Meet our Team

Marcie Black, PhD, Co-founder & CEO

Marcie Black is CEO and co-founder of Advanced Silicon Group. Dr. Black brings to the company expertise in building strong teams, managing development projects, patents, IP strategy, encouraging a healthy company culture, cost modeling, and running a startup. In addition, Dr. Black has a strong technical background in the areas of electronic materials, optics, semiconductors, solar cells/photovoltaics, batteries, renewable energy, nanotechnology, device design, and opto-electronics.

Prior to founding ASG, Marcie was the President and co-founder of Bandgap Engineering, which focused on lowering the cost of solar electricity through black silicon or silicon nanowire solar cells. Before joining Bandgap, Marcie was a technical staff member at Los Alamos National Laboratory and worked on a variety of nanotechnology and optical systems. She began at Los Alamos National Labs as a prestigious Director’s Funded Post Doc, developing organic and nano solar cells. Marcie has a Ph.D. from MIT in Electrical Engineering, under the supervision of Institute Professor, Mildred Dresselhaus. Prior to her Ph.D. work, Marcie was a device engineer at Motorola where she was on a small team responsible for combining non-volatile memory and logic onto the same chip. She improved the manufacturing yields by working with the process engineer to improve silicide formation. In 2009, she was awarded an R&D 100 award for her contributions to work at LANL. Marcie also was honored as one of the ten “Women-to-Watch in 2010” by Mass High Tech. Marcie has published over 30+ papers, given two TedxTalks, and has a long list of patents issued.

Bill Rever, MSE/MBA, Co-founder and CMSO

Bill Rever is the Chief Marketing and Sales Officer and co-founder of ASG, leading ASG's commercial activities. Since 2012, he has worked as an independent consultant in solar and renewable energy with clients in industry, investment, and government both in the U.S. and abroad. Bill began his career in solar energy in 1982 with industry pioneer Solarex which eventually merged with and became part of BP Solar in 1999. He held a variety of roles within that company including applications engineering, project management, product management, marketing, business development and strategy. In his tenure with BP Solar and Solarex Bill was involved in the production, marketing, and deployment of over 1 GW of PV in over 150 countries including many seminal applications, product innovations and projects. With over 30 years of experience in PV he is frequently called on as an industry expert and has spoken at numerous conferences and events.

Bill has a B.A. in Physics from the Johns Hopkins University, an M.S.E. in Energy Engineering from the University of Pennsylvania, and an M.B.A. from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. He is a member of the Sigma Pi Sigma Physics Honor Society and the Solar Energy Industries Association (SEIA). He is a former board member and past President of the Maryland/DC/Virginia chapter of the Solar Energy Industries Association and former Co-Chairman of the PV Advisory Group of the North American Semiconductor Industry Association (SEMI).

Nguyen Le, PhD, Biochemistry Engineer

Nguyen Le is ASG’s Biochemistry Engineer. She is leading the biochemistry process development for our biosensor as well as working with the device team to further improve our sensors. She brings with her knowledge of nano-bio interface, in particular nanostructured silicon, for evaluating and optimizing the performance of the sensors. Nguyen obtained her BS in Biochemistry and PhD in Chemistry from Texas Christian University from Prof. Jeff Coffer's research group, and she is a member of Phi Beta Kappa Honor Society. Her dissertation focused on characterizations of one-dimensional porous nanotube structure of silicon and the application of the material as drug delivery vector.

Celeste Bedard, Engineering Technician

Celeste Bedard began her career in semiconductors as an entry level technician with what was then known as Microwave Associates. She was trained in the metals lab first in the area of wet plating and then onto evaporations and sputtering using the high vacuum equipment. She also gained knowledge and experience in the use of high temperature furnace operations as well as a unique lift-off process.

Over the course of her career, she has had the opportunity to expand the fabrication processes in her skills folder working with a variety of materials from ferrites and ceramics to Si, SiC, GaAs, GaN.

Celeste has over 20 years of direct hands-on experience in semiconductor processing including experience in wet and dry chemistry, diffusion, deposition, photolithography, and physical vapor deposition. She has previously worked in clean rooms at Alpha Industries and Raytheon and is very knowledgeable about semiconductor processing techniques. At ASG, Celeste uses her expertise in silicon processes to manufacture the silicon biosensors and further develop the fabrication process.

Balaadithya Uppalapati, PhD, Senior Device and Testing Engineer

Bala Uppalapati is ASG's Senior Device and Testing Engineer. Bala is working with the team to build better photoelectric silicon nanowire biosensors as well as improving the ways that we test our sensors. He comes to us from Clemson University where he completed his PhD in the Nanoscale Electronics and Sensors Lab in the Electrical Engineering Department. Bala specializes in characterization of microelectronic devices, semiconductor sensors, and semiconductor fabrication. Bala received his Master's degree from University of Dayton in Electrical Engineering and his Bachelor of Engineering in Electrical, Electronics and Communications Engineering at the Visvesvaraya Technological University.

Ashley Wenning, Biochemistry

Ashley supports the Advanced Silicon Group team in biochemistry development and leads the ELISA testing used for benchmarking and validation. With a strong background in biological experimentation, she plays a key role in generating high-quality data and advancing ASG’s platform.

Ashley developed deep expertise in ELISA methodologies during her graduate studies and recognized the significant market need for improved biological testing solutions, which drew her to join the ASG team.

She holds a Master’s degree in Biology from the University of Massachusetts Lowell and a Bachelor’s degree in Biotechnology from the University of New Hampshire at Manchester. Her academic research included investigating the antibiotic properties of microplastic biofilms, contributing to emerging research on microbial interactions and antimicrobial discovery.