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Hardshell Labs Inc.

… is a Delaware C qualified for business in California. Hardshell’s mailing address is P.O. Box 362, Haines, AK 99827. For more information please e-mail your inquiry to us. Thank you.

timshields-1Timothy A. Shields, chairman, president, ceo, founder

Seeking out the desert tortoises which have charmed him for three decades, desert biologist Tim Shields has walked a number of miles equivalent to circumnavigating the Earth. Over thousands of days’ careful observation he has helped unlock secrets of tortoise biology which have allowed a deep understanding of tortoise ecology and may lead directly to the preservation of this bellwether species. Shields is an integral member of the scientific team that documented the tortoise’s decline and whose work led to its listing as a threatened species.

Tim co-founded and for seven years was executive director of Takshanuk Watershed Council, a very successful watershed conservation and public education non-profit. He is also an accomplished wildlife artist, drama coach and morning host of a public radio show in his home town, Haines, Alaska. His artwork has appeared in numerous publications and prestigious traveling exhibitions. His perspectives on conservation biology have been quoted by BBC World News Update, Audubon magazine’s on-line article, “Meet the Bird Brainiacs: Common Raven” as well as its print editions, CNN, the Los Angeles Times Magazine and the Sierra Club. A chapter in a forthcoming book on desert conservation to be published by Death Valley National Park will present his prescriptions for ensuring the survival of the desert tortoise. He has also authored, co-authored and illustrated numerous scientific papers.

Roy smallerRoy A. Haggard, hardware design & manufacturing consultant

Roy Haggard is a senior executive and technology company founder with extensive experience in aircraft, parachute and inflatable structure design and production. Roy was part of the two-man team who designed and built Hardshell’s Guardian Angel Rover via Kickstarter, as well as the Hardshell Labs version ground rover which was demonstrated to the public, live at TEDxBerkeley in 2014.

Roy is working with NASA on its Mars 2020 rover mission. Since 1970 he has contributed significant technical innovations related to un-manned air vehicles (UAVs), designed, fabricated and test flown over 50 of his original aircraft and holds several aircraft and parachute patents. Roy’s technical expertise and guidance has steered companies to industry leadership in inflatable, aeronautical and parachute technologies, including the first Mid-Air-Retrieval services for the space industry. His work on NASA’s Phoenix mission allowed repeated descent testing of extraplanetary landing vehicles in Earth atmosphere and was crucial to the success of the Phoenix mission on Mars. Roy is CEO of T3B, Inc. (Thinking through the Box) in leading edge tech development.

Michael D. Austin, co-founder, 1st Hardshell CEO & secretary/treasurer

Michael D. Austin is a cross-disciplinary strategic manager with long experience in start-ups and leading-edge projects of many firsts. He was present at Hardshell’s beginning and co-developed Hardshell’s ideas about how to scale its conservation strategies into sustainable market growth. He also fielded and had been developer of Hardshell’s media and social media strategies. Michael exited Hardshell’s board in Spring 2018.

His Soul Rider LLC is discussed in the book “The Premonition Code”. He is founder of a new, private financial markets forecasting fund which uses associative remote viewing. His peer-reviewed 2012 research on Gaia consciousness and cultural development was published in Spanda Foundation’s Journal, and he penned a chapter in the 2016 book, The Shamanic Powers of Rolling Thunder.

His other projects and consultancies include:  digitization of San Francisco State University’s mummy sarcophagi for its Global Museum and Museum Studies programs, to be used for scale-model 3D prints, new museum exhibits, instructional programs in museum studies, and new smart device apps; an archaeological project spanning many nations and 35 years; a private collection of 18th Egyptian Dynasty Amarna period antiquities; and the seminar, sports and franchise coaching businesses of Super Bowl champion NFL Roland Williams. Michael had managed product sales for one of the only two Warner Bros.® animation art licensees, with the first celebrity athletes featured in Warner Bros.® animation art since Michael Jordan  —  Super Bowl Champion New Orleans Saints’ quarterback Drew Brees and Boston Red Sox’ pitching legend Tim Wakefield. Mike was a fund raising executive and manager with Los Angeles United Way, American Cancer Society, Mono Lake Committee and City of Hope. He secured Sierra Club’s first-ever corporate sponsorship, and has worn hats as a marketing executive, computer network architect, communications director and investor for a premiere gallery of vintage animation fine art.

