Prior to joining as CEO, Mr. Kappers was a consultant for The Coretec Group since 2018. Mr. Kappers has extensive transactional and operational experience working with both startups and publicly traded companies. Matthew also serves as a Managing Director at Concordia Financial Group, an investment bank and consulting firm since 2011. He has experience in operations, mergers and acquisitions, and strategic planning. Mr. Kappers earned a B.A. degree from Vanderbilt University and a M.B.A. degree from Miami University.
As CFO, Matt manages organizational growth, financial reporting, modeling, and system development. Matt has worked with early-stage, high-growth businesses for the past 15 years in financial and operational capacities.
Matt’s start-up experiences have produced 30-40% annual growth through acquisition for shareholders. First, as the Controller at Adaptive Materials (AMI), a portable power development and manufacturing company, acquired by Ultra Electronics. Then, as CFO of MI Bioresearch (MI Bio), a CRO for pre-clinical drug discovery, who was acquired by Covance (LabCorp). Prior to working for startups, Matt began his professional career in public accounting at Weidmayer, Schneider, Raham & Bennett. Matt holds a Bachelor of Business Administration degree from Western Michigan University, a license as a Certified Public Accountant in the State of Michigan, and a Secret level (inactive) DoD clearance.
Ramez has a broad background in science, engineering, and entrepreneurship. He is a Senior Research Associate at the University of Tennessee where he manages a broad spectrum of projects in energy storage and energy generating devices including fuel cells, flow batteries, and lithium-ion batteries. He served as Director of New Applications for Sylvatex Inc. developing advanced lithium-ion battery materials and prior to that he co-founded two clean-tech companies: Novoform Technologies (which develops catalysts for gas-to-liquid conversion and was acquired in 2014) and Saratoga Energy Research Partners (focused on electrochemical CO2 conversion process to synthesize carbon nanomaterials for lithium-ion battery anodes). He has over 40 publications and conference proceedings and 7 patents pending. Dr. Elgammal earned his M.Sc. in Applied Physics and Ph.D. in Chemistry at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) as a Rosen Fellow and holds an honor's B.S. in Chemistry from Central Michigan University where he was a Centralis Scholar.