David E. James is an associate professor of civil engineering at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas (UNLV) and has been with the university since 1990. He is currently the director of Solar and Renewable Energy Programs for UNLV. In 2017, he and the students on his team led UNLV to victory in the U.S. Department of Energy's Solar Decathlon, placing first with a score of 98 out of 100. In the past, David James has served as Associate Vice Provost for Academic Programs, and the President of the Nevada Society of Professional Engineers.

Horace Emery was born in 1911 in California. He moved to Nevada in 1922 to work on the Hoover Dam. Emery also worked as a river boatman on the Colorado River, the Davis Dam, and as a factory worker in Clark County, Nevada.