.: Vitas / Downloads
Dr. Harry D. Fair,Executive Director, Institute for Strategic and Innovative Technologies
fair [at] isitaustin.org (512) 657-1773
Dr. Fair is the Founding President of Fair Oaks Plasma, Inc. and Oaks Plasma, LLC (2009) and the founding Director of the Institute for Strategic and Innovative Technologies (2010), a 501.C.3 not-for-profit research institute. Dr. Fair spent much of his early research career with the U.S. Army and then with the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) and the Strategic Defense Initiative Organization (SDIO). In 1990, he founded and was the Director of the Institute for Advanced Technology (IAT), the U. S. Army’s first University Affiliated Research Center (UARC), at The University of Texas at Austin until 2010. The IAT focused on research in hypervelocity physics and electrodynamics and became one of the world leaders in these technologies. An experienced laboratory director, program manager, and physicist. Dr. Fair creates, directs, and manages complex multi-disciplinary technical efforts of national importance. Among these are the Joint DARPA/Army/Marine Corps Program on Armor/Anti-Armor, the National Program on Electromagnetic Propulsion, the Advanced Kinetic Energy Technology Program for the Strategic Defense Initiative, the Army Propulsion Program, and the Army Program on Solid-State Physics and Chemistry of Explosives and Reactive Materials. Dr. Fair holds a Ph.D. in solid-state physics and an M.S. in chemical physics from the University of Delaware; he received a B.S. in physics from Indiana University of Pennsylvania. He was a visiting professor at the University of Paris, at the Royal Institution of Great Britain, and at The University of Texas at Austin. He has co-authored over 200 technical publications, including two books on Energetic Materials and is the senior editor of the Seventeen IEEE Proceedings of the International Symposium on Electromagnetic Launch Technology.
USMC Colonel (ret) Dennis Beal President, ISIT
Marine Colonel Dennis W. Beal served as executive director for the U.S. Navy’s Office of Science and Technology, which was responsible for developing technology for both the Navy and Marine Corps.
Col Beal was the Program Manager for the DoD’s electromagnetic energy and weapons research efforts along with being the DoD ED for Advanced Technology Programs and Concepts.
Subsequently, he worked as a senior partner for University Venture Capital Growth, where he managed a research team responsible for generating $120 million in revenue for various universities.
He also served as executive director for Texas A&M University Systems Strategic Commercial Alliances & Programs office, which worked with more than 400 commercial and business partners within the $3.8 billion TAMU system.
Col. Beal is a graduate of Sam Houston State University, the Marine Corps Command and Staff College and has a MS in Procurement and Acquisition from the Defense Acquisition University. He is a Level III DAU / DAWAI / PMP certified PM.
Matthew John “Jay” Diedzic, Jr., P.E., Vice President, ISIT
jay.diedzic [at] isitaustin.org (757) 784-0447
More than 35 years of leadership, management, entrepreneurship, science and technology, investment, research and development (R&D), and fundraising experience addressing global energy, water, and environmental challenges.
Directly engaged in the Energy-Water-Environment Nexus by developing, managing, investing, and/or monetizing a diverse project portfolio involving traditional energy, 24/7 carbon free energy, energy security, grid resiliency, and water quality-related projects. These projects involve nuclear, fossil-fuels, geothermal, grid-scale solar, offshore wind, and tidal energy; natural gas/coal-to-liquids, hydrogen, and synthetic fuel production; algal-based biofuels; autonomous unmanned aerial, surface and underwater vehicles for ocean exploration and observation; harmful algal bloom (HAB) and red tide detection and mitigation strategies and technologies; optimizing U.S. Army Corps of Engineers / State of Florida’s Lake Okeechobee water management and stakeholder engagements, and U.S. Department of Energy Savannah River Site Special Nuclear Material (“nuclear waste”) utilization strategies and technologies.
Dr. Joe Clayton Turnage Chief Strategy Officer
As a senior executive in competitive power generation companies and as the founder of two successful consulting companies, Dr. Turnage brings 35 years of experience working with companies in the power industry.
He has served of the Board of Directors of three companies and numerous single-asset generation partnerships. Over this time, Dr. Turnage has been actively involved with almost every aspect of the business: with managing the profit and loss of a portfolio of merchant generating plants; with product and service development and marketing; with managing shared service organizations; with implementing new asset management systems; with managing large construction projects; and with executive-level assessments of organizational performance.
His activities have included the formation of business strategy, formulation of organizational structure, and the design of executive information systems for independent power companies, national laboratories, and regulated utilities.
