Nitash Balsara
Dr. Nitash Balsara is the co-founder and CEO of Blue Current. Blue Current is working on a lithium ion battery with a solid non-flammable electrolyte. As lithium ion batteries are increasingly finding their way into electrified transportation, a next generation, non-flammable lithium ion battery is quickly becoming essential. Dr. Balsara is Professor of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering at the University of California Berkeley. Prior to Blue Current, Dr. Balsara co-founded Seeo, another lithium Ion battery startup that was sold to Bosch in 2015.
Dr. Balsara says, "I want the legacy of engineering to be not just making our lives better ... but to actually do that without putting out CO2." But there is more to Dr. Balsara than cutting edge battery scientist. His original motivation to come to the United States from India was not so much to further his career as it was to pursue his passion for playing Rock and Roll. Dr. Balsara: "When I was in college in India, I got introduced to rock and roll music which I liked very much. I liked it so much I spent a lot of my time learning how to play guitar and eventually got tired of playing on Indian guitars that were hard to play. I was reasonable in academics, but really that was not my focus. So when I graduated, I thought of coming to the United States to see if graduate school was good for me, but the main thing was to come here and buy myself a nice electric guitar and play music." Most of his bandmates from college emigrated to the U.S., and they continue to play music together in the band Second Childhood.
