Sean M. Christian serves as a Managing Director within McAllister & Quinn’s Advanced Technology Practice. In this capacity, Mr. Christian assists for-profit technology companies in their efforts to secure funding from governmental agencies and/or industrial sources. Mr. Christian’s primary focus is on technology companies in the defense, energy, chemical, and semiconductor sectors seeking assistance with technology innovation, advanced manufacturing or scaling commercialization.
Mr. Christian has approximately three decades of experience with the design, development, and commercialization of advanced sensors and systems for industrial process automation or remote environmental sensing. While his primary focus has been technology innovation and intellectual property development, he has a strong program, operations, and supply-chain management background with extensive financial and business development expertise. Throughout his career, Sean has founded or acquired several companies, where he served as VP of R&D, CSO, CTO, COO, and CEO. Additionally, Sean has international operational experience having lived and/or managed technical operations in the United Kingdom, Canada, Finland, India, China, and throughout the Middle East and Southeast Asia.
Mr. Christian was the founding Chair of the Applied Industrial Optics (AIO) Division of the Optical Society of America (OSA) and has served on a number of industrial advisory boards in the photonics and oil & gas industries. He was both a National Science Foundation NSF-STC and a Charles E. Minor doctoral fellow at Virginia Tech, in addition to an ARCS Foundation and DOW Chemical Scholar at Texas Tech. Sean holds a B.S. in Chemistry, magna cum laude, from Texas Tech University with minors in Physics and Mathematics and a Masters of Engineering (M.Eng.), magna cum laude, in Materials Science & Engineering from Virginia Tech.