He has contributed directly to the development of methods for predicting plant performance and for analyzing utility-generating system operating strategy.
He has managed a large nuclear engineering organization within a utility that was responsible for engineering support and reload licensing for both pressurized and boiling water reactors.
He has been actively involved in public policy issues surrounding electric power and utility deregulation.
David Winks Chief Business Development Officer
david.winks [at] isitaustin.org (410) 279-3153
Mr. Winks’ work focuses cyber, physical, and electromagnetic resilience for critical infrastructure. David has a degree in physics with additional coursework in electrical and mechanical engineering.
He is part of a design team for megawatt-scale transportable nuclear reactors. To power large facilities, he led a team of companies in the development of EMP-shielded multi-megawatt CHP systems incorporating gas turbines, and LNG storage. David also provides EMP shielded hydrogen fuel cells for powering remote sites.
He has developed cyber defense architectures utilizing binary hardening, software defined perimeters, artificial intelligence, and automated orchestration and restoral for IT and OT networks.
He led in the development of containerized EMP-shielded computing systems from secure supply chains.
He has extended network endurance by developing combined heat and power (CHP) systems using fuel cells and Stirling engines coupled with EMP shielded solar thermal systems.
He led the deployment of multi-carrier satellite transceivers and the commercialization of demand assigned multiple access control (DAMA) systems for thin-route telephony in emerging markets.
He has led projects for wireless local loop, digital cellular, and satellite networks in Eastern Europe, Africa, and Latin America. These networks included small modular digital switching systems, microwave links, inter-carrier text messaging, location services, and prepaid billing. He assisted clients in deploying MPLS data networks, virtualizing their telephone switching infrastructure, and relocating their computing infrastructure into geo-diverse data centers. He connected clients using 28 GHz wireless links, fiber optic cables, and ethernet-over-twisted pair. He helped telecom carriers optimize inter-carrier messaging using SS7 networks and international gateways.
He assisted clients in constructing command centers using secure multi-site video teleconferencing and video walls.
David applied his high-power microwave background to radar, electronic warfare, and satellite communications.
He also provides solutions for radio frequency shielding, and EMP transient protection for critical systems.
Dr. Thomas Blau is a consultant to the National Defense University (NDU), where he runs his national security seminar series for the General Accounting Office (13 years). He was on the regular faculty at NDU, 2001-2013. He taught courses on futures analysis and national security decision-making. He also served in management at NDU, including in curriculum support to two Middle Eastern war colleges. He continues to provide support to the NonProliferation Policy Education Center on a project to analyze intelligence-policy interactions in past cases of proliferation, aimed at inferring rules for future cases. He also is an adjunct faculty member at Johns Hopkins University, Center for Advanced Governmental Studies. He participated in the Good Judgment Project, and has worked in the Departments of Defense and Energy, and on the staff of Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. He also has worked in international aerospace business. He has published on missile defense, energy and trade security, infrastructure vulnerability, the aviation industry, and applying social theory to Iraq and Afghanistan. He studied defense policy and economics at the University of Chicago, earning a PhD.
Dr. Dawna Coutant is a social psychologist with an emphasis in how to bridge the gap between scientific research and its implementation by governmental and civic groups.. As a Visiting Professor at the University of Neuchatel, Switzerland, Institut de psychologie du travail et des organizations, she taught a graduate course in Cross-Cultural Organizational Psychology. While head of the Social Psychology Department at the University of Hawaii at Hilo, she assisted Hawai'i Volcanoes National Park (U.S. National Park Service) in implementing science-based activities for the public. As the Assistant Director of Undergraduate Leadership Programs at the Center for Public Leadership Studies, George Bush School of Government and Public Service, Texas A&M University, she coordinated the Eisenhower Leadership Development Program, including supervising group projects in which the students act as policy consultants for local government and community groups. See "Latest News" on the sidebar for her latest triumphs supporting the intelligence community of the U.S. and allies by forecasting geopolitical events.
Dmitry Sarin is one of the world's top forecasters of geopolitical and economics events. He always beats Meinel in these competitions, but she forgives him :) Recently he participated in the control group "Carbon" for IARPA's Hybrid Forecasting Competition. He surprised nobody by coming in number one in Carbon, which as the control group that meant that he had no access to machine intelligence to aid his forecasts. What did surprise everyone was that he also beat everyone on the hybrid forecasting teams, and by a long stretch. He currently is a Trading Analyst at EP UK Investments.
