Scott Hirsch the Founder of AppsBar joins Craig to discuss the gap between over-simplified apps and costly, professionally-produced apps. appsbar is the first tool for any business, group or individual to create professional, personalized apps for use on mobile devices with no cost. . appsbar is one platform to create and submit apps to popular app stores. It presents myriad personalization opportunities with a unique interface that guides creators through the entire process – from creation, to editing, to publication – with visual and textual clues at each step.

Mahesh Makhija an Associate Vice President at Infosys joins Craig to discuss end to end business solutions that utilize the best of technology. Infosys provides solutions that span the entire software life cycle encompassing consulting, design, development, software re-engineering, maintenance, systems integration, package evaluation and implementation and infrastructure management services.

PV Kannan the CEO and 24/7 Customer joins Craig to discuss a simple and easy way for companies to acquire and retain their customers, and for customers to seek solutions to their queries, anytime and anywhere in the world.24/7 Customer, Inc. is a managed services provider of online predictive experience solutions.We transform and own the outcome of digital sales and service experiences for large enterprises with thousands of call center agents. We deliver the highest CSAT at the lowest cost, and eliminate calls.

Tom Jeineck the Founder and President of On Target Web Solutions joins Craig to discuss Search Engine Optimization and Internet Marketing Solutions. At On Target Web Solutions, we are passionate about educating our clients about effective web design, effective and engaging social media campaigns, organic search engine marketing, the power of blogging, the power of permission based marketing and the power of ethical online business practices.

Jonathan Spira the CEO at Basex joins Craig to discuss collaborative Business Knowledge, which is the intersection of content management, portals, knowledge management, and collaboration. Information Overload is costing organizations billions of dollars annually as well as productivity time, which impacts the bottom line and revenue. When employees have to sort through a ton information and determine which of that data is correct, current and reliable. Searching for the correct answer or corroborating evidence can be time consuming and is no guarantee that the information is correct, which again costs organizations time and money.

Linda Rohrbough an Author and Consultant at Study by App joins Craig to talk about connecting students of all ages with bold and dynamic content. Study by App is an educational software development company that develops apps for the iPhone/iTouch/iPad. Our staff is a collective of teachers, authors, scholars, professors, and publishers from a wide variety of disciplines and backgrounds.

Sumeet Shrivastava the President at Array IT joins Craig to discuss how federal IT initiatives and impact the government and the private sector and how new and emerging technologies and leading-edge solutions can delivering best-of-the-best industry programs and practices.

Zack Urlocker the COO at ZenDesk joins Craig to discuss Cloud Based help desk software. Zendesk is the proven cloud-based help desk software that is the fastest way to enable great customer service in rapidly growing companies. Zendesk is so easy to use and their services are trusted by 10,000 organizations for their most valuable assets: customers, partners, and employees.

Thomas Swalla the COO at Savings.com joins Craig to discuss how to find the best deals on everything you want. Tell us what brands and categories you like to shop, where you live, and Savings.com will deliver the best deals for you handpicked by expert DealPros®. In addition to providing personalized recommendations, Savings.com has one of the most in-depth databases of coupons.

Dr. Rajiv Kumar the Co-Founder and Chief Medical Officer at Shape-up joins Craig to discuss the worst health problems we face as a nation–obesity, diabetes, heart disease, cancer, hypertension, osteoarthritis, depression–are related to our collective unhealthy lifestyle. Founded initially on the basic premise that people are more likely to succeed at reaching their goals when they work together with the people they care about, ShapeUp continues to stay true to its original philosophy. The company has remained focused on uniting people to improve their health while at the same time expanding its vision for the future. ShapeUp aims to build the largest platform in the world that unites individuals with their entire health care ecosystem – including their friends, family, colleagues, employer, health plan, physicians, pharmacy, health coach, and more. By creating a simple, central place to connect with the activities, information, ideas, and people that can lead us to better health, ShapeUp is working toward improving the health of the entire world.

