Dahl Winters (she/her) has been a leader in science R&D and technology initiatives with over 15 years of experience in IT and systems development services. She brings a wealth of expertise with strengths in big data, artificial intelligence, and innovation strategies for research and development. Dahl obtained her Bachelor of Science in Biology from Duke University where she received the Reginaldo Howard full-tuition scholarship for academic merit and leadership. She also holds a Master of Science in Ecology from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill where she was a predoctoral fellow of the National Science Foundation. She is currently completing Ph.D work in Systems Engineering from Colorado State University. Dahl is also an active member of the OpenAir Collective, a community of over 700 volunteers working to advance carbon removal policy and R&D.

Research Statement

Dahl Winters is presently CEO and Co-Founder of TerraNexum Inc. Her company’s goal is to provide a platform for optimizing cleantech/clean energy investment opportunities to enable rapid, profitable GHG drawdown at global scale.

Previously, Dahl was CEO/CTO of DeepScience Ltd for 7 years, leading a R&D consulting business that also built systems for science and sustainability in partnership with major corporations and research organizations. Her work there mostly focused on carbon dioxide removal and direct air carbon capture systems, as well as the analytics for scaling up those systems. One of these projects was registered as open-source hardware with OSHWA with the help of the OpenAir Collective, an all-volunteer group focused on advancing direct air carbon capture. This project grew into the focus of OpenAir’s Cyan/Carbon Forming mission which has helped many throughout the world to improve their knowledge of technical climate solutions.

Dahl is currently on the last year of her Ph.D in Systems Engineering at Colorado State University, within the Simske Lab. Her research has focused on how improvements to the carbon storage capacity and compressive strength of biochar-concrete composites can be engineered and how such a system can be successfully scaled to meet global needs for carbon sequestration and construction. Through the help of OSHWA’s Trailblazer Fellowship, Dahl can now also apply model-based systems engineering strategies to test how related, open-source hardware systems might also be successfully scaled within academia.

Prior to her recent work in carbon removal, Dahl also served as a consulting Geospatial Big Data Architect at a Fortune 500 company. There, she designed and built processing pipelines at scale to facilitate big data solutions and new tools for land cover monitoring. Before that, Dahl was a Staff R&D Scientist at DigitalGlobe, now Maxar Technologies, where she specialized in geospatial big data analytics and designed cloud-based and on-premises systems for ingesting, processing, and analyzing large quantities of geospatial data. Prior to this, she was an Environmental Scientist for Research Triangle Institute (RTI International), where she provided technical support to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Climate Change Division (CCD) under the Greenhouse Gas Reporting Program (GHGRP).

In her free time, Dahl enjoys catching up on the latest scientific discoveries within physics and quantum computing, going on hikes near her home in Evergreen, Colorado, examining the local wildflowers and birds, and doing nature photography with her husband Loren Winters.