Management

Dr. Michael A. Giardello – President, CEO, and CTO. Dr. Giardello has over 15 years of business and technology leadership experience in the chemical industry. In 1997, he co-founded Materia, serving first as Executive Vice President and CTO before becoming President and CEO in 1999. Before Materia, Mike worked at Maxdem, where he oversaw scale up efforts for a new thermoplastic resin and ran a consulting business that advised industrial and venture capital firms on technology and corporate development. Mike received his Ph.D. in Chemistry from Northwestern University and completed post-doctoral work under Professor Grubbs at Caltech.

Dr. Mark S. Trimmer – Executive Vice President and Vice President of R&D. Before joining Materia in 1999, Dr. Trimmer worked for 11 years at Maxdem, where he directed the product, application and market development of a new class of high-performance thermoplastics. Mark has broad experience in catalyst and process development, polymer synthesis and scale-up, materials application development, R&D management and government and corporate strategic alliances. He has coauthored more than 25 U.S. patents and over 15 technical publications in the areas of catalysis and materials. Mark received his B.S. with honors from Penn State and his Ph.D. in Chemistry from Caltech.

Mr. Christopher J. Cruce – Vice President of Product Development. Prior to co-founding Materia in 1997, Mr. Cruce founded and managed a molded part design, manufacturing and distribution company serving the sporting goods industry. Chris has extensive experience in product development and manufacturing and is an inventor on numerous material technology patents.

Mr. Timothy McCarthy - Vice President Marketing & Sales. Before joining Materia in 2009,  Mr. McCarthy spent 10 years in the carbon fiber industry with Zoltek Companies, Inc., first as the Managing Director of Zoltek Europe and then as Vice President of Sales and Marketing. Before joining Zoltek in 1999, Tim worked in numerous sales, marketing and business development positions at The Dow Chemical Company. He received a B.S. Degree in Economics and Chemistry from Wheaton College and an M.I.M. from The American Graduate School of International Management (Thunderbird).

Mr. John Kibler – Director of Corporate Development. Prior to joining Materia in 2006, Mr. Kibler helped commercially launch and later run the business development departments for a number of life science and alternative energy companies. Prior to these entrepreneurial efforts, John worked in investment management for LaSalle Partners (now Jones Lang LaSalle), the world’s leading real estate services and money management firm. He received a bachelor’s degree from Stanford University and an MBA from the UCLA Anderson School of Management.

Dr. Richard L. Pederson – Director of Fine Chemicals R&D. Dr. Pederson has spent the last 20 years developing new routes to fine chemicals. Prior to joining Materia, Dick worked with Bend Research Inc, where in 1997 he and Professor Robert H. Grubbs developed and patented ruthenium metathesis-based syntheses for insect pheromones. Dick is an inventor on 42 issued patents and has authored numerous technical papers and book chapters on the industrial application of metathesis. He received a B.S. in Chemistry from the University of Wisconsin River Falls and a Ph.D. in Organic Chemistry from Texas A&M University while working under the supervision of Professor Chi-Huey Wong.