Brad Murdoch the Chief Marketing Officer at Visible World joins Craig to discuss how to transform your advertising production giving it more relevance and delivering it with greater effectiveness. Visible World is the leading provider of targeted television advertising solutions. The company’s suite of services enables advertisers, agencies, and media companies to deliver addressable, interactive, and measurable ads.

On Show 628 Craig spoke with the following guests.

John Fishnell the VP of Project Management at Apriso joins Craig to discuss how technology is changing global manufacturing operations. Apriso’s FlexNet is a BPM platform-based software solution for global manufacturing operations management. Apriso supports global continuous improvement by delivering visibility into, control over and synchronization across manufacturing and the product supply network.

Brian Reed the CMO and VP of Products at BoxTone joins Craig to discuss enterprise mobility management. BoxTone’s single unified mobile management platform powered by patented real-time automation technology addresses the entire mobile lifecycle: mobile device management, support management, operations management and business management. BoxTone delivers real-time centralized control of all mobile devices including iPhone, Pad, Android, BlackBerry and Windows Phone devices; and the enterprise mobile applications that run on them.

Bill Anderson the CEO at Oculis Labs joins Craig to discuss commercialization of visual endpoint security technologies. Oculis Labs develops data privacy software that secures the last two feet of the Internet – the distance from the computer screen to a user’s eyes. Oculis Labs helps consumers, enterprise and government customers protect digital assets in the real world.

Ryan Scott is the VP of Marketing at Seamless, he joins Craig to discuss online food order and delivery services. Seamless has made ordering fun and easy for more than one million members and many of the world’s largest companies. Through its website, mobile web, and native mobile applications for the iPhone, Android, and BlackBerry, Seamless offers full menus, ratings, reviews, and exclusive discounts from an extensive network of restaurants in New York, Washington D.C., Boston, Chicago, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Philadelphia, London, and other U.S. cities. Seamless will facilitate more than $400 million in food orders from its 7,500+ partner restaurants in 2011. Seamless is an independent, privately held company.

Tyler Lessard Chief Marketing Officer at Fixmo joins Craig to discuss managing risk associated with the mobile workforce. Fixmo Inc. is the mobile risk management (MRM) company that empowers organizations to mitigate risks around mobile deployments. Using Fixmo’s solutions including its flagship Sentinel product, enterprises and government agencies ensure the integrity, compliance and auditability of every device used by their mobile workforce.

Peter Micciche the President and CEO at Certain Software joins Craig to discuss event management. Certain provides comprehensive event management solution that enables organizations to easily plan, promote, manage, and track events in an integrated, cloud-based software suite. Stakeholders at every level – planners, attendees, exhibitors, business sponsors and C-level executives – will realize more business value utilizing the event best practices and automated tools built into the Certain solution.

Mike DeVries the Chief Marketing Officer at Global Logic joins Craig to discuss Cloud based mobile applications. GlobalLogic, home to nearly 6,000 people, delivers R&D services to leading technology-enabled organizations. Since 2001, we have remained relentlessly focused on delivering innovative products, services and experiences. We work with both start-ups and technology giants, including 80% of the top global technology brands, to design and build innovative products that provide a competitive edge. With innovation hubs and design studios around the world, GlobalLogic delivers the broad range of technology design and engineering skills needed to help our clients stay ahead.

Mike Pugh the VP of Marketing at J2 Communications joins Craig to discuss cloud-based, business-critical communications and storage messaging services. j2 Global Communications offers a complete array of unified-messaging and communications services, including faxing and voicemail solutions, Web-initiated conference calling, storage messaging services, online backup, and virtual office solutions.

Ken Sun the Group Product Manager for Mobile at Intuit Personal Finance joins Craig to discuss mobile money management. Mint’s mission is to help people understand and do more with their money. Intuit has always been a customer-centric organization. Together, we’re working to get millions of Americans on track to meet their financial goals. Mint has released mobile apps for iPhone/iPad and Android.

Dr. William Jenkins the Chief Scientific Officer at Scientific Learning joins Craig to discuss How some mobile apps and games for kids – while they look like just fun – are based on learning research. Scientific Learning’s KinderSpark™ series is a collection of engaging iPad games that help young children build kindergarten readiness skills and excel in learning. Its “secret sauce” is the pairing of cognitive development research with curriculum.

