History and Staff - VerdeNero

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VerdeNero was founded to fill and bridge a gap between conventional engineering and consulting firms. Most business consulting firm focus on business development, strategy and economics but are often detached from the techncal realities of the development. Many engineering firms provide design and engineering services or an analysis of the technical feasibility of any given technology solution, but do not provide an assessment of the economic and regulatory constraints of the business that deployes it. We help our customers understanding where todays technology is limited by the economics of the present and unveiling the path to develop the capability to harness the opportunities of the future.

Luca Zullo Ph.D., Principal

Luca Zullo holds a Degree in Chemical Engineering from the University of Padua, Italy and a Ph.D. also in Chemical Engineering from Imperial College of Science, Technology and Medicine in London, United Kingdom. He started his career at Shell Research in The Netherlands where he was involved with design and automation of novel petrochemical and oil refining processes. He joined Cray Research in Minneapolis, Minnesota to lead the effort to apply high performance computing applications to the petrochemical and oil refining industry. During that time and after Cray's aquisition by Silicon Graphics, he led a project aiming to integrate large scale process simulation with 3D visualization to provide a fully dynamic and immersive simulation environment for training, design and process improvement. This project, “The Virtual Plant” was a finalist for the Smithsonian-Computerworld award for innovation in Computing. After joining Cargill, he focused on biofuels and bio-energy in plant operations with an emphasis on “waste” to energy and second generation biofuels. During that time he also led the technical effort of a group that developed domestically and internationally methane capture projects in agricultural operations to harvest renewable energy and carbon credits under the Clean Development Mechanism of the Kyoto Protocol. Luca is a co-founder of BioCee, Inc. a firm devoted to commercialize a novel bio-coating technology developed at the University of Minnesota. He’s an appointed member to the Minnesota’s Governor Pawlenty Clean Energy Technology Collaborative, and sits on the technical advisory board of several companies.