JAY UNDERWOOD

COO

Jay is a founding partner of Deep Valley Labs. Previously, Jay held multiple roles at Infinera ranging from International Sales to Product Planning and Software Development. He is currently the Head of Global OEM Partnerships at QuantumScape, where he works directly with the world’s largest automotive companies on the electrification of the drivetrain. Jay advises DVL proto-startups on strategic application of technology to solve big problems. He was a President’s Scholar at Georgia Tech, earned a BS in Computer Science from the College of William and Mary and received an MS in Music Technology from University of Limerick. He enjoys exploring the outdoors (mostly by going uphill), and trying to do impactful things with great people.

Our Team

Jagdeep Singh

Jagdeep Singh

CEO

Holger Karsunky, PhD

Holger Karsunky, PhD

Co-Founder-in-Residence

Vlad Dobrin

Vlad Dobrin

Investigator

Jay Underwood

Jay Underwood

COO

Julia Gavrilyuk, PhD

Julia Gavrilyuk, PhD

Co-Founder-in-Residence

Laura Cao

Laura Cao

Investigator

Joseph Han, PhD

Joseph Han, PhD

CTO

Zeheng Xiao

Zeheng Xiao

Investigator

Advisors

Jeff Krichmar

Mike Deweese

Pieter Abbeel

Surya Ganguli

Tom Soh

Tony Zador

Craig Peters, Ph.d

Co-Founder-in-Residence

Craig spent a good part of his 20's living in Japan where he studied various martial arts as well as the Japanese language. After that, he entered the world of start-ups where he helped start two separate companies in the food and finance space. After selling the finance start-up in 2004, he completely switched gears and went back to undergrad to study physics (his earlier degree was in English Literature). He then completed a PhD with the McGehee group in Stanford's Materials Science department, where he focused on next generation solar cell technologies. His fascination with science, combined with his love for developing businesses, led him to make building companies that use science to solve high impact problems his life's mission. After graduating in 2011, he co-founded and served as CEO of Plant PV, a solar technology company that developed a breakthrough metallization paste that can be used on >85% of the global solar cells. The company's technology was acquired in early 2019 by a Japanese multinational and Craig later joined DVL in Feb 2020.

Craig holds a PhD in Materials Science and Engineering from Stanford University, completed his undergraduate work in physics at both Columbia University and UC Berkeley and holds a BA in English Literature from Colgate University. Craig is also a lecturer within the Materials Science department at Stanford, where he co-teaches a graduate course on solar cells and mentors students on life after graduate school.

Brian Hardin, Ph.d

Co-Founder-in-Residence

Brian was a co-founder of PLANT PV, which developed a “silver-on-aluminum” metallization paste that increases the power conversion efficiency and manufacturability of silicon solar cells. PLANT PV’s technology was acquired in 2019 by a Japanese multinational. Brian received a PhD in Material Science and Engineering from Stanford University, where he developed new solar cell architectures with Prof. Michael McGehee. Brian was previously a Swiss Fulbright scholar at École polytechnique fédérale de Lausanne and a Gilman Scholar at St Edmund Hall (University of Oxford). He received a BS in Electrical and Computer Engineering from the University of Texas at Austin. Brian is also lecturer at Stanford, where he co-teaches a graduate course on solar cells and mentors students on life after graduate school. Brian joined Deep Valley Labs in February 2020.

Vijit Sabnis, Ph.d

Co-Founder-in-Residence

Vijit joined DVL in January 2020 as a Co-founder-In-Residence. Prior to DVL, Vijit was a partner at Khosla Ventures for almost five years, where he worked in the areas of biotechnology, healthcare, additive manufacturing, food technology, computation, and photonics and learned the nuances of building deep tech startups. Prior to Khosla Ventures, Vijit was co-founder and CEO of Solar Junction, which commercialized the world’s highest efficiency solar cells at that time, and was an early employee at Translucent, which developed new materials solutions for silicon photonics and electronics applications. Vijit received M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in Electrical Engineering from Stanford University and a B.S. in Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences from UC Berkeley.

