Summary
I am a chemical engineer with 25 years of experience in the plastics and medical products industries. During the past 4 years I have been a project manager for new product development of medical disposables, specifically syringes and tubing sets for CT contrast injectors. Prior to that I worked for 13 years on the design and fabrication of implantable medical products and components such as blood pump diaphragms, cannulae, heart valves, leads and connectors. Beforethat I worked for 7 years in the development and testing of materials for automotive applications such as bumpers, fenders, instrument panels, and wheel covers. Before that I worked on the development of new polypropylene materials for fibers and packaging. The development of new materials and applications has required extensive interaction with customers, processers, designers, tool makers, QC, and plant personnel to name a few. I have worked extensively with various materials such as polyurethanes, silicones, ABS, and polypropylene. My knowledge of plastics processing is fairly extensive, and I have hands-on experience with injection molding, compression molding, thermoforming, extrusion, and solution casting/dipcoating. I have experience using many tools for characterizing polymer composition, properties, and performance including gas chromatograph, HPLC, FTIR, scanning electron microscope, mechanical testing, impact testing and high speed photography. I also have expertise in plastic part design using CAD tools such as SolidWorks and ProEngineer as well as experience with computational fluid dynamics using Floworks software.
2005 - present Medrad, Inc.
Pittsburgh, PA
In August 2005 Medrad hired me as a Project Engineer in sterile disposables product development in the CT business unit. My responsibilities have included participation in and management of several cost savings projects that have saved the company millions of dollars over the past four years. In 2007 I was given Medrad's New Product Development Teamwork award as well as a gross margin sharpshooter award for leading a project to significantly improve the gross margin for a syringe filling set with sales volumes exceeding a million units per year.
Recently I was asked to manage the CT life cycle engineering group, which is comprised of 4 engineers and 3 technicians.
1992 - 2005 Vascor, Inc.
Pittsburgh, PA
During May 1992 Vascor hired me as a Biomaterials engineer to develop and scale-up proprietary polyurethane elastomers suitable for an implantable heart assist device. Vascor had purchased polycarbonate polyurethane technology from another company and needed a product development engineer to help them implement the technology. My responsibilities included synthesis and characterization of lab-scale quantities of polyurethane. Synthesis was done in 1-liter reaction vessels under my supervision using a series of designed experiment protocols to develop an optimum material formulation. The polyurethane elastomers were molded and tested for molecular weight, mechanical properties, and fatigue life. After 18 months of development I determined that the polyurethane chemistry that Vascor licensed had insufficient fatigue properties for human implant applications. I worked with a custom medical polyurethane supplier that was able to modify one of their products to meet Vascor's needs. Within 6 months a satisfactory polyurethane elastomer was produced and successfully tested.
In May 1994, I was promoted to Manufacturing Manager at Vascor. My new responsibilities included design, fabrication, and assembly of prototype parts for the Ultracor heart assist device. Many of these components were made with implant-grade metals, advanced composites, silicone rubbers, and polyurethane elastomers. Most of the polyurethane and silicone rubber components were made in-house via injection and compression molding or solution casting. Some of the more demanding applications that I worked on included integrally textured polyurethane pump diaphragms, custom cannulae with improved blood flow characteristics, and polymeric heart valves. Several of my ideas were incorporated into U.S. patents assigned to Vascor for new and novel blood pumps and textured pump diaphragms. I also worked on several projects with various vendors to extrude custom polyurethane tubing and foam for insulation on implanted electrical leads and pump housings.
My job responsibilities included development of sonomicrometry leads, percutaneous ports, cannulae, and cables for Vascor's magnetically levitated turbine heart-assist device known as the Ultracor R. I had management responsibilities for the machine shop, part inspection, the plastics fabrication lab, and the building and facilities at Vascor's location in O'Hara township. Four people worked for me including two machinists, a QC/mechanical assembly technician, and a chemical technician. My group constituted over 20% of the technical manpower at Vascor.
During my career at Vascor, I learned to use Solidworks, Surfaceworks and ProEngineer CAD software for part design as well as FloWorks for computational fluid dynamic analyses of blood flow. I also managed several capital improvement projects including remodeling and upgrade of the facilities and labs, addition of an electron microscopy lab, clean assembly area, and company wide internet capability.
1989 - 1992 General Electric Plastics Pittsfield, MA
Applications engineer II, Group leader
In December 1988, I took a
position as an advanced automotive applications specialist at GE's
Pittsfield
headquarters. My primary responsibilities were to support the
automotive marketing efforts by working with customers to determine the
suitability of GE
materials in various automotive applications. This work involved
end-use testing of components such as bumpers, fenders, wheel covers
and
instrument panels. I also conducted failure analyses on defective parts
received from customers. The root cause of part failures (design,
material, processing, or environment) would be determined so that
corrective actions could be taken with the customer.
Initially, the laboratory
facilities were
meager,
including only a pendulum-type bumper tester and a tensile tester.
During
the next 3 years I significantly expanded the lab to include a
machine
shop, 3 walk-in environmental chambers, a pendulum type tester for knee
bolsters, drop tower, strain gage test equipment, high speed
photography,
and state-of-the-art data acquisition capabilities. I also wrote the
software
that linked our PC-based data acquisition equipment to GE's VAX
mainframe
cluster so that engineers in the field could access our test data.
