Russell Read Gets a Partner

Former CalPERS chief investment officer Russell Read is making good on his promise to launch a cleantech-focused private equity fund. Details are scarce, but it looks like he’ll be targeting capital-intensive projects rather than small-money enabling technologies.

One of his partners will be John Preston, a senior lecturer at MIT who previously was director of the university’s tech transfer office. He currently serves as president and CEO of Atomic Ordered Technologies, a Fall River, Mass.-based company “researching new methods to shift the properties of materials” – including “methods to create long range ordering of atoms in bulk metals.”

Preston declined to comment on the private equity venture, due to those pesky SEC marketing regulations.