August 2023

Edna Soraya Rawlings is a Senior Member of Technical Staff at Sandia National Laboratories in the Quantitative Modeling and Software Engineering department. Her research focuses on mathematical modeling and programming, including nonlinear and generalized disjunctive programming and dynamic optimization problems. She received her B.S. in Chemical Engineering from Universidad Michoacana de San Nicolás de Hidalgo in 2008 and her Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering from Universidad de Guanajuato in 2016. She was also a research scholar at Carnegie Mellon University. After receiving her PH.D., she...Read more

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...Read more

Laura Fernandez is a Sr. Fermentation Engineer at the Advanced Biofuels and Bioproducts Process Development Unit (ABPDU) at Lawrence Berkeley National Labs. As a member of the fermentation team, Laura performs process development, downstream processing, product recovery, and data analysis in collaboration with external organizations. She has executed dozens of fermentation projects generating a broad range of bioproducts. Her work also includes supporting the ABPDU's workforce development efforts as an instructor for the UC Berkeley Masters in Bioprocess Engineering. She has been involved...Read more