Mark Topinka
Principal Scientist, KoBold Metals
Mark Topinka is currently Principal Scientist at KoBold Metals, a startup using AI to find the critical mineral deposits that will be needed for the continued growth of the world’s clean energy economy. They are focusing exclusively on searching for new deposits of Copper, Lithium, Nickel, and Cobalt , which are the key metals used in electric vehicle and grid-storage batteries. KoBold Metals and CEGA are in the process of launching a research project to study how mineral exploration projects can best benefit the communities and countries that they reside in.
Prior to joining KoBold Metals, Mark worked in the Stanford University Materials Science and Engineering Department as a postdoctoral researcher, focussing on the physics of thin-film and organic solar cells. He left Stanford to start Alion Energy, a solar cell startup in Richmond, CA focused on printing low-cost thin-film solar cells.
Mark holds a BA in Physics and BS in Electrical Engineering from Swarthmore College, and a PhD in Applied Physics from Harvard University.