Michael was the first radio producer espousing comprehensive sustainability on the first ever all-positive talk radio network on the planet, HealthyLife.net. The station has 100K+ daily listeners, is a Member station of the National Association of Broadcasters, and was one of only 64 talk stations in the seminal Microsoft® Windows Media® News + Talk category, and Windows Media Player®Radio Tuner before Microsoft sent its platform into the sunset. In the company of industry Goliaths such as BBC, KCBS and Public Radio International Michael covered breaking news on his weekly News@7 Environmental Super Segments, but also interviewed celebrities in many fields on his environmentally-focused talk magazine, Blue Planet Almanac™.

Christopher C. Smith, software/electronics engineering

Chris Smith is a highly experienced engineer and team leader with TemeCom, Inc., where he provides hardware design, software design and development services to major corporate clients utilizing cutting edge tools. Chris was part of the two-man team who designed and built Hardshell’s Guardian Angel Rover via Kickstarter, and who built and debuted Hardshell’s version 2 ground rover in a live, on-stage demonstration at TEDxBerkeley. His software and hardware designs include the development and deployment of complex aerospace, avionics, medical, financial and industrial systems. His work and code have been used at top facilities including the NASA Dryden Flight Research Center in cooperation with Lockheed staff.

Chris’s clients have included…

  • the $4B+ Hospira company, leading its features team for their next generation IV infusion pump software,
  • the $3B+ Crane Aerospace and Electronics company for design of their proprietary A400M Aircraft Brake Antiskid Control Systems,
  • HDT Global’s control hardware and software for the NASA Phoenix Mars Lander Radar Test System, as well as electronics engineering for other HDT initiatives including the NASA Genesis Space Capsule return, HDT’s Airbeam Shelter systems, numerous SBIR and DARPA projects including the Automated Guided Air-drop System, and the UAV Automated Landing System,
  • CalTruss for their Seismic Building Code Test Rigs,
  • Cassidian Communications, for their next generation of 911 routing and dispatch systems,
  • Goldina GmbH for their wireless device to monitor the status and production data of their 300+ weaving looms,
  • State of California’s Department of Parks and Recreation for which he built and deployed a new beach lifeguard Emergency Dispatch System,
  • iCoat for their Lens Optical Inspection System, and
  • UCLA’s computer application to manage and analyze infrared spectrometry data for their Electrical Engineering Department.

Tatjana DzambazovaTatjana Dzambazova, 3D workflow and printing wizardess

Tatjana is a self-described technology evangelist and whisperer for the maker world. She is advancing the revolution which 3D printing brings to creative users and imagineers. Tatjana is an Autodesk Product Manager, working in reality capture and digital fabrication on their new Memento beta. Files for Hardshell Labs’ prototype Techno-TortTM raven predation lures are managed using Autodesk’s Memento, which makes analog::digital::analog workflows in photogrammetry or laser scanning accessible and unimaginably easy.

Tatjana was also project lead and producer of the Smithsonian-Autodesk collaboration, “Smithsonian X 3D” project, where she designed and implemented an interactive 3D web explorer and storytelling platform. The platform exploits open web technologies such as WebGL to explore and share Smithsonian’s legendary collection of historical objects. Over her 17 years with Autodesk, she has worked as…

  • Senior Product Manager of Personal Fabrication, Autodesk Consumer Group
  • Senior Product Manager, Creative Products in the Digital Concepts & Emerging Products group
  • Senior Product Manager, Emerging Products
  • Global AEC Industry Sales Development Manager
  • 3D Experience Manager – Sales Execution
  • Product Manager for Revit Architecture
  • Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA) Sales Execution – Technical Manager,
  • EMEA Technical Product Support for architecture software
  • Product Manager for Revit Architecture
  • EMEA region Sales Execution – Technical Manager
  • EMEA region Technical Product Support for architecture software

She is a speaker at numerous conferences including TEDxSonoma, the Computer History Museum,Digital Heritage, the Future of Story Telling, and Be3Dimensional. She is also tech consultant and project lead with African Fossils. An active conference speaker and educator on the topics of Reality Capture, Digital Fabrication, and the power of Makers, Tatjana speaks English, French, German, Italian, Spanish, Macedonian, and Serbo-Croatian. She is studying Chinese.

For 11 years, Tatjana was an architect/designer at firms in Austria and the UK on projects from interior design to multifunctional complexes, working from preliminary design phases through construction site management. She co-authored the books, “Introducing Revit Architecture 2008,” “Mastering Revit Architecture 2008,” “Introducing Revit Architecture 2009,” and “Mastering Revit Architecture 2009.”

