Alcor Board of Directors

Andy Aymeloglu

Andy Aymeloglu is a software engineer residing in northern California. He was Director of Engineering at Palantir Technologies from 2005-2015, as it grew from a fledgling company to an 1800-person company with offices across the globe. Since 2018 he has been the VP of Engineering at Hexagon Bio. He also advises startups in the Bay Area. Prior to his time at Palantir, Andy studied math and computer science at Stanford University, and briefly lectured a couple of their introductory computer science classes. He has been an Alcor member since 2011.

Jason Harrow, JD

Jason is a constitutional and civil rights lawyer, appellate advocate, and legal writer. He is a partner at Gerstein Harrow, LLP. He has briefed and argued more than a dozen appeals, including a high-profile recent argument in the U.S. Supreme Court about the electoral college in the case Colorado Department of State v. Baca. His legal commentary has appeared in the Washington Post, the USA Today, and the LA Times, and he has made appearances on Fox 11 in Los Angeles and other networks to discuss legal issues.

Before forming Gerstein Harrow LLP, Jason was Chief Counsel and Executive Director of Equal Citizens, a leading non-profit fighting to improve our democracy. He was also an associate at a major law firm in Los Angeles, and he was an Assistant Solicitor General in the Office of the New York Attorney General. He clerked for two federal judges, the Honorable Carlos T. Bea of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, and the Honorable Kenneth M. Karas of the Southern District of New York.

Jason received his law degree from Harvard Law School, where he graduated magna cum laude, was a speaker at graduation, and won the Dean’s Award for Leadership. He was also the winner of the 100th Anniversary of Harvard’s prestigious Ames Moot Court Competition, and he was later profiled in the Harvard Gazette for his advocacy while still in law school on behalf of a grad student sued by the recording industry. He received his undergraduate degree in Philosophy from Princeton University. He previously served on the Board of Directors of the Harvard Law Association of Los Angeles.

In his spare time, Jason plays trivia and hosts trivia games, travels, runs obstacle races, and plays tennis. He published a piece in Cryonics Magazine 3rd Quarter 2021 (page 19) entitled “Cryonics and the New Space Age.”

Ralph Merkle, PhD

Dr. Merkle received his PhD 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. In 2011 Dr. Merkle was inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame. Dr. Merkle’s home page is at ralphmerkle.com. He joined Alcor in 1989 and joined the Alcor Board in 1998. See video of Dr. Merkle’s presentation on Nanotechnology and Cryonics at the 2006 Alcor Conference.

Mike O’Neal, PhD

Mike O’Neal is a professor and former Chair of the Computer Science Program at Louisiana Tech University, where he holds the Larson Endowed Professorship. Dr. O’Neal has three decades of experience in the field of higher education, has co-founded two high tech startups, and has fourteen issued US patents to his name. Dr. O’Neal received his BS (Magna Cum Laude, 1982) and MS (1984) from Louisiana Tech University, and his PhD (1989) from the University of Louisiana, Lafayette. His academic interests include active authentication and identification using behavioral biometrics, computer science education, and artificial intelligence. Mike first joined Alcor in 1989 and became an Advisor to the Board in 2012.

Michael Riskin, PhD, CPA

Michael Riskin, PhD / 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, Chairman of the Board, and 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, PhD, JD

Michael R. Seidl has been an Alcor member since 1998, served as a director from 2002 until 2013, and returned to the board in 2016. Mr. Seidl has lived in Delaware since 1998, where he practices law 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 (JD, 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 (PhD, English, 1995) and James Madison University (MA, 1990; BA 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.