During
this time I was promoted to a group leader for automotive applications
testing
with 2 engineers and 2 technicians working for me. My group
worked to support many new and existing automotive applicatons which impacted millions of pounds of GE Plastic's business at GM, Ford, Saturn, and Mazda.
I left GE Plastics
in
May 1992 to take a position with Vascor, Inc. My reasons for leaving GE
included job security concerns because of extensive layoffs from
1990-92, as well as a
desire
to return to western Pennsylvania where I grew up.
1985 - 1989 Borg-Warner Chemicals Parkersburg, WV
Product development engineer II
In 1985 I took a job with Borg-Warner Chemicals as a product development engineer II. My responsibilities included development and product support of ABS plastics for automotive applications such as instrument panels, interior trim, and bumper components. In my position I worked with customers and field-based application engineers to identify product needs and then developed materials to meet those needs. New material formulations were compounded in the laboratory in small quantities and tested to see if they were satisfactory. Typically this involved mechanical, thermal, and chemical testing of a material to an automotive material specification. If the material met specifications, then I would interface with either the pilot plant or one of the manufacturing plants to scale up the product on their equipment to make quantities ranging from 25 to 10,000 pounds. If the scaled-up material was satisfactory, then I would work with the customer to conduct evaluations at their plant to determine moldability of the material and suitability for their application. In some cases the entire process was repeated several times to develop the best product for the customer's needs
In 1987 I became extensively involved in a joint program with General Motors to develop an ABS material that would be suitable for structural bumper beams. Initially, my involvement was focused on material development and scale-up. I spent about a year interfacing with a Japanese affiliate and the Parkersburg manufacturing plant to transfer their high-impact ABS technology to the plant. This technology proved to be the basis for a satisfactory ABS material for structural bumper beams. General Motors conducted preliminary testing on prototypes made with the new ABS material and found that it met their needs.
With the material issue resolved, I became more directly involved in the design and tooling of an ABS plastic bumper beam for the 1991 Chevy Cavalier. My new responsibilities included interfacing with the mold makers in Detroit, the engineers at GM, and the Borg-Warner field engineers to design and build a kirksite tool to mold bumper beams. In the summer of 1988 the tooling was completed, and I conducted extensive injection molding trials with several developmental materials. I later became involved with end-use crash testing of the bumper beams both at GM and at Borg- Warner's applications laboratory. By 1989 both the bumper design and material met GM's performance requirements.
At this time General Electric acquired
Borg-Warner and the program was turned over to GE's automotive
marketing department. I was offered a position in their Automotive
Applications group, which
I took. In my new position I was still involved with the bumper
program,
which later evolved to GE's solitary bumper beam program. The solitary
beam
concept has since been successfully adapted to several vehicles
including most recently the Ford Explorer and Dodge/Chrysler mini-vans.
1983 - 1985 Hercules/Himont Wilmington, DE
Product development engineer
Upon graduation from Penn
State In 1983, I accepted a job with Himont as a product development
engineer. My responsibilities included development of new polypropylene
materials
for packaging and non-woven textile applications. In my position I
conducted processing evaluations with new materials on lab-scale
equipment for fiber spinning, multi-layer sheet co-extrusion and
thermoforming. The primary
focus of this work was to determine how the unique crystallization
characteristics of the materials affected processing and ultimately
structure-property relationships.
In 1984 my product
responsibilities were expanded to include Himont's ultra-high molecular
weight polyethylene. I worked on two interesting applications for this
material. The first was injection molding of the product as an
alternative to compression molding, which was the only method at the
time for processing the material. The
second was gel spinning of high strength fibers in a joint effort with
Allied Chemicals. I worked with Allied to develop an optimum material
formulation
for their Spectra fiber products.
I left Himont in December 1984 to take a position with Borg-Warner at a 20% salary increase.
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 Rapid tooling for a bladder made via Stereo- lithography |
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 Data acquisition system for Bumper testing laboratory |
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 A close-up view of the bumper tester with an environmental chamber and high speed video system in the background |
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 A generic bumper testing vehicle that my group designed and built. |
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 A test fixture to measure plastic fender distortion while in a paint drying oven |
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Education
1979 - 1983 Pennsylvania State University State College, PA
B.S. Chemical Engineering
Single chamber blood pump - Patent 5,980,448, Nov. 9, 1999,
Implant having integrally-textured,
hemocompatible, blood-contacting
surfaces and method for producing the same - US Patent 5,997,796 , December
7,
1999
Single chamber blood pump- US Patent 6,066,085. May 23,
2000
"Energy transfer characteristics of thermoplastic bumper beams in pendulum impact"
Automotive Body Panel and Bumper System Materials and Design, Warrendale Publications, 1992
Additional professional activities
Statistics and Design of Experiments, 6 week in-house course, GE Plastics
Industrial painting processes, short course, University of Wisconsin
Polymer Physics & Rheology short courses, Drexel University
High speed photography and photonics, short course, University of Wisconsin