Education & Workforce Panelists' Biographies

Fritz Prinz Director, Fuel Cells Consortium; Chair of Mechanical Engineering, Stanford University

Fritz Prinz is the Chair of Mechanical Engineering at Stanford University, as well as the Director of the Rapid Prototyping Laboratory and the Director of the Fuel Cells Consortium. His current work focuses on the design and fabrication of micro- and nanoscale devices for energy and biology. Examples include fuel cells and bioreactors. He is interested in mass transport phenomena across thin membranes such as oxide films and lipid bi-layers. His research group studies electro-chemical phenomena with the help of Atomic Force Microscopy, Impedance Spectroscopy, and Quantum Modeling.

Roland Winston Professor of Natural Sciences & Engineering Chair University of California, Merced

Prof. Winston came to UC Merced in 2003 after an academic career at The University of Chicago where he chaired the physics department for six years. Since coming to UC Merced, he was Chancellor's Professor with named scholarship (2006), chaired the UCMerced division of the academic senate (2005-6), received the first ASME energy award (2006), wrote Nonimaging Optics, Academic Press (Elsevier) 2005, wrote many papers, several licensed patents and started a solar energy group with California Energy Commission support. Prof. Winston continues his collaboration with NA48, a high energy physics experiment at CERN, Geneva, Switzerland.

Jennifer Oliver Director, Center of Excellence West Valley College

Jennifer Oliver is the Director of the Greater Silicon Valley Center of Excellence hosted at West Valley College. The Center is one of nine regional Centers of Excellence funded by the Chancellor’s Office of the California Community Colleges. Ms. Oliver, in partnership with business and industry, delivers regional workforce research and information customized for the eleven community colleges in the Greater Silicon Valley for their decision-making and resource development.

Prior to this position, Jennifer led the corporate training unit at West Valley College, where she developed training solutions for Silicon Valley employers. Jennifer also has an extensive background in delivering programs for jobseekers to prepare them to enter the workforce.

John Carrese Director, Center of Excellence City College of San Francisco

John Carrese is the Director of the San Francisco Bay Region Center of Excellence hosted at City College of San Francisco. The Center is one of nine regional Centers of Excellence funded by the Chancellor’s Office of the California Community Colleges. Mr. Carrese implements the Center's environmental scanning, partnership development and regional marketing activities on behalf of the fifteen colleges in the Northern Bay Area.

Mr. Carrese has extensive experience conducting DACUMs (Developing a Curriculum) with industry and college partners. He is also skilled in conducting research, designing performance-based training programs, and facilitating teams. He has over twenty years of experience in the workforce and economic development field and has worked at City College of San Francisco for the past ten years.

Preston Roper Founder and Chief Executive Officer Tioga Energy

Preston Roper is responsible for development, operations and marketing at Tioga Energy. He brings over two decades of experience leading innovative marketing and operations teams at high-growth technology companies, including Honeywell, NetDynamics (acquired by Sun Microsystems in 1998) and Synopsys (that issued an IPO in 1992). Roper was recently senior vice president of marketing and sales at Bitpass. Previously he was VP Marketing at business intelligence provider JasperSoft, as well as vice president of marketing at Tesaria, a provider of mobile commerce solutions. Prior to completing his Masters of Business Administration at Stanford University, he led business development and fund-raising for the University in Germany, where he also became fluent in German. Roper holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Mechanical Engineering and a Master of Science degree in hardware-software co-design from Stanford University.

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