Katie Szczepaniak Rice is an Associate with Epic Ventures where she focuses on investment opportunities in IT, cleantech, energy, advanced materials and other emerging technologies.  Ms. Szczepaniak Rice is on the board of directors of NMBio and NM WIRED, and she is the former chair and co-founder of the Nano-Network of New Mexico.  Prior to joining Epic, Ms. Szczepaniak Rice worked for Cabot Corporation as a Strategic Market Analyst in advanced materials for alternative energy markets.  Before Cabot, she was a consultant with Kline & Co., a strategy consulting firm that serves Fortune 100 companies as well as emerging businesses.  At Kline, she conducted strategy and commercial potential consulting engagements, focused on advaned materials, energy, and biotech markets.  Before Kline, Ms. Szczepaniak Rice was a field engineer in oil field services with Schlumberger in France.  Ms. Szczepaniak Rice earned a BS in Materials Science & Engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and an MBA from the University of Chicago.  She assists on the boards of Aspen Avionics, Lumidigm, and Veralight.