VALMIKI 504
Ravi Suria
Ravi Suria serves as Chief Investment Officer for Valmiki, and its subsidiaries, overseeing an investment team with similar incubator relationships across industries. Representing the lead institutional investor, Ravi takes an active advisory role in governance, corporate development, and strategy across the TOPXIGHT companies. Prior to founding Valmiki, he ran multi-billion dollar global macro and equity portfoios with Duquesne Capital Managment and Moore Capital. Prior to that, he was an All Star analyst and head of convertibles research at Lehman Brothers and PaineWebber. He has a BE from Annamalai University and an MBA from Tulane University.
Peggy Babin
Peggy Babin is the CEO for Valmiki 504 LLC. She runs Valmiki 's Louisiana operations and is in charge of academic programs and outreach for Alphabeta. Prior to that, she served as the Associate Dean at the A.B. Freeman School of Business at Tulane University for 17 years. She has been a leader in management in academia, having managed career services, external relations, alumni affairs, fundraising, and other departments for the business school in that period. Ms. Babin came to the Freeman School from LL&E where she spent almost two decades in a number of positions with the company, ending as manager of natural gas trading generating annual revenues in excess of $350 million.
Mark Babin
Mark Babin works across various portfolio companies for Valmiki 504 under the TOPXIGHT LA incubator. He focuses on Development Process Administration and Quality Control for Cythereal and Manoke. Mark has an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of New Orleans and works on fictional short stories/novels in his spare time.
TOPXIGHT LA
Dr. Charles LeDoux
From our lab in Lafayette, Charles manages the software engineering team responsible for commercialization of the Cythereal product suite. His specialty is in the design and development of scalable deep learning systems for automated malware similarity analysis. He invented methods for intrusion detection at McAfee, linking malware binaries through semantic hashes and an assembly obfuscator at the ULL Software Research Laboratory at ULL, and code obfuscation at the Air Force Research Labs. He holds an MS and a Ph.D from the University of Louisiana.
Samuel Noon
Expecting to graduate from Tulane University in 2019 with finance and management degrees, Sam has been working at TOPXIGHT LA since Jan 2017 on various projects. He is deeply involved in automated testing and financial analysis across projects. He has been a TA for Business Analytics at the AB Freeman School of Business, where he realized his passion for research and learning using data driven strategies. He has also been a supervisor for Tulane Athletic Marketing performing market research and SWOT analysis.
CERES 504
Sanjay Kharod
Sanjay is Director of Ceres 504 overseeing operations of all food initiatives. Sanjay has been a nonprofit and government professional with over 25 years experience as an academic activist and an administrator, focusing on community development, community health, and social justice. He is also currently the executive director of the New Orleans Food and Farm Network (NOFFN) and runs the Edible Enterprises kitchen. He brings a wealth of knowledge and relationships in the areas of sustainable farming, food systems and nutrition.
Ica Crawford
Ica has extensive experience as a grower, gardener, and manager throughout the New Orleans area. She also works as the Director of Farming Operations for the Recirculating Farms Coalition, overseeing and managing agricultural units, including commercial and educational farming as well as aquaponics and hydroponic facilities. She accentuates her agricultural expertise with business management skills as well cooking talents learned at Mr. B’s Bistro as a Sauté Chef.