Team
Joe Lamy
Founder & CEO
Joe is responsible for the company’s direction and participates in all aspects of the company and its strategic development. Prior, Joe helped grow Ingenio, Inc. from 10 employees inside Benchmark Capital’s office to over 100 employees and achieved profitability and revenue of over $75 million before being sold to AT&T. Its investors included: Benchmark, eBay, Microsoft, Integral Capital (KPCB), Vulcan, and The Carlyle Group. He later developed over $300 million in commercial real estate in Austin, Texas before founding LWS.
Joe began work in corporate finance in BT Alex. Brown’s (Deutsche Bank Technology Group in San Francisco. He completed equity, debt and M&A transactions for companies including: eBay, Webvan, NBCi, Nintendo, CBS, Zip2 and CNET (among others). Joe graduated from Rice University with a BA in Economics and was a letterman on the Southwest Conference Championship football team.
Joe sat on the Advisory Committee of NEWT, the NSF-backed Nano-Technology ERC for water treatment from 2015-2017 and is currently an Executive Board Member of St Gabriel’s Catholic School.
Kyle Wendel
SVP Business Development
Mr. Wendel is responsible for the company’s business development strategy and pursuits.
Prior to LWS, Mr. Wendel was the founder of AquaAlert, a technology company focused on detecting lead in drinking water. Prior to AquaAlert, Mr. Wendel spent over 10 years running product management and marketing for GE Water’s global thermal products and zero liquid discharge (ZLD) business. In this role, he was primarily responsible for identifying and commercializing new water treatment technologies. Before GE, Mr. Wendel worked as an equity research analyst for JP Morgan Chase & Co.
Mr. Wendel graduated from University of Pennsylvania with a BA in Biology and later earned an MBA at the University of Southern California’s Marshall School of Business.
Wayne Wolf
Director of Water Systems
Mr. Wolf leads water system design and product development. Prior to LWS, Wayne was the Founder and CTO of Austin Venture-backed Omni Water Solutions, a water technology company focused on water reclamation for the oil and gas industry. Wayne was responsible for product innovation and continuous development of Omni treatment systems across all markets. Mr. Wolf managed hardware and software development, permitting activity, and applied research. Mr. Wolf was previously CEO of Ozone Technology, Inc., in Austin, Texas, a leading manufacturer of advanced oxidation systems serving the water treatment industry. He has 22 years of experience in advanced water treatment processes and strategies for small to mid-sized municipalities, commercial waste water treatment plants, and remediation work for the oil and gas industry. Mr. Wolf is an expert in the use of ozone and other oxidation technologies in combination with a wide variety of water treatment systems.
Pratiksha Dongare
Director of Streed Technologies
Ms. Dongare is responsible for all R&D efforts related to Streed technology for LWS. She has been conducting experimental research in development of innovative desalination technologies since 2015. She finished her Master’s in Applied Physics from Rice University in 2017 and a Ph. D. in 2019, and is also an Assistant Research Professor at Rice University. She has won several awards for her desalination research including “2021 Outstanding Postdoctoral Research Award” from Rice University and “2021 Women in Science Incentive Prize”, awarded to 5 young women innovators across the US, by the Story Exchange. Prior to joining Rice, she worked as a Junior Research Fellow at Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, Mumbai, India, conducting research of graphene nanoelectronics. She finished her dual degree in Master of Physics and Bachelor of Engineering in Electronics & Instrumentation from Birla Institute of Technology and Science, Pilani, India in 2013.
Ed Gross
VP Waterkeys® Platform
Ed has a broad background in computer engineering, which have included both senior engineering and executive level positions. As both an electrical engineering and computer engineer, his work has included advanced real time data acquisition systems for Boeing Space Systems. At Convex Computers, he led some of the seminal work in today’s High Definition Television standards. Ed has architected and implemented state of the art wireless IoT systems with small private companies like goLock and RF Code. At Lucent Technologies, he was responsible for the Networking Center of Excellence that provided network development and 24/7 telephony services around the world. Ed has a BSEE from Carnegie Mellon University.
Patricia Baumhart
Director of Finance
Patricia is a collaborative leader with prior experience in management, consulting, and financial roles with Silicon Graphics, Accenture, PwC and startups in quantum computing and cybersecurity. She also serves on several Advisory boards including NDIA Lone Star.
Patricia is a graduate of Harvard University, earning her MBA. She graduated summa cum laude from Loyola University in Chicago, with a Bachelor in Business Administration, and obtained her CPA.
Bryan Leppi
Co-Founder, Board Member, SVP Corporate Development
Dr. Naomi Halas
Advisor
Naomi J. Halas is the Stanley C. Moore Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Rice University, where she also holds faculty appointments in the Departments of Physics and Astronomy, Chemistry, Materials Science and Nanoengineering, and Bioengineering. She received her B. S. Degree in Chemistry from La Salle University in Philadelphia and her PhD in Physics from Bryn Mawr College. She was a graduate fellow at IBM Yorktown for her PhD research and a postdoctoral fellow at AT&T Bell Laboratories prior to joining Rice. She is best known as the first person to demonstrate that controlling the geometry of metallic nanoparticles determines their color, and pursues fundamental studies and applications of nanophotonics ranging from biomedicine to water treatment. She is author of more than 350 refereed publications, has more than 20 issued patents, and has presented more than 600 invited talks. Two companies have been founded based on her research: Nanospectra Biosciences (Photothermal Cancer Therapy, in clinical trials) and Syzygy Plasmonics (Low-temperature Photocatalysis for sustainable fuels). She is Fellow of the APS, OSA, SPIE, IEEE, MRS, and the National Academy of Inventors. She has been awarded the Frank Isakson Prize and Julius Lilienfeld Prize of the APS, the R. W. Wood Prize of the OSA, the ACS Award in Colloid Chemistry, and the Spiers Medal of the Royal Society of Chemistry. Halas has been elected to the National Academies of Sciences and Engineering (U. S.), the Royal Society of Chemistry (U. K.), and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
Tim Dehne
Advisor
Tim Dehne brings more than 30 years of experience in leading and building high tech companies in both engineering and marketing. Tim spent over 21 years at National Instruments with responsibilities including VP of Marketing, VP Engineering, and SVP of R&D. Tim later helped lead Luminex, a biomedical device manufacturer, as VP of Systems R&D and VP of Global Marketing. He also has small business start-up experience from his work at Briggo, Inc, which created an automated coffee kiosk. He is currently a member of the Board of Directors of a public company, Cirrus Logic and a private company, Asset InterTech. Dehne holds a Bachelor of Science in Electrical Engineering from Rice University. He also serves on the Executive Committee for Rice Alliance Austin.