Industry Advisory Board

Prior to founding Compositek Corporation, he was Vice President of Engineering with Goldsworthy Engineering (then a subsidiary of Monsanto) where he directed the design of automated production systems for composite structures.

He attended the University of Liverpool earning the degrees of B.Eng. and Ph.D., the latter for research relating to the design of gas turbine discs. He also received a Certificate in Business Administration from UCLA.
[Return to Top]

Stephen Bedolla serves as a senior vice president, project director within Fluor’s Energy & Chemicals Group, having just successfully completed the $2.2 billion Marathon Petroleum Company Detroit Heavy Oil Upgrade Project, located at their Detroit, Michigan refinery. In this role, he was the project director responsible for the engineering, procurement and construction.

Previous experience includes several scheduled driven explosion-related fire damaged projects; PEMEX’s cryogenic gas processing plant located in the remote area of Cactus, Chiapas, Mexico, and Esso’s gas processing facility, that included rebuilding three gas processing units and a crude unit, located in Longford, Victoria, Australia. On the Esso project, Bedolla was the consortium project director comprised of Fluor, Brown & Root AOC and Worley ABB.

Bedolla received his B.S. in engineering technology from Cal Poly Pomona in 1990.
[Return to Top]

Deanna R. Haines
Director, Gas Engineering
Southern California Gas Company 
and San Diego Gas & Electric

Deanna Haines currently is the Director of Gas Engineering for Sempra Energy’s California utilities, Southern California Gas Company (SoCalGas) and San Diego Gas & Electric (SDG&E).

Prior to Haines’ promotion to Director of Gas Engineering, she was the Director of Environmental Services where she led a department that supported the development and implementation of programs.

Haines has served on several scientific committees, including the South Coast Air Quality Management District’s Best Available Control Technology Scientific Review Committee (BACT SRC) and the Environmental Protection Agency’s Industrial Combustion Coordinated Rulemaking (ICCR) Committee. 

Haines has a master’s degree in business administration from the University of Redlands and a bachelor’s degree in chemical engineering from University of Southern California.
[Return to Top]

At JPL, he was previously the leader of the Deep Space One Telecommunication Subsystem and the Project Element Manager of the Spectrometer Photometer Imaging Receiver (SPIRE), a flight astrophysics instrument for ESA’s Herschel Observatory.  He was also the leader for the Advanced RF Front-End System-On-A-Chip Task for JPL’s Center for Integrated Space Microsystems (CISM) as well as for other  advanced telecommunication R&D tasks.

Previously, Herman was with GM-Hughes where he was responsible for GaAs microwave and millimeter-wave circuit development and characterization.

Herman holds a B.S. from Drexel University, and a M.S. and PhD. from University of Michigan, all in Electrical Engineering.
[Return to Top]

Iyer started his career as a Research metallurgist with Cabot Corporation.  He has exhaustive experience in alloys and products for wear resistance applications. In addition, he has published papers and has patents on alloys and processes for manufacturing wear resistant alloy products.

He is a member of the American Society of Metals and the American Welding Society.
[Return to Top]

Bruce Kirby is a professional engineer that has been involved in land development site engineering for over 25 years. As a Vice President at a large consulting firm, he has directed the infrastructure engineering design for the development of several large master-planned community projects, throughout Southern California.

As a licensed engineer in the states of California, Oregon and Washington, Kirby is actively involved with multiple professional organizations including American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE), American Public Works Association (APWA), Building Industry Association of Southern California (BIA/SC), American Council of Civil Engineering Companies, California (ACEC), and the Urban Land Institute (ULI).

Kirby received his Bachelor of Science in Civil Engineering from California Polytechnic University, Pomona, and spent several years on the Board of the Cal Poly Pomona Alumni Association as the Vice President of Finance. 
[Return to Top]

He sits on the Board of Trustees for Marymount College in Palos Verdes, California and sits on the Dean of Engineering Industry Advisory Board for California State Polytechnic University, Pomona.

Nestor Martinez
Vice President of Engineering
and Technical Services in
Transmission and Distribution
Souther California Edison

Nestor Martinez is responsible for overseeing the planning, engineering and design of SCE’s transmission and distribution systems. He also directs the organization’s efforts to provide studies for new contracts for interconnection, transmission, or distribution service for both generation and load projects. He also participates in transmission regulatory policy and rulemaking.