Arshad TArshad LinkedInayyeb, games development consultant

Arshad Tayyeb is now a developer on Apple’s iOS operating system, and is a recent past Senior Software Engineer for Yahoo!, and was founder/developer at the Khosla Ventures backed Incredible Labs which was purchased by Yahoo! in 2014. Arshad engineered, designed and launched the iOS version (Apple’s mobile device operating system) of Hardshell Labs’ first game,Raven Repel, with his collaborator Jason LeBrun, who ported the game to the Android version (Google’s mobile operating system). Arshad also stood among our engineering stage crew during Hardshell Labs’ debut at the 2014 international TEDxBerkeley speech by Hardshell’s president.

Arshad is a past Senior Software Engineer and Integration Specialist at GraceNote/Sony and DoubleTwist, was an Engineer with America Online, an Enterprise Software Consultant with Netscape and iPlanet, and a Systems Administrator at Cornell University. He is fluent in English, German and Bengali languages, and will participate in design decisions for Hardshell Labs’ video games.

Andy Urquiaga photoAndrew Urquiaga, video games design and production

Chicago native Andrew Urquiaga is a young producer of new, video games and mobile device apps for consumer and commercial audiences. Andy was lead producer for the Hardshell Labs/Tribeca Flashpoint College mobile video game, Reef Invaders which is scheduled for 2016 release. He now leads the developers who are readying an Android/iOS mobile device app to showcase a private collection of 18th Dynasty Egyptian antiquities. In 2014, Andy led his student team of 22 to victory as Executive Producer in Chicago’s Tribeca Flashpoint College’ “Small Blue Dot” media campaign. Co-sponsored by Hardshell Labs and Tribeca Flashpoint, in less than three weeks, Andy’s team filmed and produced short videos, crowdfunded for the International Elephant Foundation, and also created a prototype mobile video game he also helped design and code. His team’s win was livestreamed at CBS television’s studios in Chicago. Their video game, Matriarch TD, advanced conservation efforts for the African elephant, and their crowdfunding was donated to the International Elephant Foundation.

Andy helped developed the arcade game, SpinnyRocket, about, “going the distance and reaching the stars and planets above,” and he produced and made all art assets. Another of Andy’s coding teams placed 4th in the highly competitive field of 11 at the Internet & Television Expo 2015 (INTX) Hack competition of the National Cable & Telecommunications Association. INTX draws 10,000+ professionals, 251 exhibitors, 723 international guests, and 336 media members. Hosted at entrepreneur Howard Tullman’s Chicago tech incubator, 1871 Chicago, competitors in this 24-hour INTX hackathon create apps for major cable companies, and is presented on the expo’s main stage at Chicago’s McCormick Place. Andy attended University of Illinois, Chicago for Computer Science in Engineering, studied Philosophy and Language at La Universidad de Navarra in Pamplona, Spain, and graduated in Interactive Media + Game Development from Chicago’s Tribeca Flashpoint College.

Rose Spinelli, croRose smallerwdsourcing & crowdfunding

Rose Spinelli is a crowdfunding consultant and trainer at The Crowdfundamentals, where she offers expert crowdfunding analyses and campaign consulting in this exploding field. Rose provides ongoing advice about how Hardshell Labs can prepare for future crowd funding campaigns.

In January, 2014, she was named to the “Top 100 Thought Leaders in Crowdfunding Today” by OurCrowd, and to the “Who’s Who? of CrowdFunding Industry Professionals.” Ms. Spinelli’s crowdfunding course is available through the United States Association for Small Business and Entrepreneurs. She writes a Tip of the Week column for Crowdsourcing.org and has been a panelist and/or moderator at many top crowdfunding conferences.

Andrea Barrica, strategistandrea barric cropped

Andrea Barrica founded O.school, which has received wide praise and press from the likes of Forbes, Vice, and Glamour. She was Venture Partner and Entrepreneur-in-Residence at 500Startups before that, where she mentored and collaborated in the selection and coaching of the best candidate companies for 500Startups’ $100K inital funding with its “…badass, global family of startup founders, mentors and investors.”

At 20 years of age, Andrea joined Y Combinator backed and 500 portfolio company, inDinero, without any startup, accounting, or business experience. After inDinero’s first model failed miserably to convert freemium users and burned through most of their capital, everyone in the company quit or was let go, but she stayed. Andrea went on to develop a new full service model for inDinero, advising 300+ startups on their back office, personally servicing the first 50 customers herself while increasing sales. She lead the team to $2M ARR.

After traveling in 2014 with an NGO in the Philippines, she experimented building the smart presentation generator SlideChef, founded SF PitchMasters (think Toastmasters but better) and also became invaluable to Hardshell when she saw Tim Shield’s presentation at TEDxBerkeley. Andrea attended university at 16, where her freshman year roommate was founder of inDinero, Jessica Mah. Andrea’s B.A. in Linguistics is from U.C. Berkeley as she had then planned a career as a cognitive linguist on endangered indigenous languages, and she also studied at Nanjing Normal University.