Chris Holbert the CEO at SecuraTrac joins Craig to discuss a new technology to the market that brings peace of mind to families, protecting children, the elderly and pets by allowing us to know where our loved ones are located at all times. SecuraTrac® develops, markets, and sells a suite of products dedicated to bringing families closer together and improving employee safety through GPS location based technology and state-of-the-art, easy-to-use websites.

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We all agreed to a certain amount of tracking when we signed up for EZ-Pass service.  This service allows us to pass along toll roads without having to stop or even slow down in some areas.  The RFID technology embedded in the E-Z Pass transceiver provides the information necessary for E-Z Pass to bill our account and pay the government.

We’ve talked about problems with tracking using OnStar before, and they’ve decided to not be quite so intrusive to the benefit of all their current (and even former) subscribers.  Their ability to track and shut down GM vechicles, however, still remains.

In a bit of a twist for E-Z Pass, they’ve recently filed a patent for an RFID device which includes both forward and rear-facing cameras.  These cameras would be used to take pictures of the occupants of the vehicle along with pictures of the surroundings.  The reason?

It appears that Kapsch wants to be able to help States monitor their High-Occupancy-Vehicle (HOV) lanes.  They’re looking to use the technology in their new E-Z Pass transponders, combine it with facial recognition technology in an effort to be able to automatically identify and fine HOV-lane violators.

Remember that the existing E-Z Pass technology could readily be used to monitor our speed (and in fact is in New York State) and that information could be used to automatically issue “Speeding” tickets, additional transit tolls based upon time-of-day and much more.

Just because they filed the patent, doesn’t mean that we’ll have cameras on our E-Z Pass devices any time soon, but the prospect definitely raises some real concerns.

Kapsch signed a 10 year contract to provide transponders for 22 toll systems in the United States, and their transponders can be found in 41 countries and 64 million cars worldwide.

Maybe having your picture taken by your E-Z Pass will make you some sort of world-wide celebrity?

Related articles

• Big Brother in the Front Seat (reason.com)
• Kapsch TrafficCom Acquires MARK IV IVHS Creating Leadership in Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS) (prweb.com)

So, along comes Google who’s trying to buy Motorola‘s Mobility division for $6 billion (actually paying some $12.5 billion).  The big reason?  To purchase their portfolio of communications-related patents to protect itself from the onslaught of inevitable patent battles which are likely to come from Apple and others.

(I wrote a detailed article about the Patent Wars last week.)

$6 billion isn’t a reasonable representation as to what it’s going to cost the economy.  These patent portfolios are busy stiffling innovation throughout the country and around the world.  It’s just too easy for big companies to establish patents that step all over small businesses attempting to make their mark through innovation.

We’ve got to change the US Patent system to eliminate software patents.  They aren’t helping spur innovation, they are truly destroying it.

Related articles

• Why America’s patent system needs to be reformed, and how to do it (customerthink.com)
• Welcome to the patent valuation bubble (zdnet.com)
• Lawyers Laughing All the Way to the Patent Bank (markevanstech.com)
• The Terrible Cost Of Patents (techcrunch.com)

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The days of the friendly London Bobby strolling through a neighborhood, talking with passers-by and being offered the occasional tea are long gone.  London’s residents have become the most monitored in the free world, as nearly 500,000 video cameras (some of which cost up to $50k each) and microphones are set throughout the city recording the everyday actions of millions of people as they pass through old London town.  One of London’s own, George Orwell, had a vision of modern-day London which is coming true.

The original problem?  London’s unarmed police offers were being harassed and attacked and had little ability to defend themselves.

The solution? Get the Cops off the streets, and put them behind video screens where they could “more effectively” monitor crimes in all its forms throughout the city.

The result? Thousands of cameras are allowing the police to do post-crime investigation (“Dial 911 and Die”) quite effectively, however they just aren’t on-the-streets anymore and can’t help stop a brewing situation from overwhelming the city.

