About Syzygy

Trevor Best is the CEO and Co-Founder of Syzygy Plasmonics. Syzygy is pioneering a new type of chemical reactor designed to produce industrial chemicals at lower cost and with fewer carbon emissions. Their novel technology is driven by light rather than heat, enabling a substantially more efficient process. Critically, Syzygy’s technology supports energy security and expansion through resource efficiency. Recent publications show Syzygy’s core components can be made without using rare earth materials, adding to the company’s value as a sustainable technology provider.

Dr. Suman Khatiwada is a co-founder, chief technology officer (CTO), and board director at Syzygy Plasmonics. In his role as CTO, he leads the technology team in developing, scaling up, and integrating the company’s core technologies, namely photocatalysts and fully electrified chemical reactors. He has built Syzygy’s patent portfolio with more than a dozen patent families and several dozen trade secrets. As a co-founder and an integral part of the management team, Dr. Khatiwada has helped Syzygy raise three rounds of venture capital funding, win three government grants, and build a team of 75 employees and counting.

Mr. Smith joined Syzygy in 2021 as CFO, having spent his 15 year career helping grow early and mid-stage energy businesses, as an advisor, investor, and business leader. He most recently served as CFO, and later CEO, of GEODynamics, a manufacturer of specialty-material tools and equipment, which the team successfully grew and exited to a public acquirer in 2018. Ben began his career at the energy investment bank Simmons & Company, before joining Lime Rock Partners, a global energy-focused growth equity investment firm. At Lime Rock, he worked with a variety of energy production, service, and manufacturing companies, helping to guide business strategy, growth, fundraising, and M&A. He is passionate about building people-centric entrepreneurial businesses that can deliver innovative ideas to advance our energy future. He holds a B.S. from the Stern School of Business at New York University.

Murtuza Marfani currently serves as Syzygy’s SVP Business and Corporate Development. In this role, he leads Syzygy’s commercial strategy formation and business development efforts. He also works closely with the executive team on developing corporate strategy, supporting fundraising, and investor outreach activities. During his tenure at Syzygy, Murtuza has been privileged to interact with business units spanning the breadth of the organization including finance, operations, supply chain, and in particular with the technology team to help translate lab performance into economic projections for commercial systems. In addition to typical commercial related items, Murtuza leads Syzygy’s analysis of competing technologies and the development of Syzygy’s technoeconomic models, including the development and publishing of Syzygy’s open-source levelized cost and carbon intensity calculator, CarbonModel.com.

Amber Weaver joined Syzygy Plasmonics in April 2023 as General Counsel. She quickly built out the legal team and provides all aspects of legal and compliance support for the company. She brings more than 18 years of experience across a range of industries including insurance, oil and gas, power generation, and biotechnology/biomanufacturing. The majority of her career was spent at Wood Group GTS (later becoming EthosEnergy, a joint venture between Wood Group and Siemens), where she held multiple leadership roles and was Chief Counsel and Assistant Corporate Secretary. Over her tenure at Wood Group/EthosEnergy, she was lead counsel on numerous multi-million-dollar global EPC, LTSA, and O&M projects, supported corporate global expansion, managed litigation and risk, and was involved in company restructuring. Most recently, Amber served as Senior Director and primary counsel for a startup company in California where she supported global commercial, products, and operations to scale up and commercialize multiple product lines. Amber earned her juris doctorate from South Texas College of Law and her bachelor’s degree in Communications from Ohio University.

Prof. Halas is the Stanley C. Moore Professor in Electrical and Computer Engineering, Professor of Biomedical Engineering, Professor of Chemistry, Professor of Physics and Astronomy, and founding director of the Laboratory for Nanophotonics at Rice University. Prof. Halas is one of the pioneering researchers in the field of plasmonics, creating the concept of the “tunable plasmon” and inventing a family of nanoparticles with resonances spanning the visible and infrared regions of the spectrum. She is a member of the National Academy of Sciences, the National Academy of Engineering, and Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry (UK). She co-founded NanoSpectra, Inc. to commercialize nanoshell technology developed in her laboratory, currently in clinical trials nationwide for prostate cancer therapy. Prof. Halas is a co-founder and adviser of technology and government grants at Syzygy.

Prof. Nordlander is Weiss Chair and Professor of Physics and Astronomy, Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering, and Professor of Materials Science and Nanoengineering at Rice University. He obtained his PhD in Theoretical Physics at Chalmers University of Technology in Sweden in 1985. He is a world-renowned researcher in theoretical condensed matter physics and nanophysics, specifically on the theoretical and computational modeling of plasmonics and nanophotonics phenomena. He has published more than 250 refereed articles, given more than 300 invited presentations at international conferences and workshops, been cited more than 25,000 times with a Web of Science h-index in the 90s. Prof. Nordlander is a co-founder and technology adviser at Syzygy.