John Russo

Innovative professional with a distinguished and proven track record encompassing over 25 years of progressive management, marketing and sales expertise in the broadcast production and digital media industries. Committed to the development, implementation and exploitation of new cutting edge technologies. Special interest in new concepts that foster consumer adoption and provide new interpretations upon existing traditional platforms. Outstanding history of strategic vision and problem solving. Created from inception three successful entities; all as Founding Principal and acting as President.

Ryan Robinson PhD

Ryan’s PhD is in Mechanical Engineering and Mechanics researching in the area of non-equilibrium plasmas. His primary research is focused on non-equilibrium-atmospheric plasma and the application to production of plasma activated water (PAW).

           At PLA he is Leading a team of engineers and researchers implementing plasma activated water for agricultural applications, including augmented crop growth and sterilization. Developing commercially viable apparatuses and providing technical expertise to clients adopting innovative plasma agricultural techniques.

Sid Joshi MBA

Sid is a Biomedical Engineer, with a background in antibacterial plasma and wound care research at Drexel University. In order to expand on his experience in drug delivery and biomedical solutions, he pursued his Master’s in Biomedical Engineering at Cornell University, followed by an MBA at Cornell University’s SC Johnson School of Management, focusing on Entrepreneurship and General Management. Advocating for plasma technology and its applications in new business fields is his passion, which he aims to fulfill through his work at Lightning Water. 

Dr. Simon Mills

Suresh Joshi, MD, PHD, MSC.

Dr. Joshi is an adjunct professor at the A.J. Drexel Plasma Institute, as well as Drexel’s School of Biomedical Engineering. He has a special interest in emerging bacterial infections, disinfection and sterilization, and biodefense. Dr. Joshi’s research areas are related to bacterial pathogenesis and biofilms and wound infection and healing. He has extensive experience in the areas of antimicrobial resistance, nosocomial infection control strategies, and molecular and clinical epidemiology, drug development and animal infection models.

Michael Zaytsev

Michael Zaytsev is a Cannabis Business Coach who serves an extensive network of high performing entrepreneurs including Silicon Valley’s elite and pioneers in all verticals of the Cannabis industry. As the organizer of High NY, New York’s largest community of Cannabis activists and entrepreneurs, Mike has produced dozens of education and networking events for a community of 4,000 New Yorkers and growing.

Francesco Di Gioia

Francesco Di Gioia

Associate Professor of Vegetable Crop Science in the Department of Plant Science at The Pennsylvania State University.

Dr. Di Gioia is a vegetable specialist at Penn State. The primary goal of his integrated research and extension program is to improve the sustainability of vegetable production systems and improve vegetable nutritional quality. Working across different crops and growing systems (open field, protected, and controlled environment) and methods (conventional, organic, soil-based, and soilless systems), his research focuses on developing and optimizing solutions aimed at improving crop resource use efficiency (irrigation, fertilization, energy), reducing the use of synthetic inputs (synthetic fertilizer and agrochemicals), and improving the nutritional value of vegetable crops employing agronomic techniques.

Among other things, over the past 5 years, Dr. Di Gioia has been leading the Penn State Plasma Agriculture Research Initiative, working with a network of colleagues, experts in different disciplines spanning from engineering to horticulture, plant science, plant pathology, food science, and agricultural economy. The primary focus of the initiative has been on developing and testing Plasma Agriculture solutions on a range of agricultural applications, including direct non-thermal plasma (NTP) and plasma-activated water (PAW) applications. His team has been evaluating the effect of NTP and PAW on seed germination and vigor, germination synchrony, and plant growth and nutritional quality, using microgreens of different species as test crops.

More recently, partnering with Plasma Licensing Authority, Dr. Di Gioia and his team have been evaluating the effects of PAW processing time and storage time on the physicochemical properties of PAW. Using the Plasma Licensing Authority PAW, their research demonstrated that it is possible to substitute synthetic nitrogen fertilizer with PAW, which contains nitrogen fixed from the atmosphere, in a form suitable for plant uptake.

Currently, they are working on optimizing PAW processing for different agricultural applications (i.e., sanitization, fertilization, biofortification) using different vegetable species as test crops.

Dr. received his B.S. and M.S. in Agricultural Science and Technology and his Ph.D. in Mediterranean Agronomy at the University of Bari in Italy. Before joining Penn State in 2018, he was a postdoc at the University of Bari and the University of Florida.

Dr. Alexander Fridman

As Nyheim Chair Professor and Director of the C. & J. Nyheim Plasma Institute of Drexel University, Dr. Alexander Fridman is a recognized world leader in research relating to plasma science and engineering. Dr. Fridman is renowned for his developments in novel plasma approaches to material treatment, fuel conversion, hydrogen production, aerospace engineering, biology, environmental control, agriculture and food processing.

Dr. Alexander Rabinovich

Associate Director of C. & J. Nyheim Plasma Institute; Research Professor