The Tech Awards Judges
Environment
Leslie Gray , Chair
Director, Environmental Studies Institute
Santa Clara University
Leslie Gray is a geographer who teaches classes that emphasize global environment, development and population issues. Her current research considers the environmental and equity dimensions surrounding global cotton production, focusing on how the agricultural subsidies given to farmers in wealthy countries affect poor farmers in West Africa. She has published articles on environmental policy, land degradation, and women's access to resources in Burkina Faso and Sudan. This research has been funded by the National Science Foundation, Fulbright/IIE and the Social Science Research Council. She has also done work for several international organizations, including CARE, Catholic Relief Services, UNDP, ILO and the World Bank.
Mike Denzel
General Partner
McKenna Ventures
Mike Denzel is a General Partner of McKenna Ventures, an early stage investment company. Mike currently splits his time between looking for new investments and working with the portfolio companies. Mike screens early-stage companies and performs due diligence on prospects. After investment, Mike acts as an advisor to the company or takes a board position, depending on the needs of the company.
Prior to joining McKenna Ventures, Mike led a team of world-class marketing professionals at Quantum Corporation, the world leader in the ultra-competitive desktop hard disk drive market. At Quantum, Denzel was responsible for P&L for the OEM business. In this role, he was responsible for customer satisfaction at Apple, Acer, Compaq, Dell, eMachines, Gateway, HP, IBM and NEC, as well as other leading PC manufacturers. During his leadership, unit shipments almost doubled to a 20 million unit annual rate representing $1.8 billion, expanding Quantum's dominant position in the desktop PC OEM business. Denzel's team achieved unprecedented levels of customer satisfaction combined with consistent profitability.
Prior to Quantum, Mike worked at Maxtor Corporation in a series of jobs of increasing accountability in the Sales and Marketing areas, at a time when Maxtor was the world's largest hard disk drive company. Early in his career, Denzel worked at Varian Associates, excelling in Engineering, Manufacturing, Operations and Marketing.
Mike supports the community by serving on a school board, church board, and coaching youth sports. He is also as active supporter of Catholic Charities of Santa Clara County and other local charities, along with his wife, Meghan.
A native of Western New York, Denzel earned his BS in Industrial Engineering at the State University of New York at Buffalo and his MBA at Santa Clara University.
William Eisinger
Professor of Biology
Santa Clara University
William Eisinger is Professor of Biology at Santa Clara University. He earned his undergraduate degree at Hiram College (BA) and graduate degrees from Purdue University (MS) and the University of Miami (PhD). In addition to his on going research at Santa Clara, he worked as a Research Associate and Senior Scientist at Stanford University, as well as, a visiting scientist at the University of California Santa Cruz. The primary focus of his research has been on the regulation of plant growth and development by hormones and light. Since 1999 he has developed a program of soil chemistry and rainforest ecology education in Trinidad. Dr. Eisinger lives in San Jose with his wife and daughter.
Ed Maurer
Associate Professor of Engineering
Santa Clara University
Edwin Maurer holds a BS in Civil and Environmental Engineering from the University of Rhode Island, a Masters in Civil Engineering (Water Resources) from UC Berkeley and a Ph.D. in Civil and Environmental Engineering from the University of Washington. He joined the faculty of the SCU civil engineering department in September 2003. His general areas of expertise are in water resources and hydrologic modeling. His past experience includes work in municipal water supply and wastewater engineering, climate change studies, water resources studies in support of western tribal water rights, and rural community water supply projects in Peru. His most recent research is in simulating large scale hydrologic dynamics, looking for potential improvements in long-lead forecasting, and studying regional hydrologic effects of climate change. His current research interests include, the impact of climate change on water resources, large-scale hydrologic variability and predictability, effect land use changes on streamflow, and parameterization of land surface characteristics in hydrology.
Stephanie Hughes
Lecturer, Environmental Studies
Santa Clara University
Stephanie is an engineering consultant, and specializes in fate and transport of air and water pollutants, particularly as they relate to water supply, industrial processes, and energy sources.
She also works as a lecturer in the Environmental Studies Institute at Santa Clara University. Stephanie received her B.S. in Chemical Engineering from the University of Minnesota, and M.S. in Chemical Engineering and Environmental Engineering from Stanford University.
