​NanoSteel Names Harald Lemke Vice President & General Manager of Powder Metallurgy

• Role to drive adoption of AHSS (Advanced High Strength Steel) breakthrough and steel coatings into industrial applications utilizing powder metallurgy
• Appointment brings deep expertise in product innovation, processing and commercialization of advanced materials

PROVIDENCE, R.I. (Wednesday, February 13, 2013) – The NanoSteel® Company, a leader in nano-structured steel materials design, today announced that Harald Lemke has joined the company as vice president & general manager of powder metallurgy.

In this new role, Lemke will lead the commercialization of NanoSteel’s alloys into the powder metallurgy industry utilizing both the recent breakthrough in AHSS and the company’s established coatings products. Lemke will focus on high hardness, wear and yield strength applications that also require ductility traditionally served by specialty and hard materials. Initial target industries for the company’s PM business will be oil & gas, power generation and mining.

Lemke’s leadership experience spans a broad range of advanced materials including metals, ceramics, plastics and composites. Across this spectrum of businesses, he established a track record of delivering customer value through the optimization of materials design, manufacture and component forming processing.

“There is significant opportunity to leverage our breakthrough in nano-structured sheet steel into the cladding and near-net shape parts businesses of powder metallurgy,” said David Paratore, president and CEO. “Harald’s proven leadership in growing a number of advanced materials categories makes him the ideal choice to build this business.”

“NanoSteel’s combination of exceptional performance capabilities and cost competitiveness makes the company uniquely positioned to meet customer requirements in increasingly more demanding industrial environments,” Lemke said. “With NanoSteel’s broad portfolio of products, we have the opportunity to extend steel’s footprint outside of traditional metal performance boundaries into new markets and applications.”

Lemke was most recently the global vice president of materials marketing at the $650M coatings division of Sulzer-Metco where he raised top and bottom line growth. Previously, Lemke was business development manager for Kennametal’s advanced materials division and chief operating officer & general manager of Powdermet, where he scaled a metal and metal matrix powder start-up business. Lemke has also held key positions at Conoco-Phillips, Air Liquide and Nalco-Exxon Energy Chemicals L.P.

About NanoSteel

NanoSteel is the world leader in proprietary nano-structured steel material designs. Over its ten-year history, NanoSteel has created progressive generations of iron-based alloys from surface coatings to foils to sheet steel and powder metals. For the oil & gas, mining and power industries, NanoSteel has successfully introduced commercial applications of metallic coatings to prolong service lifetime in the most extreme industrial environments. For the automotive industry, NanoSteel has achieved a significant breakthrough in the development of nano-structured sheet steel with exceptional strength and ductility. NanoSteel is a privately held company funded by lead shareholders EnerTech and Fairhaven Capital. For more information, visit www.nanosteelco.com or follow us on Twitter @NanoSteelCo.

Source: TechCrunch

Cylance,a cyber security company founded by former Global McAfee CTO Stuart McClure, has raised $15 million in a round led by Khosla Ventures and Fairhaven Capital.

Cylance uses data to help keep core systems healthy. In particular its focus is on critical infrastructure and the types of threats President Barack Obama mentioned in his State of the Union address last night when he announced he had signed an executive order to protect the nation’s infrastructure from the escalating danger of cyber attacks, urging the U.S. Congress to pass a Cyber Security bill. McClure, in an interview yesterday, said Obama recognizes that the physical and cyber worlds are coming together. Power grids, utilities, they all are vulnerable to attack. The problem: nobody is fixing it.

McClure said the answer to our troubles is something we have known we could do since the late 1990s. Organizations need to treat its systems like a healthy person treats their body. For instance, getting a flu shot is not the answer to keep from getting sick. Most people who don’t get the flu take care of themselves. They have a good diet, exercise and get enough sleep.

Systems need similar treatment except their nutrients are in the form of data algorithms. Taking preventative measures makes the difference between falling victim to attack and withstanding the virus by showing strength in the core of an organization’s system defenses.

Data represents the nutrients that our systems need to stay healthy. Data, when applied to algorithms, acts as a way for an organization to keep its defenses strong.

Cylance is using data in not such a different way than Google uses it to develop self-driving cars. Data is at the core of Google’s capability, connecting disparate data points to form patterns that can be used for a car to drive itself down the road. For Cylance, it means using data to form patterns to understand the preventative measures required to keep a water utility safe from attack.

The threat to our infrastructure is not just limited to electrical grids or other high profile infrastructure. Cylance will focus quite a bit on embedded systems, the technologies used in all kinds of medical equipment. These embedded technologies, be they in printers or defibrillators, will increasingly be the subject of attack. And data is the best safeguard.

The biggest problem Cylance will face is not the attackers — it’s the security industry resistant to change and a public apathetic about the risks we face from attacks that could shut off our water or plunge entire regions into darkness. Without those forces engaged, Cylance will only be able to solve a small part of a problem that grows ever wider in scope.

(Article by Alex Williams)