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Mark is currently the founder and president of The Tech Toybox, Inc., as well as the founder and managing partner of Make.Work, LLC. The Tech Toybox, a Florida not-for-profit, helps inventors and creators to make the first prototypes of their ideas. Using real-world inventions, he teaches groups of interns how to go from idea to working prototype. This enables the creation of new startups while teaching people how to solve problems and get a new idea working rapidly and effectively. In addition, Make.Work, LLC provides a shared manufacturing platform enabling small companies and startups to manufacture their products regionally. We do this by providing equipment and training in processes to enable companies who do not have resources for their own capital equipment. Both companies work together to help create new jobs and train people to fill them.
Mark began his professional career soon after his PhD in 1990. He created a startup making and selling an instrument used internationally to simulate the highly reactive environment found at low-earth orbit altitudes. After several years of running that company exclusively, he began working as a faculty member with Paul Holloway at the University of Florida on improving flat panel displays for rugged environments, as well as managing the Microfabritech research facility at the University of Florida.
During his 25+ years at UF, he managed multiple research projects in diverse areas such as thin film devices, electronics, solar panel materials, medical devices, materials analysis and surface analysis, catalysis, electrochemistry, biochemical sensors, radiation detectors, MRI diagnosis of neurodegenerative disorders (e.g. Alzheimer’s), etc. Under his operational leadership, the Microfabritech center provided critical support to over $100M in annual research at UF.
Mark realized that the techniques and abilities created at that center could be directly applied to the early-stage startup process. He partnered with the UF office of technology licensing and began a program of rapid development of prototypes of devices for which UF had patents, but no demonstrations. This program utilized student interns to go from patented idea to demonstration and resulted about 6 prototypes and multiple additional patents in the first year. Eventually, Mark retired from UF to provide similar educational and inventive opportunities for the broader community through The Tech Toybox. Since it’s founding in 2015, it aided more than 90 inventors and provided educational opportunities for hundreds.
For example, Partnering in Innovation hired The Tech Toybox in 2016 to build their first prototype of the PI-CO2 separation system. The Tech Toybox, led by Mark Davidson, created and built the 31-foot-tall prototype column consisting of 3 absorption stages, automated controls, and all associated instrumentation. The column was tested and demonstrated at The Tech Toybox in Florida, then shipped to France where it was independently successfully tested.
Mark continues to lead both The Tech Toybox, Inc., and Make.Work, LLC in transforming ideas to reality while teaching a new generation of techs and engineers to build and start companies.
Gerald C. Blount is the Chief Technical Officer for Partnering in Innovation Inc. and is principal inventor of the aqueous CO2 capture process coupled to aqueous compression of gases, and CO2 capture processes for cement making. His main technical interest is in reducing the cost of CO2 capture for the betterment of mankind and Earth ecosystems. Gerald is also especially interested in CO2 use: for Enhanced Oil Recovery (EOR), for geologic storage in saline aquifers and coupled with geothermal conditions, and for other beneficial purposes which remove CO2 from the biosphere.
Gerald’s interests led him to research the carbon balance associated with EOR and the potential to use EOR to reduce the carbon load to the biosphere through lower net carbon transportation fuels. Gerald is current on the latest technical findings with respect to global warming and global greening. He is also interested in the use of biologics coupled with CO2 capture (biogas, landfill gas, and bioenergy), and EOR to achieve a more financially favorable carbon neutral to negative status for the biosphere.
Gerald has a long history of inventing; he retired from the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Savannah River Site (SRS) in 2017. He was a Principal Technical Advisor at SRS and was known for his innovative and novel technical strategies for soil and groundwater remediation. Examples of innovative groundwater remediation include: edible oil injections, reactive chemical injection, funnel and gate reactive barriers, deep soil mixing for hydrologic modification and containment, phytoremediation of groundwater, etc. He also developed a method of thermal detritiation for concrete and soil associated with decontamination and decommissioning debris.
Gerald was selected by DOE to be a member of its Internal Remedy Review Team, and he has numerous publications associated with cleanup of contaminated Cold War era sites. He also served as Principal Technical Advisor for Energy and Greenhouse Gas Strategies for the Savannah River National Laboratory, and was primary author of the Assessment of the CO2 Sequestration Potential in the Triassic Age Basins of South Carolina, Georgia, and Northern Florida.
Gerald is a member of the American Association of Petroleum Geologists (AAPG), and began his involvement as a student chapter organizer at the University of Idaho. He received several DOE Environmental Sustainability Awards for innovative cleanup solutions, the 2010 AAPG Division of Environmental Geology Research Award, two George Westinghouse Awards, and a Washington Group Lion Award. Mr. Blount has over 40 years of experience performing technical roles in: mining, industrial minerals, large environmental clean-up projects, and CO2 capture and the geologic storage of CO2. He has several patented technologies associated with CO2 capture.
Gerald holds a Bachelor of Arts in Geology from the University of North Carolina at Wilmington, and a Master of Science in Geology from the University of Idaho College of Mines and Mineral Resources. He and his wife enjoy touring in wine and olive oil producing regions around the world, and they are currently building an olive orchard at their farm in Georgia. Gerald collects and restores wooden boats. They currently reside on the coast of South Carolina.
Dr. Maximilian B Gorensek, PE is a consultant for Partnering in Innovation, Inc. and shareholder, as well as a co-inventor of the aqueous CO2 capture process. Recently retired from the Savannah River National Laboratory, where he still works part-time in a mentoring capacity, Max is a chemical process modeling consultant and a Research Affiliate at the University of South Carolina Aiken. At SRNL, Max was co-Principal Investigator for the RAPID Center for Process Modeling, an AIChE-sponsored joint project with Texas Tech, Georgia Tech, and three software companies that developed chemical process models in support of process intensification efforts. His areas of research include modeling and simulation of a broad range of chemical processes, from biomass pyrolysis to carbon capture to high-temperature water-splitting hydrogen production to nuclear materials processing and waste treatment, and in support of initiatives ranging from process development to nuclear nonproliferation. Before joining SRNL in 2002, he worked in the commercial chemical industry, where his experience spanned the range from bench and pilot-scale process development and catalyst testing, through steady-state and dynamic modeling and simulation of plant processes and flowsheet development, to plant and licensing technical support. Max has been an adjunct professor at the University of South Carolina Columbia and an Associate Editor of the International Journal of Hydrogen Energy. He has 4 patents and 40 peer-reviewed scientific publications and book chapters. Max holds BS and MS degrees from Case Western Reserve University and a PhD from Princeton, all in chemical engineering, and is a registered Professional Engineer. He is a Fellow of the AIChE, a Director and past Chair of its Nuclear Engineering Division, and a recipient of its Robert E. Wilson Award. An Ohio native, Max and his wife have lived in Aiken, SC for over 20 years. In his spare time, he is a tenor soloist, church cantor and choral singer, and enjoys traveling with his wife and spending time with their daughters.