The people
behind the work.

Michael is the founder and CEO of Pheratech, inspired by the collective intelligence of social insects to build autonomous systems that think and act together. His research background spans medical robotics and the da Vinci Surgical System, physical chemistry and medicine, computational and theoretical mathematics, and the emergent behavior of ant and bee colonies. He sits on the advisory board at Claremont McKenna College for Entrepreneurship and Innovation and is a Z Fellow.

Dr. Sablon joined Pheratech to lead Technology and Autonomy following a distinguished career in defense research. She served as Principal Director for Trusted AI and Autonomy at the Office of the Secretary of Defense and as the Army's S&T Director overseeing a $2.6B annual research portfolio. The inventor of Quantum-LEDs, she holds a Ph.D. in Applied Physics from the University of Arkansas and has authored more than 70 peer-reviewed papers.

Christian joined Michael at Pheratech to help lead Applied Engineering. His background is in mechanical engineering, with research across Carnegie Mellon University and Harvey Mudd College, including work under a Nobel Prize-winning physics team with a focus on robotics and quantum communication.

Deji joined Pheratech to lead technology integration and transition, bringing nearly two decades of experience across autonomy, AI, and defense R&D. He previously led the U.S. Office of Naval Research’s Intelligent Autonomous Systems portfolio and served as a Science Director at ONR Global, where he built research programs in swarm intelligence, AI, and autonomous systems. Most recently, he was a Director and Distinguished Engineer at Booz Allen Hamilton. Deji holds a Ph.D. in Computer Engineering from Texas A&M University.

Dr. Daley joined Pheratech as the company's founding research scientist and its research mathematician. He spent much of his childhood coding and studied mathematics through undergraduate and graduate school, receiving his Ph.D. from Georgia State University. He went on to study swarm dynamics during his postdoc at the Naval Research Laboratory before joining Pheratech.

Ben joined Pheratech after studying Computer Science at the University of Maryland, College Park, with an emphasis in Artificial Intelligence. Prior to Pheratech, he worked at a chemistry spectroscopy company applying computer vision to analyze drugs and compounds.

Emmanuel studied computer engineering at California Polytechnic University, Pomona and brings extensive experience in embedded systems and backend software engineering. Prior to Pheratech, he worked on F1 simulation projects alongside building a weather application.

Leo studied computer engineering at the University of California, Irvine and brings an extensive portfolio of autonomous and small-UAS projects, including building FPV drones, autonomous warehouse drones, and more.

Daniel is an international award-winning mechanical and design engineer and the first person to join Pheratech in its infancy, making him the company's founding engineer. Today he specializes in small-UAS and drone technology, and works alongside other engineers on larger projects.

Diego works across robotics software and embodied AI, with a focus on intelligent systems that can perceive, reason, and act in the physical world. His background spans vision-language-action models, multi-agent systems, computer vision, and robotic simulation, with research at the University of Central Florida and prior work at Pheratech. He holds a B.S. in Computer Science from the University of Central Florida.