Please join us at the 2026 ICOPS Young Professionals Event, which will be held on Monday, June 22, at 6-8PM PST in the Emerald Bay in Caesar’s Republic. The event will start with a Workshop on Entrepreneurship led by Dr. Uri Shumlak – University of Washington Professor and a co-founder of Zap Energy. Dr. Shumlak will discuss the exciting and daunting journey of translating research breakthroughs into commercial products. The event will be followed by a networking event where attendees can interact with the speaker and conference industry sponsors. Light refreshments will be provided.

Professor Shumlak completed his undergraduate work at Texas A & M University and then obtained his PhD from the University of California at Berkeley. After finishing his graduate degree, he was a National Research Council Postdoctoral Fellow at the Air Force Phillips Laboratory (now AFRL) at Kirtland AFB. After the Phillips Lab, he joined the Aeronautics and Astronautics Department at the University of Washington where he is currently a Professor and serves as the department’s Associate Chair for Academics. He is also an Adjunct Professor of Applied Mathematics. He is an APS Fellow, an IEEE Fellow, and an AIAA Associate Fellow. He has also co-founded Zap Energy – a spin-out company from the University of Washington to develop commercial nuclear fusion.