Emily Rounds, Ph.d

Investigator

Emily’s work integrates computational modeling and cognitive neuroscience to explore the principles of learning in the biological brain. At Deep Valley labs, she brings knowledge of bio-inspired and brain-based computation to bear on achieving generalized learning capabilities in artificial intelligences. Her previous work focused on the development of a generalizable evolutionary framework that could train generic spiking neural networks to replicate the functional behavior observed at the level of individual neurons as well as the population. She has a Ph.D. and M.S. from the University of California, Irvine in Cognitive Neuroscience and a B.S. from Pacific University in Psychology.

Holger Karsunky, Ph.d

Co-Founder-in-Residence

Holger Karsunky joined Deep Valley Labs in September 2018 with a focus on Life Science. His previous roles included Senior Director Oncology Discovery at Abbvie Stemcentrx and Director Preclinical Development at Cellerant Therapeutics where he led research teams and oversaw oncology programs from early target discovery to preclinical validation and submissions of INDs. He received his M.Sc. (Marburg) and PhD (Essen) in Molecular Biology/Immunology and his post-doctoral training in normal hematopoiesis and leukemic stem cells (Stanford).

Ryan Fong Ph.D,

Co-Founder-in-Residence

Ryan brings directed evolution and synthetic biology experience from the industrial biotechnology space. His previous work focused on applying forward-engineering approaches to the development of enzyme biocatalysts, transgenic insecticidal protein traits in agricultural plants, and microbial metabolic pathways. Ryan is also an active residential real estate investor. He is a Chemical Engineer by training, with a Ph.D. from Stanford University and B.S. from the University of Virginia.

Joseph Han, Ph.D

CTO

Joseph works at the intersection of quantum mechanics and computation. He introduced the use of Linux commodity clusters for quantum chemical electronic structure simulations at Dow Chemical in the 90’s. He has held positions at multinational corporations such as Intel, early stage startups such as QuantumScape, and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, with roles ranging from running physics-based (quantum and continuum) calculations for experimental and manufacturing design to contributing to and leading teams providing hardware, software, and cloud consulting services. He has a Ph.D. from Stanford University, where he focused on ab initio calculations, and M.S. and B.S. degrees from Texas A&M University all in Chemical Engineering. He volunteers with the Astronaut Scholarship Foundation to support STEM education to continue the legacy of the original Mercury 7 Astronauts.

Jagdeep Singh

CEO

Jagdeep is a serial entrepreneur, currently co-founder and CEO of QuantumScape, and chairman of Raxium. His entrepreneurial history is one of starting companies willing to take on big technology risk in return for a disruptively compelling value proposition and correspondingly lower market risk. He was co-founder and CEO of Infinera Corp, which he took public in a billion-dollar IPO based on the strength of customer demand for its pioneering photonic integrated circuit technology and new approach to optical networks. He was also co-founder and CEO of Lightera Networks, developer of the CoreDirector optical switch, which was acquired by CIENA Corp and went on to generate billions in revenue.

Jagdeep holds a BS in Computer Science from the University of Maryland, an MS in Computer Science from Stanford University, and an MBA from the University of California, Berkeley. He currently serves on the Stanford Engineering Advisory Board, and served on the Stanford Graduate School of Business Advisory Board from 2004-2006. He has been recognized for his contributions to the industry by numerous awards including Ernst and Young Entrepreneur of the Year and LightReading Person of the Year.

Jay Underwood

COO

Jay is a founding partner of Deep Valley Labs. Previously, Jay held multiple roles at Infinera ranging from International Sales to Product Planning and Software Development. He is currently the Head of Global OEM Partnerships at QuantumScape, where he works directly with the world’s largest automotive companies on the electrification of the drivetrain. Jay advises DVL proto-startups on strategic application of technology to solve big problems. He was a President’s Scholar at Georgia Tech, earned a BS in Computer Science from the College of William and Mary and received an MS in Music Technology from University of Limerick. He enjoys exploring the outdoors (mostly by going uphill), and trying to do impactful things with great people.