PROMETHEUS INC - Key Persons
Job Titles:
- Distinguished Professor of the Industrial and Systems Engineering Department at Auburn University
Alice E. Smith is the Joe W. Forehand/Accenture Distinguished Professor of the Industrial and Systems Engineering Department at Auburn University, in addition to being a Principal Scientist at Prometheus. Dr. Smith's research focus is analysis, modeling, and optimization of complex data sets and systems with emphasis on computational intelligence. She holds one U.S. patent and several international patents and has authored more than 200 publications which have garnered over 12,000 citations and an H Index of 45 (Google Scholar). Dr. Smith is the Editor in Chief of INFORMS Journal on Computing and an Area Editor of Computers & Operations Research. Dr. Smith has been a principal investigator on over $10 million of sponsored research. She is a Fellow of IEEE and IISE. She has served as Principal Investigator on over $10 million of sponsored research with funding by NASA, U.S. Department of Defense (both Air Force and Army), Missile Defense Agency, National Security Agency, NIST, U.S. Department of Transportation, Lockheed Martin, Adtranz (now Bombardier Transportation), the Ben Franklin Technology Center of Western Pennsylvania, and U.S. National Science Foundation, from which she has been awarded 18 distinct grants. Her defense funding has included projects on advanced simulation modeling, data-based risk analysis, robustness in military systems, and intelligent approaches to large scale system dynamics.
Prometheus Inc. Principal Scientist Mr. Dale Green has been an internationally recognized expert in modem development, acoustic communications and signal processing for more than 40 years. He was the principal architect for the development of modem-based portable tracking ranges for the US Navy's NUWC Division Keyport. His three directly related patents, for which Mr. Green developed the technologies, are: a method for communicating with very high speed underwater platforms; a modem-based technology which precisely identifies the range and bearing to another modem; and a device which accurately measures the bearing of arbitrary broadband acoustic signals. He has worked extensively in the field of undersea networks, and was the Principal Investigator on the US Navy's SEAWEB program. He provided the core technology for the new NATO standard (STANAG) on underwater acoustic communications known as JANUS, and was the Vice Chair (North America) for a NATO Industrial Advisory Group (NIAG) advising NATO on JANUS. He received the 2018 NATO Scientific Achievement Award for his contributions to JANUS.
Dr. Jerry Kautsky, Principal Scientist at Prometheus, is an expert in numerical analysis. He has published many papers in control and numerical integration. In recent years he has developed an interest in wavelet theory and image processing. His work on wavelets resulted in him being invited to write a chapter in the series of books on wavelets edited by Charles Chui.
Job Titles:
- President
- Formerly Professor of Mathematics at the University of Massachusetts
Jim Byrnes, formerly Professor of Mathematics at the University of Massachusetts, has headed Prometheus Inc. since its inception in 1983. He is well known in the field of applied harmonic analysis. In addition to leading many significant applied mathematical efforts for the United States Department of Defense, Dr. Byrnes has organized and directed nine NATO Advanced Study Institutes. These intensive two-week courses bring together international experts from academia, government and industry to further development in the fields of digital signal processing, imaging and detection, wavelets and other areas at the intersection of mathematics and engineering.
John D. Pearson, a Prometheus Principal Scientist, was the Faculty Chair of Mine Warfare at the U.S. Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey CA from January 2000 through January 2005. He was also President of the Mine Warfare Association from 1998-2007, an internationally recognized professional association, and is a life member of the National Defense Industrial Association. He graduated from the U.S. Naval Academy in 1961. He was a USN Surface Warfare Officer over 35 years, and retired as a Rear Admiral in 1996.
Rear Admiral Pearson commanded USS THOMAS C. HART (FF-1092) from 1979-81, and USS TRUXTUN (CGN-35) from 1981-84. Ashore, he was the Commander, Joint Task Force Four (the U.S. Atlantic Command's counter-narcotics detection and monitoring command) as his first flag officer command. He then was the Commander, U.S. Navy Mine Warfare Command from 1991-96, when he retired. He is the "Cal Ripken" of mine warfare, in command longer than any previous mine warfare commander.
He is qualified in nuclear propulsion and was the commissioning engineer officer of USS CALIFORNIA (DLGN-36). He also holds a M.S. degree in Underwater Acoustics from the U.S. Naval Postgraduate School.
Prometheus Inc. Principal Scientist Joseph J. Kranz, has been a key force behind the reconciliation of rational decision-making theory with the realities of behavioral decision-making in modeling the acquisition and investment milieu. Dr. Kranz has performed as a DoD Program Manager and received, among others, the Superior Civil Service Award and the Naval Sea Systems Command Quality Champions award. His current research focus is on fast and frugal heuristic decision making in real time command and control and emergency medicine contexts. He has been an Operations Research principle for the DoD and has developed cost analysis and decision models that have demonstrated, among other things, the ROI of engineering level of effort and the ROI of intangible assets. Also as noted above he has presented numerous papers at academic forums on decision-making under uncertainty, cost analysis and Human Systems Integration.
Kathy Brown is a strategic consultant specializing in partnership development and process optimization. She has worked closely with numerous science and technology start-ups to translate mathematical and scientific discoveries into useful applications and business models. Kathy applies her outstanding analytical and organizational skills and ability to initiate and manage projects to bring our efforts to successful completion. She is a former Strategic Advisor to the Council for Scientific Society Presidents and the Center for Policy on Emerging Technologies. She also served six years as a Vice President, Business Development for MBNA Chicago.
Dr. Michael Ramalho is a prolific inventor with over 50 issued patents spanning signal processing, communications theory and data networking. He has worked in a variety of engineering, applied research and management roles for Bell Labs, Telcordia, Cisco Systems, as Chief Telephony Technologist for an early VoIP startup (Voxware) and previously and again now as a Prometheus Inc. Principal Scientist. He holds a Ph.D. from Rutgers University and a M.Eng. from Cornell University. Michael is known for his pioneering work in reverberant room information transfer via design and application of a new ultrasound Discrete Sequence Spread Spectrum (DSSS) system which uses subsets of the Prometheus Orthonormal Set (PONS) codes. The resulting system is used in tens of thousands of Cisco Systems cloud-connected Telepresence endpoints. He is also known for early Internet Telephony and lossless media coding for Voice over IP (VoIP). Michael is active in many IEEE activities including serving as the Florida West Coast Communications and Signal Processing Vice-Chair, ICC 1992 Technical Program Committee (TPC) Vice-Chair and Globecom 1988 TPC Member. His volunteer work includes board participation in educational settings (Rutgers CAIP Industrial Advisory Board) and startups. _________________
Job Titles:
- Principal Systems Engineer
Walt Rankin joined the Prometheus team in 2012 as Principal Systems Engineer after a distinguished career in technology development, program management and systems engineering with the US Navy. Mr. Rankin spent over ten years working closely with ONR defining and shepherding the important technologies needed to modernize mine warfare systems and operations. He was also instrumental in the formulation, development and execution of the mine warfare acquisition systems that will reside in the LCS MIW mission package.