Deborah serves as the Director of Acceleration, providing strategic and tactical management, as well as investment-related advice for developing innovative technologies. She has an extensive background in business development, management, non-equity funding, entrepreneurship, compliance, and research. She has provided operations support to the Governor’s Council on Science and Biotechnology Development and currently acts as associate director for the Gulf Coast Regional Center of Innovation and Commercialization, Texas Emerging Technology Fund.

Versatile and accomplished IT strategist with extensive experience building innovative technological solutions across a wide range of industry and technology disciplines. A sample of key accomplishments include helping architect a set of enterprise applications in response to the BP Macondo oil spill to mitigate future risk, leading a worldwide application redeployment at BP Plc migrating applications from obsolete infrastructure to more modern and robust cloud-based infrastructure - reducing infrastructure costs by 25% while improving quality of service. Lead architect for building the credit card payment processing backbone at Chase Bank to process up to $500 million in transactions per day including 80% of all internet credit card transactions. Melvin is a Math & Computer Science graduate from Dartmouth College, NH.

Ken is a current Advisory Board Member at Eiffel Trading. He has broad experience as a senior commodity finance executive at Citi, Deutsche Bank, Bear Stearns, and Shell. He is skilled in the areas of trading, structured origination, risk management, restructuring, and capital markets experience in commodities, derivatives and securities. He lead and managed Citi’s unit that structures transactions for Americas with a focus on power, natural gas, & oil. At Shell, he lead the North American Deal Structuring group. He ran Risk & Derivatives marketing, business development, and origination for end users, financial sponsors and utilities in gas, power, and emissions markets. Ken graduated from the University of Michigan, is a CFA charterholder, competes in marathons, and lives in Houston.

Robert excels at U.S. and international patents in electrical, computer, and related fields. He has experience in computer software and hardware patents. He received his Bachelor of Science in Electrical Engineering from the University of Missouri-Rolla in 1988, where he graduated magna cum laude. While in law school at the University of Missouri, Mr. Bain received an American Jurisprudence Prize in Procedure 1 and Academic Achievement in Law Awards in Intellectual Property and Employment Discrimination. He is past chair of the Patent, Trademark and Copyright Section of the Bar Association of Metropolitan St. Louis and past vice chair of the Patent, Trademark and Copyright Committee of the Missouri Bar. Robert was deemed Missouri & Kansas Super Lawyer® (recognition given to the top 5 percent of lawyers per jurisdiction).

Dan has both engineering and law degrees, with extensive business experience in large companies and as a small business adviser. He enjoys the building process and providing value at the intersection of law, business, and technology. His ultimate goal is to provide the legal understanding needed to remove uncertainty, and allow us to focus on what we do best: manage, engineer, operate, and invent. He has experience in a broad range of legal services, including intellectual property protection, business formation, contract drafting, negotiation, and enforcement. Dan has a Juris Doctorate (cum laude) from Baylor University School of Law and a MS in Chemical Engineering from Auburn University. He lives in Houston and is licensed to practice in Texas.