People

Comprised of physical scientists, engineers and computer scientists with advanced degrees, research experience and software application development experience, Tech-X Corporation is committed to leveraging a unique combination of scientific and programming excellence.

At Tech-X Corporation we have a team skilled in project management, and community understanding and alignment through presentation and conversation. We specialize in algorithm development, object-oriented and distributed system programming in C/C++, Java, Fortran 90/95, Python, Web services and CORBA for scientific and engineering applications. Tech-X Corporation has developed plasma and particle accelerator simulations to facilitate both engineering design and fundamental scientific understanding.

Our scientists are experienced scientific researchers and software engineers, and are in leading positions in national computational efforts sponsored by the Department of Energy and the Air Force Office of Scientific Research. In addition, prior to joining Tech-X Corp, many of our staff have contributed to projects and programs at prestigious and innovative centers of scientific research, including:

Los Alamos National Laboratory
Sandia National Laboratory
Oak Ridge National Laboratory
Northrop Grumman Corporation
The University of Colorado
The University of Texas Institute of Fusion Studies
The Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory
The Institute of Astronomy, Zürich

Executive Management

John R. Cary, Ph.D.
Chief Executive Officer

Professor John R. Cary graduated with a BA in Math and Physics from the University of California, Irvine, and received his MA and Ph.D. in Physics from the University of California at Berkeley. Prof. Cary spent two years at the Los Alamos National Laboratory and four years at the Institute for Fusion Studies (University of Texas).

In 1984, Prof. Cary went to the University of Colorado (CU) at Boulder, where he has been the primary graduate thesis advisor for nine graduate students. At CU, Prof. Cary has served as Department Chair, Director, and Area Teaching Scholar. In the latter position he mentored all incoming faculty in the Natural Sciences in teaching and proposal writing.

Professor Cary's research is in the areas of computational physics, plasma physics, beam physics, and nonlinear dynamics. He has published more than eighty articles in refereed journals, and has given more than fifty invited talks. His current interests include high-performance computing and distributed computing, especially as applied to the analysis of physical systems.

Svetlana Shasharina, Ph.D.
Vice-President, Distributed Technologies

Dr. Svetlana Shasharina graduated from Moscow State University and received her Ph.D. from the General Physics Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences. Dr. Shasharina has worked on a number of computational science projects, and has published on the uses of object-oriented programming in scientific computing, distributed computing and the development of intuitive scientific modeling applications and libraries.

As a Senior Research Associate at the University of Colorado, Dr. Shasharina taught at both the graduate and undergraduate levels. At Tech-X Corporation, Dr. Shasharina is a principal investigator of many projects, combining C/C++, Java and distributed (CORBA, grid) programming and leading accelerator physics projects that include accelerator modeling and differential algebra. Dr. Shasharina has also participated in development of the National Transport Code Collaboration demo code.

David Bruhwiler, Ph.D.
Vice President, Accelerator Technology

David Bruhwiler earned a doctorate in plasma and accelerator physics from the University of Colorado at Boulder in 1990. Dr. Bruhwiler has fifteen years of experience in the development of high-performance Fortran and C/C++ codes for the design and simulation of particle accelerators, free-electron lasers (FEL) and other beam and plasma devices.

Dr. Bruhwiler joined Tech-X Corporation in the Fall of 1997, where his work has focused on the development of particle-in-cell (PIC) codes for simulating high-power RF devices and advanced concepts for plasma-based particle acceleration, with emphasis on parallel computing techniques, graphical user interfaces (GUI) and 3-D visualization.

Peter Messmer, Ph.D.
Vice President, Space Applications

Dr. Messmer received his Ph.D from the Institute of Astronomy, ETH Zürich, Switzerland. Dr. Messmer's research interests and skills include numerical plasma physics and its application to astronomy, parallel and distributed computing, algorithms, software tools and applications, grid technologies and Web technologies. Dr. Messmer was a research assistant for the Swiss Center for Scientific Computing and the Institute of Astronomy in Zürich.

He is expert in various computing languages, including Fortran, C++, Java and Perl as well as IDL and AVS. Dr. Messmer has conducted numerous computing projects, including large-scale plasma simulations on a Beowulf-Cluster, parallelization of a PIC plasma simulation code, and vectorization of a Beam-Propagation code.

Peter Stoltz, Ph.D.
Vice President, Beam-Plasma Interactions

Dr. Stoltz received a BS in Physics from the University of California-Berkeley in 1989 and his Ph.D. in Physics from the University of Colorado in 1996. Dr. Stoltz completed his post-doctoral research at Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory developing particle-in-cell simulation codes for heavy-ion fusion beams. Dr. Stoltz has also worked Sandia National Laboratories as a post-doctoral research scientist developing magneto-hydrodynamic simulation codes for z-pinch x-ray sources.

Dr. Stoltz designed and implemented a graphical user interface for the PPPL heavy-ion code using IDL, and wrote a GUI tool in IDL for post-processing simulation results while at Sandia. Some of Dr. Stoltz' recent work involved the development of a scientific steering package based on Python where he also used MPI to prototype a parallel version of that scripting language. Dr. Stoltz also headed the development of the parallel IDL prototype developed by Tech-X Corporation in 2002.

Ed Kase
Director of Marketing and Business Development

Mr. Kase received his BS in mechanical engineering from Clarkson University. He has worked in scientific computing and numerical modeling as an engineer and software developer at General Electric, Visual Numerics, Inc. and other organizations.

Mr. Kase has extensive experience in marketing, sales and business development for analysis and visualization software products and services. Mr. Kase is responsible for developing opportunities and commercial applications for technologies developed by Tech-X Corporation.

Larry Nelson
Controller

Mr. Nelson received a B.S. in Accounting from the University of Colorado (CU) at Boulder in 1969. After a one-year position at a bank in Denver, he became employed at CU, initially in the Accounting Department, and soon thereafter in the Office of Contracts and Grants (OCG). OCG is responsible for processing and administering all of the sponsored research proposals and awards at CU (more than $250 million annually). In 2001, Mr. Nelson was a recipient of the University of Colorado?s Robert L. Stearns Award for Exceptional Service, the highest honor bestowed upon CU faculty and staff for exceptional teaching, research, or service.

In 1981, Mr. Nelson became the Director of OCG and served in that capacity until his retirement in 2004. In February 2005, Mr. Nelson joined Tech-X as its first Controller. He brings to Tech-X his 34 years of experience with sponsored research, federal funding, and contract management.

Additional Tech-X Staff Information