This appears to be just another mis-application of technology.  Although the cameras have allowed the London Police from having to be on the streets, the overwhelming results is that the Police are now very much out-of-touch with the “feel” of the street.  Something which isn’t possible with shiny, new CCTV technology.

Not to mention, the civil liberty implications…

Related articles

• Social Media, Privacy, Mass Surveillance, London Riots and the Arab Uprising (nextbigfuture.com)
• The Ideology of the London Riots (forbes.com)
• A bad day for civil liberties (bigbrotherwatch.org.uk)
• Facial recognition in use after riots (physorg.com)
• The Twitter Riots put the Surveillance Society on trial (computerweekly.com)

Image by RobertCiavarro via Flickr

Our cars are getting easier to use, coming stacked with features and, as it turns out, are becoming more and more vulnerable to attack.  The integration of cellular phones into our phones and the country’s infrastructure  is getting dangerous.

Just this past week, Don Bailey revealed that he could use a simple text message to unlock certain car doors and do much more.  He said in an interview with CNN at the Black Hat security conference in Las Vegas that the same technique could also be used to attack industrial systems, the power grid and the water system.

“I could care less if I could unlock a car door,” he said. “It’s cool. It’s sexy. But the same system is used to control phone, power, traffic systems. I think that’s the real threat.”

As insecure technologies continue to be used by companies who are unaware of the security implications of their products, our country is at severe risk.  Foreign governments, organized crime or even a small, dedicated crew of hackers looking to make a name for themselves, could quite literally destroy our economy.

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We’ve long known that the FBI and other law-enforcement agencies are able to obtain wire taps to monitor suspected criminal behavior on telephones and internet connections.  In recent years they’ve even been able to do some monitoring without court order via the Patriot Act.

In a recently de-classified document, the FBI acknowledges that the wireless revolution is creating serious problems for monitoring individuals.  The use of the newest high-speed “4G” networks, such as Verizon‘s LTE, provide 20Mbps connections which were unheard of just one year ago.  Processing and analyzing these fire-hoses of information is presenting numerous technical challenges for everyone involved.

All voice calls on 4G networks are placed using VoIP technologies.  One of the major problems the FBI has noted with this technology, arises from the tunnels that are used within networks during the “handoff” of IP traffic as it’s transmitted. “Tunnels within a network increase the complexity of lawful intercept (LI) solutions,” reads the newsletter. The challenges presented by tunnels include “difficulty in identifying the traffic of a particular user (e.g., deep packet inspection may be needed), accessing the content of a tunnel at its end-points, and the use of encryption within tunnels.”

On top of the strictly fire-hose amounts of data problems noted is the ability to use high-level encryption on-the-fly with these newer, faster phones.  Free software, such as that from Phil Zimmerman of PGP fame, allows people to communicate without fear of commercial or government monitoring.  As the use of encryption for communications increases, the FBI and other law enforcement agencies problems are going to increase exponentially.

Related articles

• Cryptography and Wiretapping (schneier.com)
• Document: FBI Surveillance Geeks Fear, Love New Gadgets (wired.com)
• Paypal gives FBI the list of IP Address of 1,000 Anomymous hackers (thehackernews.com)
• Andy Greenberg: Federal Wiretaps Nearly Doubled Last Year (blogs.forbes.com)
• FBI working from list of top 1,000 protestors in Anonymous raids (newsworldwide.wordpress.com)
• Wiretaps are increasing (chicagoreader.com)
• Cryptography Versus Wiretapping: and the Winner Is … (q-ontech.blogspot.com)

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Hey, the budget deficit is only in the Trillions of dollars.  Why not throw a little money to start-up engineers in the hope that it’ll spur the economy.  Too little, too late?  Not government’s job?

Starting this September at Standford University, the Innovation Corps program will give $50k to each of 100 new “start-up” companies every year.  The members of these 3-person-minimum companies must go through an intensive entrepreneurial education class associated with the University and the money isn’t a “investment,” at least not using the normal vernacular.

The $50k/company is free money.  No stock, no payback, no obligation.

