Advisory Board
NREF ADVISORY BOARD OF DIRECTORS
Harsh Arora. India-based software engineer at SUPPORT4ALL Technical Services, Inc., with experience in Software Development and a longstanding interest in helping develop robotics-based educational programs for high school and college students.
Leslie Ballard, robotics writer; manuscript copyeditor; Editorial Contributor specializing in music and recording technology, as well as early industrial robotics.
Dr. Kenneth Berry, Robotics Educator, at the University of Texas, Dallas, and President of the BEST robotics competition program.
Kevin Berry, Manager of Ground Projects for a NASA contractor at Kennedy Space Center. Mr. Berry also writes extensively, actively contributing to Robot, Servo and Cure magazines. Kevin blogs at:www.curetoday.com/community/kevin-berry and www.takingvienna.blogspot.com.
David Calkins. President, Int'l RoboGames; Manager, LEGO Education.
Rick Coscarelli. Free Lance Robotics Photojournalist and Professional Photographer.
Professor C.J. Chung, PhD, Founder & Director of Robofest; World Robot Olympiad USA Director, Math and Computer Science Dept., Lawrence Technological University.
Scott Dedic, SONY USA Director of Corporate Security, Writer and Contributor to Robot magazine.
John Doe, U.K. and European Robotics Freelance Photojournalist.
Marc Essenburg, Business Process Analyst, Manitoba Telecom Services.
Salvador Garcia, hardware and software project engineer. Content Contributor to Element 14, Tu Tecnologia, ChiBots and Robot Magazine. Positions have included Technical Writer, Systems Programmer, Product Manager, and ChiBots President (2010-2011), Author and Senior Programmer/Analyst.
Ken Gracey, founder and CEO of Parallax, the company that created the world renowned Boe-Bot, a key product that launched educational and hobby robotics for many tens of thousands, and that continues to play a major role today.
David Greenbaum ran the Manhattan-based Robot Village robot store for many years and remains President of www.robotvillage.com. Robot Village has hosted many birthday parties and classroom workshops using popular educational and hobby robots to entertain and educate students and teachers.
Carol Hazlett, Robotics Hobbyist and semi-retired teacher, Product Developer for Minds-I. A prolific robot builder and programmer, Carol owns a definitive collection of leading educational and hobby robots.
Humanoido, A longtime contributor to Robot magazine, based in Asia. He has reported extensively on Japanese, Chinese and Asian robotics, and is leading an emerging international commercial space robotics business.
Cameron Hughes is a software epistemologist for Ctest Laboratories and an Artificial Intelligence software developer for ASC (Advanced Software Construction). He is the co-author of "Build Your Own Teams of Robots" published by McGraw Hill and "Beginners Guide to Robot Programming" published by Pearson Education. He is also the co-author of several other books on software development and engineering. Cameron is a senior member of the ACM, IEEE and AAAI.
Tracey Hughes is the president of Ctest Laboratories, a non-profit research facility dedicated to the study and development of logical and epistemological-based software systems. She is also a software and visualization engineer at Ctest Labs and ASC. She is the co-author of "Build Your Own Teams of Robots" published by McGraw Hill and "Beginners Guide to Robot Programming" published by Pearson Education. She is also the co-author of several other books on software development and engineering. Tracey is a senior member of the ACM, and IEEE professional associations and spends her spare time developing information and epistemic visualizations for the computer science field.
Joseph Kornfeld, Esq., Joe is the lead partner and director of the Brooklyn, NY-based Kornfeld law firm. Joe specializes in corporate law, real estate and estates practice.
Bill Lovell, CEO, c-Link Systems, Inc. c-Link offers the Forager rover for search and rescue missions in mines and disaster zones, as well as custom robot arms. Bill has also created multiple STEM curricula for use in high school and college education.
Thomas S. Marsh, Robot magazine Contributing Writer and Future Bytes columnist. Thomas has assessed trends in robotics and artificial intelligence and their impacts on individuals, companies, military and industry.
Donald Mazzella, COO & Editorial Director, Information Strategies, Inc., NREF Board of Directors member.
George Mitsuoka, Technical Editor, Robot magazine, Director of the Innovation Center, Regis Jesuit High School.
Mike Marzetta. Mike is a Foundersof MINDS-i Education (www.mindsieducation.com), a high performance robotics system that empowers STEM educators and their students to create extreme autonomous inventions. Mike is also President of Altek, Inc (www.altek-inc.com), a contract manufacturing organization with core competencies in plastic injection molding, tooling, machining and assembly; serving hi-tech customers in the aerospace, medical, and industrial equipment sectors. Mike is a Founder and Chair of the Inland Northwest Aerospace Consortium (www.inwac.org).
Brian Nave, Logicom CEO, Robot Rivals Co-host and Technical Advisor, Bots-IQ MC and Technical Advisor; Owner, LogicomLLC.com and Tugbots.com, Competitor on Battlebots, Robot Wars, Robotica and Nickelodian’s Power Hour.
Steve Norris, Steve is the Senior Software Architect at Phios Corporation. Mr. Norris is a software architect and developer with over 30 years of experience ranging from the design and construction of artificial intelligence systems, process knowledge management, web and graphical user interfaces to digital electronics and robotics. Mr. Norris is also a Writer and Contributing Editor to Robot magazine for which he writes feature articles detailing the design and construction of robot projects.
Tony Ohm, HitecRCD Service Manager.
Carl Owen, CEO, DSPRobotics. DSPRobotics offers Flowmedia and Flowstone software. These are graphical programming packages that greatly facilitate programming tasks with a library of modules generated by the user community, and with programming capability.
James H. Phelan MD, Conributor to Robot magazine. Continues to work as a member of the late Dr. James Gouge's Machine Neuroscience Beta Team.
CDR David Place, USN (Retired), and former Research Associate with SECNAV's CRUSER (Consortium for Robotics and Unmanned Systems Education and Research) program. Today, David posts a bi-weekly USN (Unmanned Systems News) blog that is distributed by email and widely read. We highly recommend it. Interested parties can contact David to subscribe. Simply send a request to David at: davidplace47@gmail.com.
Steve Rainwater. Starting in the 1990s, Steve launched and ran Robots.net as a robotics news source, with assistance from fellow robotics enthusiasts. Steve is a photojournalist; he and Tom Atwood often worked together to cover major robotics events for Robot magazine and Robots.net. Robots.net has evolved over the years and today provides podcasts of interviews on robotics.
Gerald Sayer, AUVSI founder and freelance writer for magazines and websites.
Russell Schwausch, programmer and who has continued, as time permits, to develop the unique AI technology created by the late Jim Gouge. Schwausch has worked with programmer Patti Alred, daughter of Gouge.
Dick Swan. Programmer, Educator and Mentor; Creator of the programming environment RobotC, designed for VEX, LEGO and other robotics platforms. RobotC is used by Carnegie Mellon University to support robotics education programs nationwide and globally.
Mario Tremblay. Founder and CEO - RobotShop.com, the world leading robot store for personal and professional robot technology.
Dan Ward, Cofounder of VisualEdge, Inc., one of the largest VEX resellers and inventors of the Game-in-a-Box competition line; purveyors of curricula and table-top VEX robot competition systems.
Rob Wood, Special Projects Director, HyperGold Web Services, Photojournalist and Bay Area organizer of robot boat combat competitions using pneumatic pellet cannons.