of Envia Systems Inc. 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 Nanogram Corp where he led several energy storage and photonics device projects. His inventions related to laser pyrolysis and aerosol delivery systems revolutionized the synthesis of nano-materials having complex compositions. His work related to nano-SVO cathode led to acquisition of NDC by Greatbatch. Dr. Kumar has a Ph.D. in Materials Science from the University of Rochester and Bachelors in Ceramics from I.I.T. B.H.U, Varanasi. He is the inventor of over 40 patents.

Dr. Hang Shi
VP of Manufacturing

A pioneer of lithium-ion technology, Dr. Hang Shi has been researching, developing and manufacturing li-ion batteries for the past twenty years. Most recently, Dr. Shi was the managing engineer at Exponent, where he conducted various lithium-ion failure investigations and battery manufacturing process audits. Before that, Dr. Shi was the founder and president of Zhejiang Wanxiang Power battery, a major producer of large, flat lithium-ion batteries for electric vehicle applications in China. Prior to that, Dr. Shi founded Xiamen Powerlong Battery in 1998, making it one of the earliest lithium ion battery manufacturers in China. Dr. Shi has also been the project manager at Valence Technology, where he worked jointly with Delphi E (a subdivision of GM) to develop large lithium-ion batteries for starting, lighting and ignition systems. Dr. Shi obtained his first Ph.D. in Materials Science from Shanghai Jiaotong/Nanjing University in China in 1987, and his second Ph.D. in Physics from Simon Fraser University in Vancouver, Canada in 1993 under the guidance of Prof. Jeff Dahn.

Michael Sinkula
Co-Founder and Director of Business Development

Before co-founding Envia Systems Inc., Mr. Sinkula was the Director of Business Development at Nanoexa, where he successfully negotiated development and licensing contracts for lithium battery technology and products. Prior to that, Mr. Sinkula founded Molecular ID Systems, a company that developed portable bacterial diagnostic devices. He has also held several finance positions at Hewlett Packard. Mr. Sinkula earned a B.S. in Finance from Santa Clara University, an M.Sc. in Biomedical Engineering from the University of Newcastle (United Kingdom), and an MBA from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania.

Dr. Herman Lopez
Vice President of Materials Development

Dr. Lopez leads the development and scale-up of advanced materials using new chemistries and processes for next generation rechargeable lithium ion batteries. Before joining Envia Systems Inc., he worked at Intel Corporation developing new materials, processes and testing protocols for novel non-volatile flash memory based on phase change chalcogenide alloys and carbon based namomaterials for transistor and interconnect applications. Dr. Lopez has previous served as a manager and project leader at Nanogram Corporation successfully developing their proprietary laser deposition technology, which produces active and passive optical films as a platform for planar lightwave circuits. Herman received a Ph.D. in Materials Science from the University of Rochester, and a B.S. in Chemistry from the University of California, San Diego. He holds 8 patents and has co-authored 16 journal and proceeding publications.

Hari Iyer
Executive Vice President of Commercialization

Hari Iyer leads the marketing efforts at Envia Systems. He brings nearly 20 years experience working with automotive Tier-1s and OEMs. Prior to Envia, he was Vice President, Engineering at Next Autoworks Company, an automotive start-up. At Next Autoworks, he led the creation of a North-American auto industry first vehicle development process, which involved true supplier collaboration of major Tier-1 and Tier-2 suppliers. Prior to that, he was co-founder and Chief Operating Officer at Elio Engineering, a product development firm. Prior to Elio Engineering, Hari was at Johnson Controls, Automotive Systems Group as an Engineering Analyst, working with the various automotive component groups and their OEM customers. He is a co-inventor on 5 issued utility patents and has several patents pending. He received his M.S. in Mechanical Engineering from Penn State and his M.B.A. from Stanford.

Rohit Arora
VP of Business Operations

Rohit Arora serves as VP of Business Operations for Envia Systems. Prior to that, he was a Partner at The Ugroup, an M&A advisory and turnaround management firm, where he led the capital placement and transaction structuring group. Prior to that, he held management roles with ReadRite Corporation, Prio, Digex and Centerbeam.