The Feds are “investing” $10 million to try and change the course of MBA programs.  Turns out that an MBA just isn’t particularly useful if you’re not looking to work for one of the Fortune-500 companies.

Best of luck to these start-ups.  Hopefully the schools can help send them in a successful direction now that they’ve got more money even though their previous education turned out to not be so useful.

Related articles

• Feds Giving Engineers and Scientists $50K to Learn to Start Companies (wired.com)
• Is an MBA Worth It? (getrichslowly.org)
• What motivates serial entrepreneurs? (venturebeat.com)

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I’ve talked on the show before about the problems with some of the newest smartphone technology we’ve been using.  Apple was “caught” keeping data on the iPhone which provided detailed information about precisely where any of their cell phones had been over the past 12 months.  Apple claims it wasn’t using the data for tracking (and there are reasonable technical explanations for what happened), but it does raise the overall issue of tracking individuals.  And now two US Senators want to know if the spooks are trackingus.

Senators Mark Udall (D-CO) and Ron Wyden (D-OR) are members of the Senate panel overseeing all 16 US Intelligence Agencies.  Earlier this year they sounded the alarm that the Obama administration had started taking even broader reach into people’s private lives by re-interpreting the Patriot Act.  Domestic spying is apparently on the increase.

Now they want to know if they are being spyed on.  They asked Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, “Do government agencies have the authority to collect the geolocation information of American citizens for intelligence purposes?”

A good question, and one that deserves a direct answer.  We tend to have our smart phones with us 24/7.  They have built-in location equipment that tells the cell phone company precisely where we are so that they can route calls, and many of them now contain GPS equipment due to Federal requirements.

They also have microphones, cameras and motion sensors.

With the concern over GM’s use of its OnStar service to collect location information of our governmental officials, why shouldn’t we be concerned about the potential mis-use of our cell phones and smart phones?  Seems only logical.

I’ll try and report back on Clapper’s response, assuming it’s unclassified.  Of course, if it is classified we will seem to have another problem on our hands.

By the way, Wyden has written legislation along with House Republican Jason Chaffetz that would require warrants for law enforcement to be able to collect geodata from our phones, cars, gps devices and more.

Related articles

• Geo-tracking controversy homes in on iPhone (roundup) (news.cnet.com)
• Apple acts on iPhone tracking bug (bbc.co.uk)
• No Immediate Threat Seen in Apple iPhone Location Tracking File (blogcritics.org)
• Senators press Apple, Google for answers about location tracking (textually.org)
• Bill Would Keep Big Brother’s Mitts Off Your GPS Data (wired.com)

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Maybe it’s better put as “Your Vehicle Snitches on You More.”  The wonderful ODB-II port on our cars has gone beyond letting your car’s mechanic know which parts are bad or which pollution-control laws your car has been violating.  There are cases in Canada and now Michigan where the police have been extracting information from cars to issue tickets and to provide as evidence in court.  (Check out ODB-III, which makes things much worse.)

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) is expected to call for mandatory installation of “black boxes” in automobiles in June, and engineering groups are weighing in on which data the boxes should collect and who should access it.

“When the vehicle crashes, we want to make sure that the first person who gets access to the data is the owner,” says Tom Kowalick, chairman of IEEE Global Standards for Motor Vehicle EDRs, as well as an author of seven books on EDR technology. “Right now, no data is secure. There are 20,000 tow-aways in America every day, and none of them has secure data.”

Read the Full Story at Design News.

Related articles

• Automotive Black Boxes, Minus the Gray Area (wired.com)
• Report: NHTSA expected to mandate black boxes in all cars next month (autoblog.com)
• Transportation Department to propose mandatory black boxes in passenger vehicles? (engadget.com)
• Big Brother Wants To Get in Your Back Seat (lewrockwell.com)

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As if there wasn’t enough news about government waste at every level, here’s a new story just out:

The National Endowment for the Arts has declared Video Games a Valid Form of Art!

In case you haven’t been keeping track, the US Federal government has already spent more than $4,000,000,000 on what it calls “art.”

