The Executive Night Series provide a platform for students, alumni and local professionals to network and listen to senior executives discuss leadership in the context of promoting sustainable development.

The featured speakers for this month are:

Dr. Bryan Willson and Dr. Al Weimer

Dr. Bryan Willson is a Professor of Mechanical Engineering at Colorado State University (CSU) and has worked for over 25 years to develop large-scale solutions for global energy needs.  He serves as Director of CSU's Clean Energy Supercluster (www.Energy.ColoState.edu), an academic unit of over 120 diverse faculty members working to develop and disseminate clean energy solutions.   He is co-founder of Solix Biofuels (www.SolixBiofuels.com), a developer of large-scale production systems for algae-based biofuel, and Envirofit International (www.Envirofit.org), a global company distributing clean energy solutions in the developing world. In June 2009, Scientific American named him to its inaugural list of the "Scientific American 10" - ten individuals who have made significant contributions to "guiding science to serve humanity" on a global basis; in August 2009, he was awarded the Maurice Albertson Medal for Sustainable Development (Albertson was the architect of the Peace Corps); in 2008 he received the Royal Award for Sustainability from the governments of Denmark and Spain.

Dr. Al Weimer joined the faculty of the University of Colorado after a 16 year career with the Dow Chemical Company.  He was named Dow Research Inventor of the Year in 1993 and received Dow's "Excellence in Science Award" in 1995 for inventing, developing and commercializing the Rapid Carbothermal Reduction process.  He is recipient of a 2005 DOE Hydrogen Program R&D Award, the 2009 AIChE Thomas Baron Award in Fluid-Particle Systems, and the 2010 AIChE Excellence in Process Development Research Award.   His former students have co-founded two spin-off companies out of his university laboratory (ALD NanoSolutions in 2001 and Copernican Energy, now part of Sundrop Fuels, in 2006).  He is named inventor on 24 issued U.S.Patents and is author of over 120 peer-reviewed publications.