Peter smallerPeter Hawley, broadcast education & digital media

Peter Hawley is Executive Vice President and Academic Dean at Tribeca Flashpoint College, a new generation digital arts college in Chicago, IL. Peter invited Hardshell Labs’ participation in Tribeca Flashpoints’ 2014 highly-pressured Production in Action environment, a pilot program between Hardshell and Tribeca Flashpoint, which produced four mobile video game prototypes in cooperation with four environmental conservation nonprofits chosen by Hardshell. 2014’s Production in Action hackathon was titled, “Small Blue Dot,” raised funds for four NGOs and served to test Hardshell’s Crowd Sourced ConservationTM concepts. Peter and his department heads have also invited Hardshell to collaborate in future years’ Production in Action classes for environmental conservation campaigns.

Past collaborators with Tribeca Flashpoint have included video games entrepreneur Mark Ecko, and noted actors Edward Burns and Vincent D’Onofrio. Tribeca Flashpoint’s biggest investor was Tribeca Enterprises, co-founded by actor Robert De Niro, Jane Rosenthal and Craig Hatkoff. Tribeca Flashpoint follows Peter’s vision for its Film + Broadcast Department, and the school was founded by entrepreneur Howard Tullman in 2007. Peter has been a college educator for 17 years and a producer/director/writer for 26 years.

David Lang, maker of open-source techLang crop 1

David Lang is a co-founder of OpenROV and OpenExplorer, which are communities of citizen-builders of those projects’ open-source, ocean, airborne and terrestrial exploration rovers. OpenROV began as creators of low-cost underwater robots, and is now… “an open-source, low-cost underwater robot for exploration and education. It’s also a passionate community of professional and amateur ocean explorers and technologists.” OpenROV ran a very successful Kickstarter crowdfunding project to launch itself in 2012.

David was named a 2013 TED Fellow following his presentation, “My Underwater Robot.”OpenROV’s work was featured in National Geographic’s “Voices” article, Searching for Sunken Treasure.” FastCompany’s article about OpenExplorer aptly sums its concept and reach, “Open Explorer Is A National Geographic For Remotely Operated Vehicles.”

These notables expressed their take about OpenROV:

“I wish they were in every hardware store in the world.” – Dr. Sylvia Earle, National Geographic Explorer-in-residence.

“It could change the future of ocean exploration.” – New York Times

“The maker movement at its best” – Tim O’Reilly, Founder and CEO of O’Reilly Media, Inc.

OpenExplorer has featured Hardshell Lab’s tortoise rover project on the OpenExplorer website, and David has brought Hardshell’s open-source Techno-Tortoise project to a ground rover DesignDay at Tech Shop, co-sponsored for Hardshell by AutoDesk.

David and co-founder Eric Stackpole attended the inaugural 2014 White House Maker Faire. He is also contributing editor to MAKE: magazine and the author of the book, “Zero to Maker,” which tells his journey from under-skilled beginner to manufacturing entrepreneur and ocean explorer. His book is a guide for anyone  —  regardless of experience level  —  to get involved with the maker movement and digital fabrication tools, like 3-D printing. David describes his take on the Maker movement as motivated not by DIY (Do It Yourself) motivations, but he instead calls it DIT (Do It Together) in collaborative community. Before his underwater robots and the far-flung collaborators of OpenExplorer, David managed OCSC Sailing in Berkeley, California.

Matt smallerMatt Huffine, education designer

Matt Huffine is Science Lead instructor for the Lewis Center for Educational Research, an internationally-renowned charter school in the Apple Valley Unified School District. Many of Hardshell Labs’ field trials for its ground rover have taken place at the Lewis Center.

The Lewis Center was instrumental in the development of the worldwide Goldstone Apple Valley Radio Telescope project, a highly successful and on-going collaboration with NASA to deliver scientific data to NASA through highly-specialized classroom environments. The telescope allows instructors and students to operate a 34 meter (112 foot) radio telescope from any classroom in the world.

Matt’s implementation plans for the revolutionary Next Generation Science Standards are under consideration for adoption by one of the largest school districts in the nation. His distinguished career as an educator includes his Mojave Environmental Education Consortium “Teacher of Excellence” Award in 2006 and also its “Teacher of the Year” award in 2010. In 2003-4 Matt led students to spearhead efforts which resulted in the creation of an on-campus refugium for the critically endangered Mohavi Tui chub. He established Tortoise Terrace, a holding facility for adoptable endangered Desert tortoises in partnership with the California Turtle and Tortoise Club’s High Desert branch.