Specifically, the revisions for Arts in Media guidelines now state “all available media platforms such as the internet, interactive and mobile technologies, digital games, arts content delivered via satellite, as well as on radio and television.” Grantees can expect funding from $10,000 to $200,000, depending on the platform and complexity of the project.

Related articles

• US Government Recognizes, Funds Video Games As Art (games.slashdot.org)
• What do Videogames do to Art? (bogost.com)
• US government now funds video games… if they’re “art” (arstechnica.com)

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Can you believe we had to find out about this from a UK-based Newspaper?  The Guardian is reporting that it obtained a “restricted” draft of an agreement between Washington and Brussels that would allow the US to retain all passenger information about anyone who flies between the UK and the US for 15 years.

They will be keeping everything — Names, Address, Credit Card Numbers, Credit Information, Ethnic Origin, Political Opinions, and details of Health and Sex Life.  Everything they can get their hands on.  Absolutely amazing.  Or maybe not…

This type of information is dangerous for governments to keep on-hand, and provides an incredibly tempting target for illegal activity from Identity-Theft through Terrorism.

The personal data of millions of passengers who fly between the US and Europe, including credit card details, phone numbers and home addresses, may be stored by the US department of homeland security for 15 years, according to a draft agreement between Washington and Brussels leaked to the Guardian.

The “restricted” draft, which emerged from negotiations between the US and EU, opens the way for passenger data provided to airlines on check-in to be analysed by US automated data-mining and profiling programmes in the name of fighting terrorism, crime and illegal migration. The Americans want to require airlines to supply passenger lists as near complete as possible 96 hours before takeoff, so names can be checked against terrorist and immigration watchlists.

Read the whole article Here.

Related articles

• You: Air passenger data deal with US defended by Kenneth Clarke (guardian.co.uk)
• Air passengers’ lunch details to be stored in terrorism plan (thetruthiswhere.wordpress.com)
• U.S. Government Could Store European Air Passenger Info for 15 Years (newsfeed.time.com)

So this week I decided to bring you some news on Technology that is being developed within and outside of the mainstream auto industry.  I interview CEO’s and even a professor about what they are doing and where they see the future of the American Auto industry.  Enjoy!

Following the EPA 511 Guideline test protocol, Blade underwent independent testing by the nation’s premier emissions testing lab, the Automotive Testing and Development Services, Inc. (ATDS).  ATDS is approved by the EPA and licensed by the California Air Resources Board (CARB) 

EPA guidelines for a fleet of five vehicles state that the fuel economy increase must average three percent to be considered a real effect. The fleet of five Bladed vehicles tested – including 4 cylinder, 6 cylinder, 8 cylinder, foreign, domestic and Hybrid vehicles – averaged a four percent increase.  This achievement is historic as it has never before been demonstrated by any aftermarket device.

TABLE 1: For each car tested, CO₂ reduction and fuel economy increases often exceeded expectations:

Vehicle Type CO₂ Emissions Reduction (up to … ) Fuel Economy Increase (up to…)

2004 Honda Civic 6% 6%

2008 Hyundai Sonata 12% 12%

2007 Ford E-250 6% 5%

2008 Pontiac G6 6% 4%

2007 Toyota Prius 6% 3%

William J. O’Brien CEO, Founder

In addition to leading Sabertec, Mr. O’Brien is a co-founder and general partner of Saber Capital. In this capacity, Mr. O’Brien oversees the selection and management of the investment firm’s portfolio companies. Mr. O’Brien served as Chairman and CEO of Octave Software, a provider of next-generation content management solutions. In addition to launching Octave’s product line, Mr. O’Brien developed its key partnerships, recruited its managers, and played an instrumental role in securing its major customers. He also led the company in a $4 million preferred round financing from Sigma Partners. Mr. O’Brien was also actively involved in the direction of Saber Capital’s Austin-based professional services firm, Neogent, Inc., which it funded in 2000 and sold to Sun Microsystems (NASDAQ: SUN) in 2006. Mr. O’Brien also holds board seats at San Jose based, Jetalon Solutions, a maker of precision, liquid chemical sensor and control systems. Since the initiation of Mr. O’Brien’s involvement, the company has increased shareholder value nearly 17x. Before co-founding Saber Capital, Mr. O’Brien spent over 12-years in the high technology industry, most recently serving as Vice President of Sales for the Americas at Vignette Corporation (NASD: VIGN). Benefiting from Mr. O’Brien’s direction, Vignette became the fastest growing enterprise software company in industry history, with annual revenues growing from $3 million to over $500 million in a three-year period.

