DENVER, COLORADO — (Apr. 27, 2012) – The Chief Executive Officer of ALD NanoSolutions, Michael Masterson, has been awarded the prestigious University of Colorado Distinguished Engineering Alumni Award for his work in Industry or Commerce. This award was established to award alumni with outstanding contributions to both the industry and the University of Colorado. In 2012 only five alumni were given these highly competitive awards.
Michael Masterson’s career has been focused on creating sustainable companies in the alternative energy, advanced materials, and biopharmaceutical industries. He is currently the managing director of Oxford Innovations, as well as the chairman and chief executive officer of ALD NanoSolutions, a spinoff company from CU-Boulder.
As a co-founder, CEO, and investor in multiple technology companies over the past 30 years, Masterson has strived to build compelling companies in collaboration with thought leaders from world-class industrial and academic institutions. He has raised over $100 million in investment capital from the leading venture firms in the U.S. and has created over $500 million in commercial value from these investments.
In 1985, he co-founded Kemper-Masterson, which focused on testing computer systems for FDA compliance. The firm achieved great success and was acquired by Parexel, the leading contract research organization for clinical trials. In 2000, he became a venture partner in Flagship Ventures, an MIT-based firm, where he focused on launching early-stage life sciences companies. Some of his notable successes over the last decade include BG Medicine and Xcellerex (acquired by GE Healthcare).
In 2003, he launched ALD NanoSolutions with CU professors Steve George, Alan Weimer, and Karen Buechler to commercialize the atomic layer deposition intellectual property developed at the University of Colorado. The company has received extensive recognition for materials innovation, has been awarded 18 Phase I and seven Phase II SBIR grants, and has collaborated with multiple industrial companies in the electronics, lighting, medical, and energy markets.
Masterson teamed up with Weimer again in 2006 to co-found Copernican Energy, to commercialize the concentrated solar power reactor developed at CU. As the CEO, Masterson orchestrated a merger with Sundrop Fuels in 2008, and the company recently received a $155 million investment from Chesapeake Energy.
In addition to his current positions at Oxford Innovations and ALD NanoSolutions, Masterson has a joint appointment as an “Entrepreneur in Residence” at the Isenberg School of Business and the School of Engineering at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, and is vice chairman of the Wentworth Institute of Technology in Boston.
He earned his bachelor’s degree in chemical engineering at the University of Massachusetts in 1975, and his master’s in chemical engineering at CU-Boulder in 1977. He also is a graduate of the Owner/President Management Program at the Harvard Business School.