Dr. Nair is a Chemical Engineer with nearly two decades of experience in developing and commercializing chemical technologies across the industrial gases, specialty chemicals, electronics, and pharmaceutical industries. He earned his Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering from Auburn University in 2005, specializing in separation technologies with a focus on adsorption and catalytic materials. His research has been published in leading journals and presented at major conferences, including AIChE and ACS.

An expert in computational process modeling, material characterization, and scaling chemical processes from lab to commercial production, his work focused in bridging the gap between research and application while promoting sustainable practices.

Before Hydron, he held R&D and engineering roles at Praxair Inc. (now Linde Engineering), DuPont (later Chemours), Air Products, and EMD Electronics. At Praxair, he led the development of hydrogen pressure swing adsorption technologies, advancing them from bench-scale research to full-scale commercial deployment. In the pharmaceutical sector, he managed technology transfers, process optimization, and the integration of new products into API manufacturing. He has experience developing processes involving high temperatures, high pressures, and highly reactive materials, including fluorine chemistry, pyrophorics, and polymer chemistry.

At Hydron, Dr. Nair focuses on advancing sustainable technologies and engineering solutions for environmental decontamination.

Sarah Cone is a Co-Founder & Executive Chair of Hydron.

She is also the founder and Managing Partner of Social Impact Capital, a venture capital firm that produces top decile returns by investing in the earliest stages in companies that are solving the world’s most difficult problems. Hydron was incubated at Social Impact Capital, due to the pressing need for widespread, low-cost desalination solutions and emerged from a comprehensive review of all emerging desalination technologies.

Earlier in her career, Sarah worked for the consulting firm CTI, helping to restructure the R&D departments of Japanese corporations. Sarah has also been an Associate at Illuminate Ventures, a Silicon Valley-based venture capital fund investing in B2B SaaS. She got her start in venture capital working for the “emerging technologies” venture capital group at Omidyar Network. Sarah has also worked in the legal department of Google, at the technology law firm Fenwick & West, Amazon.com, and at the technology policy non-profit Public Knowledge.

Sarah has a BA in interdisciplinary studies from the Evergreen State College and a JD from UC Berkeley. At UC Berkeley, Sarah won the Advocacy Award for persuasive writing, the Jurisprudence Award for academic excellence, and her thesis “Reforming Federal Tax Policy to Support Social Entrepreneurs” received honors.