At CEO (Boardroom Media) we track over 1,000,000 startups and over 5,000,000 people who hold key positions in these companies. We use this directory of startups to highlight top employees, founders and board members we think deserve more appreciation than they are currently getting.
This list showcases the top San Francisco based CEO’ operating in the Advanced Materials space. If you think a CEO’ is missing from this list, feel free to contact our editor on [email protected].
The individuals on this list have been included because of exceptional performance in one of the following categories:
- Innovation – Operating as a key part in an extremely innovative business or startup.
- Growth – Operating as a key figure in the growth and upscale of a market leading business or startup.
- Management – Showing exceptional management skills.
- Societal impact – Putting their business on the map for their positive societal or environmental impact.
Our Data – We source our data from OSINT (open source intelligence) and public directories such as Crunchbase, SemRush and many more. The data from these sources should be treated with a degree of caution and verified yourself.

Eli Goldstein
Co-Founder & CEO of Skycool Systems
Eli received his Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering from Stanford University. Eli has a passion for energy systems and thermal science. He worked with two energy startups, ZERE and Clean Power Solutions (CPS) and lead thermal modeling/testing for a team on the Gates Foundation’s Reinventing the Toilet Grand Challenge.
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About Skycool Systems: Skycool Systems is improving the efficiency of all cooling systems by harnessing an untapped renewable resource: the sky.
JB Straubel
Co-founder & CEO of Redwood Materials
JB Straubel is the Co-Founder and CEO of Redwood Materials, a Nevada-based company building a sustainable future by creating circular supply chains, turning waste into profit and solving the environmental impacts of new products before they happen. Prior to founding Redwood, JB spent 15 years at Tesla as Co-founder and CTO. JB built one of the best engineering teams in the world at Tesla and among many topics, he led cell design, supply chain and led the first Gigafactory concept through the production ramp of the Model 3. JB had a direct role in both R&D, team building and operational expansion from prototype cars through to mass production and GWh-scale. JB holds a Bachelor of Science in Energy Systems Engineering and a Master of Science in Energy Engineering from Stanford University.
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About Redwood Materials, Straubel Foundation: Redwood Materials is a battery recycling startup that makes electric vehicles and sustainable materials for circular supply chains.

Chris Prucha
Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Origin
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About Origin: Origin is an additive manufacturing platform designed for mass production
Philip Mezey
CEO of Itron
Philip Mezey was appointed president and chief executive officer and named to Itron’s board of directors on January 1, 2013. Mezey has served the company in several capacities during his career at Itron, most recently as chief operating officer for Itron’s global Energy segment, with responsibility for the operations of Itron’s electricity and gas businesses around the world. He also previously served as senior vice president and chief operating officer — Itron North America, group vice president and general manager, as well as senior vice president for Software Solutions. Upon Itron’s acquisition of Silicon Energy in 2003, Mezey joined the company as managing director of Software Development for Itron’s Energy Management Solutions group. Prior to joining Silicon Energy in 2000 as vice president, Software Development, Mezey was a founding member and served 12 years with Indus, a provider of integrated asset and customer management software. Mezey earned his BA degree in history from the University of California, Berkeley.
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About Itron: Itron is a technology company that offers products and services on energy and water resource management.
Joseph Luttwak
Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Lingrove
Joe, founder of Blackbird Guitars composite string instruments, has over a decade of product development, composites and design experience- including a stint at Ferrari in Italy and with various San Francisco product development firms. Joe, with his team at Blackbird, have been working with natural composites since 2008.
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About Lingrove: Lingrove manufactures natural fiber composites from plant-based fibers and resins using a proprietary process and adaptable platform.
Dane Anderson
Co-Founder & Co-CEO of Full Cycle Bioplastics
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About Full Cycle Bioplastics: Full Cycle Bioplastics transforms organic waste into the lowest-cost, lowest-carbon materials on the planet

Alexander Lorestani
Co-Founder and CEO of Geltor
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About Geltor: Geltor is a bio-design company that makes proteins used in beauty, food, & beverage products like collagen and elastin, but without animals.
David Snydacker
CEO of Lilac Solutions
David Snydacker is the Chief Executive Officer at Lilac Solutions, Inc.
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About Lilac Solutions: Lilac Solutions develops an ion exchange technology to address the challenges faced by lithium producers.

