TRION’s Leadership Team

TRION’s proprietary technology is being advanced by highly qualified scientists. TRION’s four PhD scientists are supported and governed by a dedicated Management Team, Board of Directors and Advisory Board.

Board of Directors & Management

Eric M. Leslie

Director / CEO / Co-Founder
  • Co-Founded TRION in August 2013
  • Extensive experience with start-ups & growing businesses
  • 30 years experience in VC funding
  • Entrepreneur in residence – South Dakota School of Mines & Technology
  • Director Metamaterial Inc. (Nasdaq: MMAT)
  • BA in Economics from Western University

MARK R. SMITH, LL.B

Chairman

  • CEO Surmont Energy Ltd. & CEO Strategic Lithium Mining Corporation
  • International experience including; cross-border transactions, strategic alliance partnerships, commodity trading arrangements and regulatory matters
  • Former Partner at Osler, Hoskin & Harcourt LLP and Burnet, Duckworth & Palmer LLP
  • LL.B and B.Comm degrees from University of Alberta

EDWARD R. BUIEL, PhD

Director

  • CEO/Founder Coulometrics, an advanced energy storage consulting and battery production/testing business based in Chattanooga, TN
  • 26 years of experience in development materials & energy storage devices including Lithium-ion batteries, supercapacitors, NiMH batteries & lead acid batteries
  • Former CTO of Axion Power & Ioxus
  • Extensive connections with battery manufacturers, OEMs, material companies and U.S. government agencies.

DAN HURAS, CPA

Director
  • CPA (CA) with extensive experience in management, finance, projects and business development
  • Leadership roles in several large organizations, as well as leading start-up ventures
  • Wide-ranging Board experience including sitting on audit committees

Jeffrey Milne

Director

  • Former Head of Global Capacity Planning at Amazon
  • Former Director of Global Supply Chain Management at Duracell
  • 20+ years of Supply Chain experience with P&G
  • Proven track record of delivering outstanding product supply and business results
  • Extensive experience in mfg. ops and financial management

Thomas R. Zwaska

Director & Secretary
  • Electronics Engineer with BSEE degree from Drexel University
  • 30+ years of expertise in embedded computer systems and systems architecture
  • Broad expertise used in advancing TRION’s Battery Management System

VINCENT CHEVRIER, PhD

Chief Technology Officer
  • PhD Physics Dalhousie University J. Dahn Group
  • Post Doc, MIT, G. Ceder Group
  • 10 years of industrial experience developing materials and technologies for LIBs at 3M
  • Commercialization of Si alloy materials
  • Prelithiation, materials synthesis, electrode design & cell design
  • Computational and experimental experience
  • 6,000+ Citations

ROBERT GILLIES, CPA

Chief Financial Officer
  • Extensive experience working with start-ups as a CFO
  • Assisted in numerous go public transactions
  • Experienced with junior listed companies and security filing requirements

Brian Humphry

VP Bus. Dev. / Director
  • Extensive experience as Founding Partner in multiple start-up companies
  • 25+ years experience as an entrepreneur
  • Experienced board member,
    with extensive board audit committee experience

Advisors

LARRY KRAUSE, PhD

Strategic Advisor – Battery Materials
  • Principal of Cyclikal, a consultancy firm specializing in high precision analytics and testing of batteries, based in St. Paul, Minneapolis
  • 36 year career at 3M as a Battery Scientist and Executive. Developed extensive IP portfolio for 3M
  • Principle Investigator of 30kWh USABC project managed by 3M with partners Hydro-Québec and Argonne National Laboratories
  • 3M spearheaded the development of NMC cathode material, invented by Prof. Jeff Dahn, for use in lithium-ion batteries. NMC materials have been used in the production of tens of billions of Lithium-Ion batteries in recent years
  • Initiated early efforts in main group metals and metalloids (e.g. Si, Sn, etc.) for use in high energy density Lithium-Ion batteries

DAVID S. DEAK, PhD

Strategic Advisor – Commercialization 
  • Operating Partner – Azimuth Capital Management, a $1B private equity low-carbon energy fund
  • Principle – Marbex LLC, consultancy firm focused on energy materials markets and deployments
  • Formerly CTO and SVP – Lithium Americas Corp., TSX and NYSE listed lithium mining developer
  • Formerly Senior Manager – Tesla Inc. – built up Tesla’s battery raw materials supply chain and pursued upstream investment strategies

ROBERT PURDY

Strategic Advisor – Capital Markets
  • Principal Purdy & Partners Inc. – Private Equity and Venture Capital Firm founded in 2008
  • Formerly senior advisor at Peters & Co., Canaccord Capital and began his career in 1993 at RBC Dominion Securities
  • Co-Founder of Benevity, Founder Chronos Resources, Strategic Advisor and Board member to a number of Early-Stage Ventures in the Energy, Infrastructure and Technology sectors
  • Advisor and Mentor at the Founders Institute and keynote speaker at Start-Up incubators and events
    Passionate about technologies that “change the way we do business and live our lives”

RICHARD J. GOWEN, PhD

  • President Emeritus of South Dakota School of Mines & Technology (“SDSM&T), Dakota State University and the Institute of Electrical & Electronics Engineers Foundation (“IEEE”), 450,000 members / 160 countries
  • Former President (1984) of the IEEE
  • Former President of SDSM&T (1987-2003)

DARYL H. GILBERT, P.Eng.

  • Director JOG Capital Inc.
  • Former President & CEO GLJ Petroleum Consultants
  • Broad understanding of traditional and renewable energy sector
  • Extensive senior management & board experience with multiple energy related companies

Darren Haar

  • Business turnarounds, leadership, product development, cross-functional team leadership, and entrepreneurship
  • Entrepreneur in residence – South Dakota School of Mines & Technology
  • Former global business director microcircuit materials for DuPont

Scientific Team

DAVID SALEM, PhD

Chief Scientific Officer
  • PhD, University of Manchester, UK
  • CPhys, Chartered Physicist, UK
  • Director, Composites and Polymer Engineering Laboratory (CAPE)
  • Team Leader - Joint Collaboration TRION/CAPE SiMoGraph™
  • Expertise: Processing, structure and properties of polymers, composites and nanocomposites
  • >90 refereed scientific publications, 15 book chapters, 1 book
  • 9 granted US patents

FAN ZHENG, PhD

Battery Scientist
  • PhD, South Dakota School of Mines and Technology
  • Materials Synthesis Lead
  • Extensive materials formulation and synthesis experience
  • Expertise: nanomaterials synthesis, thin film deposition, polymer synthesis
  • >15 refereed scientific publications
  • PhD thesis: Flexible electronics for space applications: development of new materials and device processing technologies

GEORGE LANE, PhD

Battery Scientist
  • PhD, Monash University, Australia
  • Developed fluorine-free lithium battery
  • Former Research Director at Ioxus – spearheaded scientific development & commercialization of TITAN™ Cell technology
  • Expertise: Electrolyte chemistry
  • Key patents for lithium-ion batteries, magnesium batteries & ultracapacitor electrolytes
  • Numerous highly cited academic publications

TRION Energy Solutions

TRION Energy Solutions Corp. is a private Delaware corporation, incorporated in August of 2013. To date TRION has raised over $12 million to advance the Company’s goal of delivering a cost-effective way to improve energy density storage capacity in multiple different devices. TRION is commercializing its proprietary silicon modified graphite anode materials (“SiMoGraph™”) that are engineered to improve Lithium-Ion battery performance by about 35%. Utilization of SiMoGraph™ by Lithium Ion battery cell manufacturers will not require them to change out their legacy equipment or radically change their manufacturing processes.