Dr. Kamau Gachigi

Dr. Kamau Gachigi Kamau is the is the Founding Executive Director of Gearbox, a non-profit organisation that provides members with access to CNC and analogue machines for prototyping and low volume manufacture, including PCB fabrication. Gearbox also avails training, and incubation/ acceleration services in order to broaden access to manufacturing in Kenya. Dr. Kamau was contracted by UNDP to design the UniPods under the timbuktoo project which are entities modeled on Gearbox now implemented in 13 African countries and growing. He is also a founding Director of Gearbox Europlacer, a world class PCB contract manufacturing plant in Nairobi, known for its global clients such as Raspberry Pi. Until recently he Chaired the Board of the National Industrial Training Authority and served as a member of the Global Council on the Future of Production under the World Economic Forum. He was also a member of the Consultative Advisory Group of the Partnership on Applied Sciences, Engineering and Technology (World Bank and select African Governments), and board member of Numerical Machining Complex. He currently serves on the Board of Wildlife Direct. He earned his Ph.D. in Solid State Science from the Pennsylvania State University (USA) and worked in Japan for TDK in R&D for over two years after earning his doctorate. He holds a US patent for an energy storage device and has 10 academic and many more non-technical publications.