About

Our company is led by a unique partnership that combines deep scientific innovation with extensive product development expertise.

Ben is the CEO and Co-Founder of Ursa Science, where he directs the architectural vision for the world’s first software-defined laboratory platform. A multidisciplinary scientist and Certified Project Manager (PMP), Ben has authored over 20 peer-reviewed publications and patents at the intersection of microbial cultivation, photophysiology, and spectroscopic analysis.
Ben’s career is dedicated to solving the instrumentation gap in physical science. He architected the Environmental Photobioreactor (ePBR)—a system that became an industry standard by synchronizing complex environmental variables with real-time physiological data. At Ursa, he translates this expertise in hardware-software integration into the Mars modular robotic system and the Deterministic Control Kernel. His work ensures that physical experiments are no longer manual, person-dependent events, but are instead auditable, versioned, and software-defined.

With extensive experience as a CSO, Founder, and Research Director, Ben applies a systems engineering lens to the lab environment. He views the challenge of modern research as a data-fidelity problem, where the goal is to convert stochastic physical processes into predictable digital twins. Under Ben’s leadership, Ursa Science is building the control plane for the next century of science, making laboratory discovery proactive, explainable, and compounding.

Chris is the CTO and Co-Founder of Ursa Science, where he architects the computational control plane that powers the world’s first software-defined laboratory. A multidisciplinary technologist with over 25 years of leadership in product innovation, Chris specializes in the development of high-availability platforms and distributed systems that bridge the gap between digital logic and physical execution.

His expertise spans the entire technical stack—from embedded systems and microcontrollers that govern modular robotics to the API-first architectures required for cloud-based lab management. Having led engineering teams across Financial Services, Telecommunications, and Immersive Media, Chris brings a unique perspective on system reliability and deterministic performance to the life sciences. At Ursa, he is the primary architect of the Control Kernel, ensuring that every robotic movement and sensor reading is logged, auditable, and repeatable at scale.

Chris views the laboratory as a complex data environment where software must act as the ultimate source of truth. By integrating real-time hardware control with AI-driven insights (Mik), he has transformed the “manual lab” into a versioned, programmable artifact. His career is defined by building robust, industrial-grade solutions that enable Ursa’s partners to treat physical science with the same precision and agility as modern software engineering.

Clay is a Physicist and Systems Architect who builds the software that connects AI with lab equipment at Ursa Science. He specializes in reliable systems that turn scientific data into instructions robots can follow.

At Ursa, Clay is the primary architect of Mik, the platform’s AI agent. His work focuses on connecting people and ML models to hardware firmware—so researchers can ask Mik to run tasks, while the system spots equipment problems before they happen and keeps workflows running smoothly. Using his physics background to design systems, Clay ensures that Ursa’s AI doesn’t just suggest experiments, but understands the underlying physical laws of the instruments it controls.

A former DOE Innovation Fellow and founder of impact-driven platforms like Maalka, Clay brings deep technical experience to the Ursa leadership team. He treats the lab as a physics problem—using software to make experiments more predictable and repeatable. Whether he’s working out formulas from experimental data or building pipelines from cloud to firmware, Clay’s focus is on making research more reliable and scalable.

John serves as the Chief Business Officer at Ursa Science, where he leads the commercialization and strategic deployment of the world’s first software-defined laboratory platform. A Molecular Biologist and Biochemist by training, John’s technical foundation was forged in the high-stakes field of CRISPR-mediated plant engineering. His early research focused on the precision modification of cell-wall lignocellulosic architecture—a domain where technical success is measured by the brutal intersection of molecular recalcitrance and industrial unit economics.

At Ursa, John partners with the founding team to bridge the gap between breakthrough laboratory science and scalable industrialization. He focuses on the market integration of Ursa’s core architecture: the Mars modular robotics, the Deterministic Control Kernel, and the Mik AI agent. By treating laboratory experiments as software-defined, versioned artifacts, John helps Ursa’s partners eliminate the fragility of manual workflows and replace it with predictable, programmable science.

Drawing on his background as a former founder and deep-tech venture investor, John brings a first-principles approach to building Ursa’s commercial ecosystem. He specializes in helping technical organizations translate a Proof-of-Concept into a Scalable Industrial Platform, ensuring that institutional knowledge becomes a persistent, compounding asset. For John, the future of deep tech isn’t just about better hardware; it’s about creating a deterministic control plane where the physical and biological laws of science are encoded into the software itself.