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INDUSTRY ADVISORY COUNCIL

Jim Bierschenk

Director of New Market Development at II-VI MARLOW

Zachary Cathcart, P.E.

Electric Vehicle Design Engineer at Peterbilt Motors (division of PACCAR)

Jeff Cloud

Senior Staff Engineer | Technical Consultant & Career Development at Bell Flight

Joseph Florer

Manager – Strategic Accounts at Price Industries

Matt Hanusa

Director Test and Evaluation at Emerson Automation Solutions

Austin Kozman, PhD., P.E. 

Dr. Austin Kozman is an R&D Sr. Director at PepsiCo leading the External Innovation team. The External Innovation (XI) team is an upstream, externally facing, department within PepsiCo R&D. We actively scout for, identify and develop strategic partnerships with external collaborators. Our goal is to locate key external insights, business models and technical unlocks and new capabilities that, when partnered with PepsiCo’s robust internal R&D expertise, will yield disruptive innovation in our core products and/or new and emerging products.

We are currently exploring novel technology spaces that can dramatically impact our portfolio of foods and beverages. We are interested in improving all facets of our supply chain—from raw material inputs all the way to the consumer consumption—and identifying global efficiencies in areas including crop science, ingredients, processing, packaging, equipment, distribution/fleet, retail and e-commerce. We are also committed to sustainability for our planet and our communities.

Austin has worked as a thermal engineer for over 25 years. Austin received his B.S.M.E. from the University of Texas at Austin and his Masters of Engineering and Ph.D. in mechanical engineering from the University of Texas at Arlington. Austin has three issued US patents and six currently pending (3 issued UK patents). In 1999 Austin was selected as the Young Engineer of the Year by the North Texas Electronic Packaging Division of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME). In 2010, Austin was elevated to Fellow Status in ASME. Austin is a registered professional engineer in the state of Texas.

Prakash Bedapudi 

Prakash Bedapudi currently serves as Executive Vice President and Chief Technology Officer for Lennox International Inc. He has been serving in that role leading the combined engineering and information technology functions since July 2008. He had previously served as Vice President, Global Engineering and Program Management for Trane Inc. Commercial Systems from 2006 through 2008, and as Vice President, Engineering and Technology for Trane’s Residential Systems division from 2003 through 2006. Prior to his career at Trane, Mr. Bedapudi served in senior engineering leadership positions for GE Transportation Systems, a division of General Electric Company, and for Cummins Engine Company. He holds a bachelor of science in Mechanical/Automotive engineering from Karnataka University, India and a master’s of science in Aeronautical engineering from the University of Cincinnati.

John Randall 

John N. Randall, CEO of Zyvex Labs, Executive VP of Teliatry, Executive VP at NanoRetina, Adjunct Professor at UT Dallas, and Fellow of the AVS, IEEE, and Micro Nano Engineering Society, has 38 years of experience in Micro- and Nano- Fabrication. He has attracted over $45M (a lot of that went to UTD as subcontractors) in research contracts to Zyvex and resulting products have grossed over $100M. He joined Zyvex in March of 2001 after 15 years at Texas Instruments where he worked in high resolution processing for integrated circuits, MEMS, and quantum effect devices. Prior to working at TI, John worked at MIT’s Lincoln Laboratory on ion beam and x-ray lithography. He has 119 articles published in refereed journals, more than 50 conference proceedings and other publications with 4489 citations and 34 issued US Patents with 972 citations.

Daniel Viassolo

Manager of Analytics & Principal Data Scientist at Schlumberger