Timur Bazhirov
Founder / CEO of Mat3ra.com
Founder / CEO at Exabyte.io.
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About Mat3ra.com: Mat3ra.com powers the adoption of materials modeling to design and discover advanced materials and chemicals from the nanoscale.

Greg Mulholland
CEO & Co-founder of Citrine Informatics
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About Citrine Informatics: Citrine Informatics specializes in the fields of big data, artificial intelligence, and machine learning.

Virginia Klausmeier
President & CEO of Sylvatex Inc
Virginia founded SVX and has been President and CEO since 2012.
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About Sylvatex Inc: Sylvatex has developed a next generation cathode active material manufacturing process for electric vehicles and energy storage that lowers cost, capital, and carbon footprint.
Austin Sendek
Founder and CEO of Aionics
Austin Sendek is the CEO of Aionics (aionics.io) Entrepreneur-in-Residence with Echelon.
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About Aionics, Echelon: Tools, Data & Consulting Services for A.I.-Driven Materials Design
Virj Kan
Founder & CEO of Primitives
Virj Kan is the Founder and Chief Executive Officer at Primitives Biodesign.
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About Primitives: Primitives is a public benefit company that develops advanced bioplastic materials to reduce food waste and plastic pollution.

Eric Steen
CEO & Co-founder of Lygos
At Lygos, Dr. Steens’ primary responsibilities include establishing a strategic vision, managing partnership and customer development, process commercialization, product development, and fundraising. Dr. Steen is an expert in optimizing sugar to product conversion efficiency, and prior to co-founding Lygos he led efforts to engineer yeast for the conversion of sugars into fuels and chemicals at the Department of Energy’s Joint BioEnergy Institute; these technologies resulted in numerous peer-reviewed publications and patents, which are in various stages of commercialization. Dr. Steen earned a BS in Biomedical Engineering from Brown University in Providence, RI, and a Ph.D. in Bioengineering from UC Berkeley and UC San Francisco. While in graduate school, Dr. Steen completed a program in Management of Technology at UC Berkeley’s Haas School of Business.
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About Lygos: Lygos provides biotechnology solutions for today’s renewable chemical challenges.

Amanda Brief
Co-Founder & CEO of My.Flow
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About My.Flow: My.Flow is a tampon monitor that helps women keep track of and predict their flow during menstrual cycle.
Nadir Bagaveyev
CEO & Chief Designer of Bagaveev Corporation
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About Bagaveev Corporation: Bagaveev is currently working on upper stage propulsion, turbomachinery and GNC.
Peter Frischmann
CEO and Co-founder of Sepion Technologies
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About Sepion Technologies: Sepion is an advanced membrane company offering a platform suite of highly-tunable nanoscale membranes for multiple industrial markets.
Julia Marsh
CEO of Sway
Julia Marsh currently works as Chief Executive Officer and Co-Founder at Sway.
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About Sway: Sway offers regenerative design solutions for plastic pollution using seaweed to create compostable replacements for single-use plastics.
Charles Dimmler
CEO & Co-Founder of Checkerspot
CHARLES DIMMLER is the co-founder and CEO of Checkerspot. His career has focused on building and leading teams at emerging growth companies in the life sciences and biotechnology sector. He has deep expertise in general management and leading strategic transactions, with over $1 billion of completed transactions ranging from public and private financings to joint ventures, licensing and M&A. From 2008 to 2016, he served as Senior Vice President of Corporate Development at Solazyme, Inc. where he led financings and a range of other strategic transactions, including two venture capital rounds, the initial public offering, two public convertible debt issuances, and project financing for the construction of a commercial scale manufacturing facility in Brazil. In addition to his corporate development responsibilities, he served as Acting General Manager of Solazyme’s personal care business in 2009. Prior to Solazyme, Charles was the General Manager of Geron BioMed, Ltd., a wholly-owned subsidiary of Geron Corporation, where he led a team focused on developing R&D and preclinical cell therapy candidates. Charles began his career as an investment banker at Peter J. Solomon Company. Since 2008, Charles has remained active in his community as an Operations Leader with the Bay Area Mountain Rescue Unit, the mountain search and rescue team of the San Mateo County Sheriff. Charles earned his MBA from the Stanford Graduate School of Business and his BA from Columbia University.
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About Checkerspot: Checkerspot is a high performance materials company that designs materials at a molecular level.