University Club Downtown Quarterly: BlueTech

The San Diego region is no stranger to innovation. San Diego has booming bio-tech, high-tech and defense sectors, but the blue economy has quietly become another of the regions strengths. In fact, San Diego’s blue economy was recognized in the 2012 San Diego Maritime Industry Report as an economic powerhouse with more than 1,400 companies producing more than $14 billion of direct sales and a workforce of nearly 46,000 employees across San Diego County.

Join the Downtown Quarterly as we explore the San Diego Blue Economy and a few of the amazing companies that are leading the innovation in San Diego County.

The University Club Atop Symphony Towers Thursday, September 29th 11- 11:30 am Networking 11:30 - 1 pm Lunch & Speaker Panel $38.50. Buy tickets online and please bring confirmation to the event.

Our esteemed panel:

Matt Classen, Executive Director TMA BlueTech TMA BlueTech is one of the largest member-based organizations of leading BlueTech companies in the world. Matt Classen joined TMA BlueTech as the Executive Director in September 2021 from an exceptional career with small, medium, and multinational organizations around the world. He believes that organized, regional BlueTech clusters are the best way to explore and protect ocean and water resources.

Shara Narsipur, Corporate Communications at BlueNalu. BlueNalu is recognized as a global leader in cell-cultured seafood, developing great tasting, healthy, safe, and trusted products that support the sustainability and diversity of our ocean. BlueNalu will produce real seafood products directly from fish cells, that are as delicious and nutritious as products that have been grown conventionally, in a way that is healthy for people, humane for sea-life, and sustainable for our planet. As Director of Corporate Development & Strategic Partnerships at BlueNalu, Greg Murphy is responsible for the areas of market development, commercial partnerships, consumer insights, go to market strategy, communications, marketing, policy and government relations. He is former Executive Director of TMA BlueTech, which is the largest organized BlueTech cluster in the United States, and has been a Blue Economy advisor and consultant for leading organizations in academia, industry and government for almost a decade.

Yi Chao, Ph.D., CEO & Founder Seatrec Seatrec designs and manufactures energy harvesting solutions that generate electricity from naturally occurring temperature differences in ocean waters. Yi Chao is the Founder and CEO of Seatrec. He pioneered the ocean thermal energy harvesting project at NASA JPL in collaboration with his co-Inventors, Jack Jones and Thomas Valdez. Additionally, Yi was the PI for the SOLO-TREC project funded by the Office of Naval Research (ONR) and the follow-on project Slocum-TREC.

Jim Mullen, President-Partner- Free Foam Inc., Arctic Foam and Earthwise Sorbents Inc. As President of Free Foam, Jim has helped to grow the brand, sales and distribution of Arctic Foam and its sister company Earthwise Sorbents. Arctic Foam is a leading global manufacturer of high performance surfboard foam. Striving for a sustainable solution for rigid polyurethane foam, the team at Arctic Foam developed the first sustainably sourced bio-based polyurethane surfboard foam. Earthwise Sorbents is partnered with the largest sorbent manufacturer in the world, NPS, to produce sustainable chemical and oil spill clean-up products. Earthwise uses repurposed waste including polypropylene (plastic) and polyurethane foam to manufacture a wide array of highly effective sorbent products for cleaning up spills on land and in the water. On behalf of Arctic Foam and Earthwise, Jim has spoken nationally and internationally about cultivating sustainability within and introducing environmentally responsible materials and manufacturing in the surf and oil-spill clean-up industries.

Host or Publisher Pamela Stambaugh/Accountability Pays