About Sabertec

Sabertec, based in Austin, Texas, is on the vanguard of solving environmental challenges through technology, education and the inspiration of behavioral change. Sabertec products reduce fossil fuel burning engine emissions that are known contributors to global warming, as well as health consequences including cancer, strokes and respiratory diseases. Launched in 2008, Blade, www.bladeyourride.com is the company’s first consumer product available in the United States. Blade was developed utilizing Sabertec’s patent-pending impact filtration method, which is the core technology in their IDPF product. IDPF has been reducing toxic diesel particulate matter emissions on commercial bus fleets in Sao Paulo, Brazil since 2005.  www.Sabertec.org

Sabertec’s product, Blade easily attaches to the tailpipe of a car to reduce CO2 emissions and toxic particulate matter – a type of pollution that includes dust, soot, and tiny bits of solid materials suspended in the air.

About Jeff:

Dr. Naber joined MTU in August of 2004. Prior to joining MTU, he worked in the automotive industry on R&D of engine-management-systems for gasoline and diesel engines. He also worked at Sandia National Laboratories, CRF investigating sprays and combustion processes of diesel, natural gas, and hydrogen engines utilizing laser based diagnostics. He and fellow colleagues direct the Advanced Internal Combustion Laboratories (AICE) at the University. His research interests are in IC engines and after-treatment and the development and application of advanced experimental techniques, signal processing technologies, theoretical models, and embedded control to characterize the thermo-physical processes.

The areas under investigation include:

• Combustion processes and combustion control of hydrogen and hydrogen dual fuelled engines,

• Biofuels including ethanol with production from forest products and application in advanced combustion engines,

• Gasoline IC engine research and the development of physical based correlations and models,

Development of combustion measurement techniques for diesel, gasoline, and HCCI and PPCI engines.

About Michigan Tech University:

• The Department of Mechanical Engineering-Engineering Mechanics at Michigan Tech is proud to have been selected as the THE FIRST MECHANICAL ENGINEERING PROGRAM in the Peace Corps Masters International Program.

• Mechanical Engineering is the Top In-Demand Major according to the Yahoo Hot Jobs, and based on the National Association of Colleges and Employers (NACE) in the Spring 2008 Salary Survey. Mechanical engineering grads received a healthy 5.3 percent increase over 2007, boosting their average offer to $57,009. More about Engineering Jobs

• Michigan Tech ME Team wins Regional Student Design Competition
A ME Senior Design Team (Team 20) won the Regional Student Design Competition at the Student Professional Development Conference held in Columbia, Missouri on March 28-30, 2008.

• Our Graduate Program is ranked 48th nationally among the 165 doctoral granting Mechanical Engineering Departments in the U.S. by the 2009 U.S. News & World Report: America’s Best Graduate Schools

• NSF ranked the ME-EM Department 21st in Research Expenditures in FY2006 with $10.238 Million among all Mechanical Engineering Departments in the U.S.

Our Undergraduate Program is ranked 22nd nationally among doctoral-granting Mechanical Engineering Departments in the U.S. by the 2008 U.S. News & World Report: America’s Best Colleges

ME-EM Undergraduate Program is currently 9th in the U.S. in BSME degrees granted. We have been in the top 9 in this category for the past 24 consecutive years.

The Keweenaw Research Center and the Department of Mechanical Engineering-Engineering at Michigan Tech will host the 2009 SAE Clean Snowmobile Challenge (CSC) during March 16-21, 2009 and has hosted it for the last 6 years.