Team

Chris Wilmer
University of Pittsburgh

Chris Wilmer is the leader of Project URN and a materials scientist that specializes in the interactions between gases and surfaces. His research has focused on designing metal-organic frameworks (MOFs), which are materials that act like sponges for gases, with the aid of molecular simulations. In addition to 60+ scientific publications, he has co-founded two deep tech companies (Numat & Aeronics) and was named to the Forbes 30-Under-30 in Energy.

Nikhil Bajaj
University of Pittsburgh

Nikhil Bajaj is an Assistant Professor of Mechanical Engineering at the University of Pittsburgh and an NSF CAREER awardee, with expertise in trace gas sensor development, with applications ranging from CO2 monitoring to bed bug detection. His work spans resonant sensing hardware, signal processing, and AI/ML for interpreting sensor data. He is a co-inventor on 6+ patents and has developed technologies licensed by multinational companies, some of which produce millions of units based on the inventions.

Cory Simon
Oregon State University

Cory Simon is an Associate Professor of Chemical Engineering at Oregon State University. His research focuses on the development of mathematical and machine learning models to design and analyze the response patterns of gas sensor arrays.

Ron Appel
CalTech

Ron Appel holds a PhD in machine learning and computer vision and has extensive experience developing AI-powered products and sensing technologies. His expertise spans ML research and system design, and the translation of emerging technologies into practical products.

Brian Day
University of Pittsburgh

Brian Day has a PhD in chemical engineering, specializing in data science and computational chemistry, and wrote his dissertation of the development of electronic noses for disease detection. He has since worked as a full stack engineer developing scientific software for biotechnology applications.