TRL 7-9

Rebuilding the industrial base with dual-use frontier manufacturing technologies

Steve is the co-founder and CEO of oneNav, his fourth technology startup based in Silicon Valley. His second company, SnapTrack, pioneered the integration of GPS technology into mobile phones. SnapTrack was acquired by Qualcomm, and SnapTrack technology is now embedded in billions of smart phones around the world. Over the course of his career, Steve has launched, grown, and sold three technology companies, managed a portfolio of a dozen startups as an SVP at Qualcomm, worked at the highest levels in state and federal government and volunteered for a year as a public high school teacher. He was inducted into the Silicon Valley Engineering Hall of Fame in 2014. Steve holds a BS in Electrical and Electronics Engineering from the University of Texas at Austin, and an MBA from Stanford.

Amitav Mukherjee is the founder and CEO of Tiami Networks, where he is building the world’s most secure and high-performing 5G networks for dual-use applications. He previously served as Sr. Director of 5G R&D at Charter Communications, where he led the 5G air interface standards team. At Verizon, he was the RAN architect for the Onsite private LTE/5G network service launched in 2020. At Ericsson, he led the R&D teams that designed the world’s first 4G systems that operate in unlicensed spectrum (MulteFire and LAA-LTE). He is an inventor on 130  patents. He received his Ph.D. in ECE from UC Irvine in 2012 and an MBA from the Univ. of Illinois Urbana-Champaign in 2022.

Daniel Powell has over 25 years of experience delivering technical solutions across multiple industries. In 2006, Mr. Powell found his true passion in medical devices, specifically neurostimulation, and has since launched multiple products in the space, including Deep Brain Stimulation for movement disorders and Vagus Nerve Stimulation for Epilepsy. Mr. Powell co-founded and serves as CEO of Spark Biomedical, the developer of the FDA-cleared Sparrow Ascent; a novel, wearable neurostimulation solution to address opioid withdrawal and addiction. Under Mr. Powell's leadership, Spark continues to advance the science of wearable neurostimulation and is developing a novel new solution to improve hemostasis, harnessing the power of the nervous system to cause platelets to form quicker, stronger clots - turning potentially unsurvivable wounds, survivable. As one General said, turning the "Golden Hour" into the "Golden 6 hours".

Nils Alstad is the CEO and Co-Founder of Stridar, a defense technology company focused on developing unmanned ground systems to support warfighters at the edge. With a career that spans military leadership, global supply chain operations, and cutting-edge robotics, Nils brings a rare blend of operational insight and product innovation to the rapidly evolving domain of autonomous systems. A former officer in the Swedish Army’s Combat Engineering Regiment, Nils served as a Platoon Commander, Company Chief of Staff, and Instructor from 2002 to 2006. His military experience—combined with a foundation in customer focused supply chain studies and user interaction—has shaped his commitment to designing systems that serve the realities of the modern battlefield. Under his leadership, Stridar was founded in direct response to urgent operational needs from Ukrainian forces and U.S. partners. With a deep sense of responsibility to those in harm’s way, Nils remains focused on building field-proven, reliable platforms—not hype-driven prototypes. His vision is clear: keep the warfighter at the center of innovation, not the periphery.