Val Miftakhov, ZeroAvia Founder and CEO, is a serial cleantech entrepreneur who knows how to scale technology for use by existing transportation industries. Val's previous venture, eMotorWerks, developed smart vehicle-grid integration hardware and software, and was acquired in 2017. eMotorWerks' JuiceBox Smart EV charging station is the best-selling product in its category in the United States for the last 5 years. Before eMotorWerks, Val held executive business strategy & operations positions at Google, McKinsey & Company, and Nielsen. He also launched and managed three startup companies, in all of which he held the CTO positions. Prior to his industry experience, Val was a high energy physics researcher at Stanford Linear Accelerator, a Department of Energy facility. Val received his PhD in Physics from Princeton University and his MS in Physics from Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology. He was a two-time winner of the Nationwide Russian Physics Competitions. In whatever spare time he gets, Val tries to get good use out of his airplane and helicopter pilot licenses.