Who We Are
The people behind the work.
Gravitas Grove brings together experienced professionals across research, strategy, finance, and technology. Senior expertise, no layers.
Matt Nolan
Founder
Founded Gravitas Grove and leads its research, technology, and client delivery. Brings 15 years of quantitative work across consulting and product development, forecasting, automated data pipelines, AI-powered tools, and full-stack software and web applications. Master's research at UIUC ran more than 3.7 million forecasts across 50 futures markets to test the predictability of returns. Holds B.S. and M.S. in Agricultural and Applied Economics from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.
Philip Montgomery
Founding Partner
Philip is an AI Specialist (GS-15) at the Department of Government Efficiency, where he leads efforts to modernize systems across the IRS and Department of Treasury. Previously, he founded an AI-powered education technology company that generated personalized math content for students, improving outcomes across dozens of schools. Philip holds a B.S. in Computer Science and Economics from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.
Austin Belman
Associate
M.S. candidate in Applied Economics at UIUC, specializing in econometric modeling, machine learning, and time series analysis. Brings hands-on experience forecasting commodity futures prices and building predictive models across academic research and industry projects. Expertise in Python, R, SQL, and advanced statistical methods.
Michael Stablein
Associate โ PhD
PhD in Agricultural & Biological Engineering with over 10 years of technical expertise from applied research on food, energy, and water (FEW) systems. Combines technical depth with business acumen from entrepreneurship and international consulting across sustainability, healthcare, and education for tech startups, multinational enterprises, minority businesses, and nonprofits. Specializes in transforming complex problems into actionable insights that drive strategic decision-making.
Jeffrey Huang
Associate
Jeffrey has conducted rigorous data science and GIS-focused research across academic and industry settings, including the National Science Foundation's I-GUIDE center for geospatial studies, and within the utilities industry as a data scientist. His background includes working with large-scale spatial, temporal, and infrastructure data, as well as extensive experience developing state-of-the-art forecasting solutions and robust, scalable data pipelines that support critical analytics and business operations.