Mitrani smallerMichael Mitrani, management development

Michael Mitrani is Board President of Earth Island Institute, founded by environmental legend David Brower. He sat on the judges’ panel at Hardshell’s Eco-Hack for New Conservation Video Games Design, in collaboration with the UC Berkeley Center for Entrepreneurship and Technology Student Association. The event was held at the widely-recognized David Brower Center in Berkeley, CA.

Michael brings to Hardshell several decades of business management experience consulting for Deloitte, Johnson and Johnson and Bristol-Myers Squibb, as well as myriad connections in business to the conservation world. He holds a Master’s Degree in Environmental Management with an emphasis in Restoration Ecology. He has managed events and speaker’s series for Earth Island Institute and sits on several boards.

Kush smallerKush Amerasinghe, futurist & scientist

Kush Amerasinghe is a futurist and scientist at Adobe, where he explores and illustrates cutting edge and future creative tools and technologies. Kush assists in the conceptual design of Hardshell’s laser products, and sat on the judges’ panel at Hardshell’s Eco-Hack for New Conservation Video Games Design, in collaboration with the UC Berkeley Center for Entrepreneurship and Technology Student Association.

His work has been nominated at Cannes Leons, the Emmys and the Webbys, and he has won multiple Graphic Design USA and Adobe internal awards. His experience spans across several industries with many fast-paced years of experience working in six countries across three continents. Kush is also a Project Director in Adobe’s Pro-Bono Initiative for corporate social responsibility, an emerging technologies consultant for Cobalt Aircraft Industries launched in France, Co-creator of social mindfulness app for interpersonal connections ConnectTone, and many other initiatives aimed at empowering the world through both technology and creativity.

JasonJason Huertas, development strategist

Jason is a product manager with social networking startup Tapcast, and was Co-Founder and CEO of revolutionary Website social networking comment software Critica. He sat on the judges’ panel at Hardshell’s Eco-Hack for New Conservation Video Games Design, in collaboration with the UC Berkeley Center for Entrepreneurship and Technology Student Association.

As Product Manager of UC Berkeley’s renowned Center for Entrepreneurship and Technology(CET), Jason managed CET’s online social network and mentors UC Berkeley’s brilliant student entrepreneurs. Jason is a front end computer systems software developer, former Market Research Analyst for Radius and EMC, and is a UC Berkeley Economics graduate.

Dale Capewell, laser engineer

Dr. Dale CapewellDr. Dale Capewell brings extensive theoretical and practical knowledge of lasers to Hardshell Labs. He is president of Malibou Lake Engineering, which provides consulting expertise in optics, optical telecom, RF wireless, CAD, test automation, imaging, image processing, and medical diagnostics. Malibou Lake’s clients include Intel, Jabil Circuit, UCLA, and Omega Biosystems. Dale is a successful corporate executive, technical team leader, and inventor with the hands-on, system-level problem solving skills needed to turn technical concepts into prototypes. He also earned the industry and management experience needed to develop prototypes into commercial products.

Dale’s work over a 20-year career in the laser industry has spanned a wide range of theoretical and practical challenges, but with an emphasis on the application of lasers to optical telecom and medical imaging. He has worked in numerous successful startups, as well as serving as a Senior Engineering Manager at Intel and Vice President of Iris Diagnostics. He has published many technical articles, and has received eight patents with more pending.

He is an Adjunct Professor of Physics at California State University, Channel Islands, where he teaches Newtonian Mechanics, General Relativity, Electricity and Magnetism, Quantum Mechanics, and Radiobiology. Dale received a B.S. in Applied Physics from Cornell University, after earning the 1981 Cornell Ingenuity in Mathematics and Science Award and an NROTC Scholarship. His doctorate from Cal Tech was in Applied Physics, with research on pulsed laser ablation and rarified gas simulation.

Mike Fouraker, conservation marketing alliancesFouraker smaller

Mike Fouraker is Executive Director of the Fort Worth Zoological Association, which manages Fort Worth Zoo. Mike was one of three expert judges during Hardshell’s collaboration with Tribeca Flashpoint Media Arts Academy’s Small Blue Dot Conservation Campaign.

He has more than 30 years of expertise in animal care, exhibitry, marketing and zoo management. Fouraker joined in 1993 as Director of Animal Programs and has been with the Zoo Association throughout more than $100 million in capital renovation projects. His leadership guided the Zoo to its ranking of fifth in the nation, increasing its annual visitors to1M.

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