Ivan Smalyukh is the founder of iFeather Technologies and a Professor of Physics, MSE and RASEI at University of Colorado Boulder. Smalyukh’s awards and honors include Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers (PECASE) from the Office of Science and Technology Policy of the White House (awarded in 2010, by Obama), Langmuir Lectureship Award from the American Chemical Society, Paris Sciences Chair and CNRS Chair Awards, APS Fellow Selection by the American Physical Society, SPIE Fellow selection by the Society of Photo-optical Engineers, GSoft Award of the American Physical Society, Bessel Award, DOE Career Research Award, Kavli Frontiers Fellowship, Sigma Pi Sigma Favorite Professor recognition, NSF CAREER Award, Glenn H. Brown Prize, and many other. As a leader of the iFeather team, he was the winner of the NASA iTech Award in 2018. Professor Smalyukh published over 230 peer-reviewed research articles in top international journals, such as 4 in Nature and 4 in Science, and has a large IP portfolio of patents and patent applications. Smalyukh organized many conferences, workshops, and summer schools. At CU-Boulder, he is heading a multi-disciplinary research group with 35 members (students and postdocs) with a broad spectrum of research projects. Under the support of the ARPA-E OPEN program, Smalyukh developed porous materials for thermoelectrics and waste heat recovery. Under the support of ARPA-E SHIELD program, Ivan developed transparent aerogels to address the single-pane window efficiency problem via retrofitting, where the team developed an applied retrofit product to be laminated as a highly insulating transparent film atop of single-pane windows (with square-meter prototypes demonstrated). The aerogel-based insulating glass units are licensed to a major US manufacturer, with market entrance planned within 4 years, whereas the retrofit aerogel product is being further developed by the startup company iFeather Technologies that Smalyukh founded. Smalyukh now strives to combine the unique properties of porous materials and robot-based retrofitting to enable widespread deployment of retrofit products to insulate windows and other parts of building envelopes.