Summary

Brian Neltner, Ph.D. is a lab manager and technical instructor at MIT as well as the President of Neltner Labs. He received bachelors degrees in Physics and Materials Science from MIT in 2005, a Ph.D. in Materials Science from MIT in 2010, and completed a Post-Doc in Chemical Engineering at CU Boulder.

Brian’s thesis involved genetically engineering a virus to assemble three different catalyst materials in a careful geometric arrangement. Brian designed and built a custom chemical reactor, control electronics to use a fuel injector, valves, and mass flow controllers to operate the system, along with gas chromatography, FTIR, and on-line specialty gas sensors to prove that the catalyst could eliminate the need for rhodium in the conversion of ethanol to hydrogen gas.

Extensive characterization work was performed with high-temperature XRD, SEM, TEM, BET, and XPS. This concept was adapted and used to start Siluria, where they worked to convert natural gas into ethylene. Brian next went to a Post-Doc with Prof Alan Weimer at CU Boulder and then started Navolta to develop thin film supercritical coating technologies through a NSF SBIR grant.

In 2015, Brian went to California to work at Visolis as the Director of Process Development where he led a team of eight engineers and scientists, developed SOPs and test plans, built new analytical tools for fermentation systems, and used DoE methodology to analyze results and optimize catalyst materials. In this role, Brian successfully developed and tested catalysts to convert biomolecules into commodity chemicals for plastics with a yield of over 97%, as well as identifying a new target chemical and bringing yields to over 60%. He also managed an outside independent verification of yield results with PNNL, and assisted with writing multiple awarded Phase I and Phase II SBIR grants.

MIT Lab Manager and Instructor

Brian started working at MIT in 2018. He manages an electronic materials shared experimental facility and co-manages the undergraduate teaching lab for the Department of Materials Science. Some of the shared experimental equipment he is responsible for includes:

• DynaCool PPMS

• Customized Vibrating Scanning Magnetometer

• Four Point Probe

• Probe Station with Ferroelectric Testing equipment (Radiant II)

Brian is also responsible for working to extend these tools with custom external equipment, such as performing measurements with an external lock-in amplifier, current sources, or using additional signals as gate drives for more complex 3 and 4-terminal devices. He is responsible for environmental health and safety in both facilities, repairs and maintenance of equipment, managing reservations, training, and billing.

Brian designs equipment for effectively teaching undergraduate level material science principles and occasional acts as an instructor. He was the assistant instructor for 3.48, a graduate course on measurement science. He also redesigned a lab class on solid ionic conductors to use impedance spectroscopy with customized LabView software, along with teaching the undergraduates how to manually construct fitting algorithms for non-linear equations, error bars, and weighted fits using error estimates.

Finally, Brian spends a great deal of time mentoring graduate students and helping them learn to design and manufacture custom experimental systems for tasks such as magnetic measurements, robotics, and designing equipment for high throughput experiments, often using LabView for control software along with custom firmware and python.

Neltner Labs

Neltner Labs is a small business that helps new hard-tech startups design, manufacturer, and design experiments using custom designed professional equipment. Examples of past projects include helping MindMics design customized bluetooth earbuds for health monitoring, helping DropWorks design a high-throughput digital PCR instrument, and LyteChip to design a sophisticated spectrophotometer. He also helps companies like Phoenix Tailings with grant writing support for their unique rare earth recycling technology.

Most clients are especially interested in bringing a novel scientific tool to commercialization. Brian’s experience with Materials Science, Physics, Chemical Engineering, and Bioengineering combine with electronics and design experience to put together compelling solutions to technical challenges often faced especially by early stage hard-tech startups.

Hobbies and Art

In addition to this core work in Materials Science and electronics, Brian founded the SaikoLED project to develop open source LED lighting for art projects. This art incorporates his  LED lighting into joint projects with mixed media artists such as Janet Fox to achieve stunning visual effects. He also developed unique strobe lights that use the Ganzfeld effect to introduce unique visual effects directly into the visual cortex of the viewers. Brian is a musician, and enjoys working with electronic music, classical voice, and harmonica.

Brian is interested in quite a few non-technical past-times and has spent a great deal of time refining his hobbies. He practice Shotokan Karate directly under Grandmaster Kazumi Tabata and reached the rank of nidan (second degree blackbelt) in 2009. He was an instructor for the MIT Shotokan Karate Club and a physical education instructor at MIT.