Our Team
John C. Lin
Co-founder, President
John C. Lin is the co-founder and President of Exaquest Carbon and also a member of Exaquest’s board of directors. John has a B.A. in Economics (Drew University, 2002), a J.D. (University of Pennsylvania Law School, 2006), and B.S. and M.S. degrees in Chemical Engineering (CCNY, 2015 and Stanford University, 2019).
John completed a federal judicial clerkship after finishing law school and also practiced law as a commercial litigator before deciding to switch to a climate-related career in 2011. As part of this career switch, John went back to college to study chemical engineering and then spent 4 years in the Chemical Engineering PhD program at Stanford, where his research focused on electrochemical CO2 reduction, a.k.a. “artificial photosynthesis.” After 4 years of working on artificial photosynthesis, John concluded that natural photosynthesis is a better technology for capturing and converting CO2 and founded Exaquest Carbon to develop open-source technologies that will maximize the amount of carbon that is stored in terrestrial biomass.
John currently lives in San Francisco, CA with his wife and daughter.
Amber Janda, PhD
Co-founder, CTO
Amber Janda is co-founder and CTO of Exaquest Carbon. She holds bachelor’s degrees in Chemical Engineering and Chemistry (University of Wisconsin-Madison, 2006) and a PhD in Chemical Engineering (University of California-Berkeley, 2015). Prior to beginning her doctoral studies, Amber worked as a process research engineer at Dow Chemical. During her time at Dow, Amber performed lab scale experimentation, process optimization, and specified raw materials and major equipment for the manufacture of polyurethane/polyisocyanurate foams used to reduce energy consumption in the building sector. Amber returned to graduate school to continue her work reducing energy consumption by focusing her thesis research on catalysts, materials that increase the efficiency and yield of chemical processes. Amber subsequently completed postdoctoral work at Stanford University, where she researched catalysts for the thermochemical conversion of CO2 to commodity chemicals, and then co-founded Exaquest Carbon as a board member with John Lin. Amber is now Exaquest Carbon’s CTO.
Amber lives with her husband and daughter in Cupertino, CA.
Ning Zeng
Advisor
My general research interests are in the field of climate change and climate variability on time scales ranging from seasonal-interannual to glacial-interglacial cycles. My approach is to study the Earth system as a whole, focusing on the interactions among various components, in particular, the atmosphere, the hydrosphere and the biosphere. Currently my research covers two different but inter-connected areas: carbon cycle-climate interaction and the modeling of atmosphere-land-vegetation-ocean system. I also conduct research in the technical solutions and policy implications of climate change, including renewable energy and carbon sequestration.