A career spent moving hard technology from invention to deployed capability.

I have spent my career at the intersection of materials science, RF and microwave systems, MEMS, and advanced manufacturing — turning technical insight into real-world hardware that defense and industrial customers can actually field. The pattern across my work is consistent: identify a hard technical problem, build a small operating company around it, move the technology through funded programs and manufactured product, and either exit to a larger industry buyer or stand the company up as durable operating capability.

ACT MicroDevices → Haleos → Rohm and Haas Electronic Materials (2002). Founded in 1996 as ACT MicroDevices, re-incorporated as Haleos, and acquired by Rohm and Haas Electronic Materials in 2002 (now part of Dow Chemical following the 2009 Dow/Rohm and Haas merger). The Haleos IP became the seed of the PolyStrata platform that followed.

Nuvotronics → Cubic Corporation (2019). Founded in 2006. Built PolyStrata 3D-microfabricated millimeter-wave components for U.S. defense and aerospace customers. 13-year build through DARPA Phase I–III programs, manufactured hardware, and customer adoption. Acquired by Cubic Corporation in 2019.

NuvoNexus, MacroVation, Helicon Defense, Phoenix Asset Recovery (current). Operating today as a portfolio. NuvoNexus is the holding-company spine. MacroVation is a defense-materials R&D operating company with active SBIR/STTR programs across USMC, NAVSEA, and ONR. Helicon Defense is being developed as a U.S. and allied transition platform for selected Ukrainian and allied defense technologies. Phoenix Asset Recovery turns surplus deep-tech and process-industry assets into deployable capability.

Across two decades of building and operating, the work has concentrated in a coherent technical zone where chemistry, physics, electromagnetics, and manufacturing meet:

• RF and microwave electronics. Millimeter-wave structures, antennas, filters, packaging, and 3D-microfabricated transmission lines. The PolyStrata platform at Nuvotronics was the most public expression of this.
• MEMS and microfabrication. Lithography-based microfabrication, sealed structures, additive microscale processes, and precision metal microstructures.
• Materials science and composites. Defense-relevant materials, composite tooling, controlled material systems, and process chemistry. This is MacroVation's current operating zone.
• Advanced manufacturing. Process scale-up, manufacturability constraints, trusted supply chains, technical data packages, and low-rate production engineering — the discipline that turns a prototype into a fieldable product.
• Defense electronics and systems integration. Counter-UAS payloads, RF sensing, electronic warfare components, and the systems context that determines whether a component matters.
• Hard-technology commercialization. The non-technical layer that decides whether good technology actually reaches a customer: IP structure, program acquisition, prime relationships, customer translation, and exit pathways.

Most deep-tech companies fail somewhere between funded R&D and fieldable product. Not because the technology is wrong. Because the operating discipline that connects invention to acquisition, manufacturing, and sustainment is the harder part.

The principles that govern how I build and operate:

• Match technology to a specific operational problem. Generic capability is not a product. Mission-relevant capability is.
• Build with manufacturing in mind from the first prototype. A capability that cannot be sourced, built, and supported is a demonstration, not a product.
• Treat program execution as a technical discipline. Schedule, performance against milestones, customer relationships, and contract discipline matter as much as physics.
• Stay close to the work long enough to make the transition happen. Most failures occur in the years after R&D funding ends and before customer adoption begins. That is where operating presence is required.
• Recover and redeploy capability. The same operating skill that builds a deep-tech company can also recover and redeploy the technical capability inside a previous one. That is Phoenix Asset Recovery's logic.

NuvoNexus, LLC is the holding-company platform across the current operating portfolio. It exists to connect technical judgment, operating discipline, capital allocation, and company formation across hard-technology opportunities. Cocoa Beach, FL with operating sites in Fairlawn, VA.

MacroVation, LLC is a defense-materials and defense R&D operating company — my day-to-day program-execution surface. Four active federally funded programs across USMC, NAVSEA, and ONR. The work spans non-lethal stand-off immobilization systems, additive composite tooling, warfighter recovery materials, and related defense-materials problems.

Helicon Defense is being developed under NuvoNexus as a U.S. and allied transition platform for selected Ukrainian and allied defense technologies — helping operationally validated capabilities move toward trusted U.S./allied evaluation, manufacturing, acquisition, and sustainment pathways. It is a separate operating company, not part of MacroVation.

Phoenix Asset Recovery turns surplus deep-tech and process-industry assets into deployable capability for the next operator. Fairlawn, VA.

I also serve as an advisor to Phase Shift Ventures, a deep-tech venture fund focused on the Florida Space Coast and adjacent technology corridors.

Operating across two locations: Cocoa Beach, FL on the Space Coast, and Fairlawn, VA in the Southwest Virginia defense-industrial corridor near the Radford Army Ammunition Plant, Virginia Tech, and the regional manufacturing ecosystem. The dual base reflects the work: Florida for capital, advisory, and Space Coast technology relationships; Virginia for physical engineering, materials processing, prototype manufacturing, and proximity to the defense industrial base.