Alcor Board of Directors

Mr. Clement is an attorney and entrepreneur. Following his graduation from the University of California-Hastings College of Law in 1982 with his Juris Doctorate, he practiced international business and real estate law in Hawaii for a private law firm. He later attended the Graduate Tax Program at the New York University School of Law, where he received his Master in Laws (Taxation) in 1986. He served as Tax Manager in the International Services Office of Arthur Young & Company in New York City from 1985 until 1988, when he left to pursue entrepreneurial activities on a full-time basis. He has been a manager, officer, and director in numerous companies across a broad range of business sectors, including real estate, financial services, hospitality, manufacturing, and energy. James is also the owner of the website Betterhumans.com, is a member of MENSA, holds Series 7 and Series 66 licenses from the National Association of Securities Dealers, and is an Accredited Asset Management Specialist from the College of Financial Planning.

Dr. Ravin Jain is a neurologist practicing in the Los Angeles area and also serves as Assistant Clinical Professor of Neurology at the UCLA School of Medicine. He attended Northwestern University, where he graduated Phi Beta Kappa with a double major in geology and integrated sciences. He received his M.D. from Baylor College of Medicine. At Baylor, he was a recipient of the Presidential Scholarship. He did residency training in internal medicine at the University of Texas Health Science Center in Houston. His neurology residency was done at the UCLA Medical Center. He also completed a fellowship in Clinical Neurophysiology and Neuromuscular Disease at UCLA. He is a Diplomat of the American Board of Psychiatry and Neurology. He has been a cryopreservation member of Alcor since 1989 and a member of the Alcor Medical Advisory Board since 1999.

Saul Kent

Saul Kent has been a member of the Alcor Board for five years. In 1965, he was one of the founders of the first cryonics organization, the Cryonics Society of New York. Kent is CEO of Suspended Animation, a research company in Boynton Beach, Florida that offers cryonics services to members of cryonics organizations. Kent is co-founder of the Life Extension Foundation, a non-profit organization in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida, which offers information about the latest advances in the biomedical sciences and dietary supplements for health and longevity. Kent is also co-founder and director of three research companies: 21st Century Medicine, Critical Care Research, and BioMarker Pharmaceuticals, as well as co-founder of the Timeship Project.

Ralph Merkle, Ph.D.

Dr. Merkle received his Ph.D. from Stanford University in 1979 where he co-invented public key cryptography.He joined Xerox PARC in 1988, where he pursued research in security and computational nanotechnology until 1999. He was a Nanotechnology Theorist at Zyvex until 2003, when he joined the Georgia Institute of Technology as a Professor of Computing until 2006. He chaired the Fourth and Fifth Foresight Conferences on Nanotechnology, was co-recipient of the 1998 Feynman Prize for Nanotechnology for theory, co-recipient of the ACM’s Kanellakis Award for Theory and Practice and the 2000 RSA Award in Mathematics. Dr .Merkle has fourteen patents and has published extensively. He is now a Senior Research Fellow at the Institute for Molecular Manufacturing. In 2001 he and Robert Freitas co-founded the Nanofactory Collaboration and in 2008 he and Freitas published "A Minimal Toolset for Positional Diamond Mechanosynthesis" which describes positionally-controlled atom-by-atom fabrication of diamondoid materials. Dr. Merkle's home page is at www.merkle.com. He joined Alcor in 1989 and joined the Alcor Board in 1998.

Michael Riskin, Ph.D., CPA

Michael Riskin, Ph.D. / CPA, has been an Alcor member since the mid 1980's and a board member since 1993. Michael has served Alcor in various capacities over the years including that of Membership Ombudsman, Vice President, and Chairman of the Board. He is currently the Alcor Board representative to the Alcor Patient Care Trust Board. Michael's wife, Anita Banker Riskin, also an Alcor member since the 80's, suffered legal death in early 2006 and is now in long term bio-stasis in Scottsdale. He is both a California State Licensed Psychotherapist and Certified Public Accountant, with a private psychology practice in Santa Ana, California. The other half of his professional life is that of a business consultant to startups and more mature companies facing a variety of organizational and marketing challenges. Michael believes that being alive, healthy, and happy is a good thing. He intends to enjoy as much of that trinity as long as is possible.

Michael Seidl, Ph.D., J.D.

Michael R. Seidl has been a member of the board of directors of the Alcor Life Extension Foundation since September 2002; prior to that time, he served as an advisor to the board, and he has been an Alcor member since 1998. Mr. Seidl has lived in Delaware since 1998, where he practices law as a partner in a boutique firm specializing in corporate insolvency and related litigation. From 1996 to 1998, he served as the judicial law clerk to the Honorable Jonathan R. Steinberg on the United States Court of Appeals for Veterans Claims. He is a graduate of the Georgetown University Law Center (J.D., 1996), where he served as managing editor of the Journal of Law & Policy in International Business. He is also a graduate of the University of Delaware (Ph.D., English, 1995) and James Madison University (M.A., 1990; B.A. 1988). Mr. Seidl dates his interest in cryonics from his fortuitous (and nearly simultaneous) reading of both Engines of Creation by K. Eric Drexler and Society of Mind by Marvin Minsky in the summer of 1990. Mr. Seidl's wife, Lisa L. Lock, is also an Alcor member.

Tim Shavers, J.D.

Tim Shavers is a private investor living in the Phoenix area. He attended Harvard College  (AB 1989) and Yale Law School (JD 1993), and began his career practicing corporate and real estate transactional law in New York City with Winthrop, Stimson, Putnam & Roberts (now Pillsbury Winthrop). In 1995 Tim joined McKinsey & Company and spent 9 years as a management consultant in McKinsey's New York and Hong Kong offices, primarily working with the board and top management of several well-known companies on issues of global strategy and growth. While with McKinsey, Tim led projects in the US, Canada, the UK, Japan, Korea, Hong Kong, Singapore and Indonesia, and he has traveled to more than 40 countries. Over the past decade Tim has also been involved in several investment partnerships in the US and overseas. Tim's wife and son are also Alcor members.

Brian Wowk, Ph.D., is a biophysicist employed as a Senior Scientist at 21st Century Medicine, Inc., a company specializing in low temperature preservation of tissue and organs for medical applications. He holds M.Sc. and Ph.D. degrees in medical physics, specializing in radiation oncology physics and magnetic resonance imaging. He is a leading expert in cryopreservation by vitrification. Dr. Wowk has maintained an interest in cryonics since 1986. He has served on Alcor’s board of directors since 2004.