Martinez joined SCE in 2006 and held positions including Director of North West Distribution, Construction & Maintenance, Director, Central Design and Field Accounting, Region Manager, Desert Region, Business Advisor ERP R/3 and Manager, Special Projects. that organization. Martinez represented Power Delivery as the primary witness for DC&M in the 2012 GRC.

Prior to joining SCE, Martinez worked for over 25 years in various subsidiaries of TECO Energy (TECO) based in Tampa, Florida. Martinez held various transmission and distribution leadership positions in Tampa Electric Co. including engineering management staff and operational roles.

Martinez earned his Bachelor of Science degree in Engineering (Electrical) from the University of South Florida and is a Registered Professional Engineer in the State of Florida.

[Return to Top]

David Merrill has more than 40 years of experience in systems, software and digital design and development. He has led teams of design engineers for the successful development of electronics and real-time software for airborne and ground-based chemical agent sensors.  In addition, Merrill led the software and digital design teams for the Major Constituent Analyzer for the International Space Station. 

Merrill manages the Engineering Department which consists of Systems, Project, Mechanical, Electronic and Software Engineering.  He currently holds a Top Secret clearance.

Kevin M. Payne is Vice President of Engineering & Technical Services for Southern California Edison (SCE), responsible for planning, engineering and designing SCE’s transmission and distribution systems spanning the company’s service
area.

Prior to his current role, Payne was vice president of Information Technology & Business Integration, responsible for the delivery of technology services to the various business units within SCE. He was vice president of Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) for SCE, where he led a comprehensive 5-year, half-billion-dollar program to implement SAP integrated systems and streamline the company's business operations.

Payne has a degree in mechanical engineering from the University of California, Berkeley, and is a registered professional engineer.
[Return to Top]

Rounds holds a B.S. in physics from Stevens Institute of Technology in Hoboken, N.J., and an M.S. in nuclear physics from Yale University.  He is the Chairman of the Southern California section of the Institute Of Navigation, Western Region Member-at-Large of the ION National Council, holds multiple patents in the navigation field and has numerous publications in various aerospace and navigation forums.
[Return to Top]

Timothy R. Schempp is a Senior Engineering Fellow with Raytheon Company.  He is currently the Technical Director for the Navigation and Landing Systems business area which builds high integrity landing systems for both military and commercial applications.  He is also the Chief Engineer on the Wide Area Augmentation System (WAAS) project where he has worked since 1996.  WAAS is a safety critical differential GPS system for aircraft which provides navigation accuracy, availability and continuity sufficient for use in commercial aviation.

Schempp is an active member of the Institute of Navigation (ION) where he has presented numerous papers over the last 10 years. He has published 17 papers on GPS applications. Tim is a member of the WAAS Integrity and Performance Panel, a group of industry experts formed by the FAA and responsible for the approval of the WAAS algorithms and the WAAS safety design. 

Schempp received his B.S. in pure mathematics from Cal Poly Pomona in 1992 and a M.S. in applied mathematics from Cal State Fullerton in 1996.
[Return to Top]

Prior to that, he led the Conceptual Design group at the Skunk Works.  In his career, Mr. Schrock has participated in the development of many different types of vehicles; from transports, attack aircraft, bombers, cruise missiles, reconnaissance vehicles, and helicopters. 

Michael P. Smith has held various technical and engineering positions with CBS Radio and CBS Television and was the director of engineering for CBS Radio West Coast from 1990 to 1996

Since then, Smith is currently the director of engineering for CBS Radio San Francisco.

Smith graduated from Cal Poly Pomona in 1984 with a B.S. in engineering technology.
[Return to Top]

James Van is Director of West Coast Operations for Jacobs, one of the world's largest and most diverse providers of technical, engineering, and construction services.  He has more than 30 years’ experience in executive management, execution of complex projects involving multiple offices, product development, and design engineering for the petroleum refining and petrochemical industries.  Prior to joining Jacobs in 2007, he was Vice President of Engineering for the US division of a European-based EPC firm. 

Van earned a Bachelor of Science degree in Chemical Engineering from the University of Southern California in 1981.  He and his wife have two grown children. 
[Return to Top]