Derek Stein is the founder and CEO of Adept Materials, established in 2018 to advance building sustainability, health, and comfort. Derek is a physicist by training who also holds the title of Professor of Physics and of Engineering at Brown University. His academic research and interests have covered a wide range of topics from nanofluidics and single-molecule biophysics to non-equilibrium statistical mechanics and the quest to discover the nature of dark matter. Derek earned his Ph.D. from Harvard and his undergraduate degree from McGill University.