Mr. Aschenbrenner has over seven years of experience and extensive knowledge in the safety and reliability field. After graduating from University, Mr. Aschenbrenner began working for Gustav Klein where he was responsible for software and hardware of programmable electronic systems. In 1995, he joined TUV Product Service GmbH where he became responsible for machinery safety devices. In 1998 Mr. Aschenbrenner joined TUV Product Service Inc. in the USA to set up a functional safety department for the Americas. During this time he became Business Unit Manager of “Automation, Software, and Electronics” at TUV Product Service. This position provided him with worldwide responsibility. In 2000 Mr. Aschenbrenner joined exida.com.

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Mr. Faller has over twenty years of experience and extensive knowledge in the safety and reliability field. He is widely known as the world’s top safety and reliability expert. After graduating from University, Mr. Faller began working for MAN Technology where he co-developed a driverless bus for public transportation. In 1985, he joined TUV Bayern where obtained the position of Referent (chief engineer) for safety of computer systems. Several years later, Mr. Faller became a Manager at IQSE, the Institute for Quality and Safety in Electronics and then Department Manager for “Industrial Electronics” at TUV Product Service. Also during this time, Mr. Faller was named Chairman of the German DIN/DKE committee on “Computers in Safety–Related Applications”. In 1998, he became Business Unit Manager of “Automation, Software, and Electronics”. This position provided him with worldwide responsibility. Most recently, Mr. Faller is the co-founder and principal partner for exida.com, LLC. Mr. Faller is a member of many different international standardization committees. His signature appears on most of the world’s equipment safety certifications. He is frequently sought after for speaking engagements and publications based on his unparalleled expertise.

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Peter Mueller has over 15 years of experience and extensive knowledge in the safety and reliability field. After graduating in 1992 from the University of Applied Sciences in Mannheim, he began working for TUV Südwest where he developed the measurement and control software for the automated EMC test equipment. During this time, Mueller started to work in the field of functional safety, electrical safety and environmental testing at TUV Südwest. He was qualified as ISO 9000 auditor. In 1997, after the merge of TUV Südwest and TUV Bayern to TUV Süddeutschland , he moved to the department IQSE, the Institute for Quality and Safety in Electronics, as a Senior Project Manager. In the beginning of 2000, r Mueller became Department Manager at IQSE with the responsibility of the German market. In late 2000, he overtook the worldwide responsibility. In 2001, Mueller overtook in addition the technical leadership of the department for electronic systems and devices in the automotive section of TUV Süddeutschland. In 2002, he joined exida GmbH in Germany, and in 2007 he was named as an exida partner.

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Rolf Spiker has over 40 years experience in Safety Instrumented Systems (SIS) used in the Petrochemical and Oil & Gas Exploration and Production industries. He has fulfilled a wide variety of functions within the Yokogawa System Center Europe organization and preceding companies and was heavily involved in the development of the companies Safety Systems and has two Safety Systems patents on his name

Via electronic development engineer, project manager, sales engineer/manager, marketing manager, managing director of the Safety Systems group in the Netherlands, president of the US safety systems office, he finished his career as ‘Senior Safety Consultant’ in the Yokogawa SCE company. In this activity, Mr. Spiker has established a new safety patent for the use of Neural Networks in Instrumented Safety Systems and has written and co-authored several articles about safety systems and their application in the industry. He was also involved in many presentations for the Instrument Society of America, the American Institute of Chemical Engineers, WIB and Botlek group.

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Alan Gaulton joins exida as a Software Support Specialist in the UK.  Initially qualified as a graphic design artist, Mr. Gaulton pursued computing after leaving college.
His early years as a draughtsman/computer support technician at a granite memorial factory ultimately led him into working for Shell UK in Aberdeen as a desktop support engineer, where he soon diversified into project management. After a rewarding few years, Mr. Gaulton moved to work for EDS based out of Milton Keynes, continuing work as a project manager. The next natural step was to expand into project office management, where his skillset was an ideal match, and therefore gaining extensive experience in financial management using SAP. Following the takeover of EDS by HP, he felt it time to assess his career and subsequently dove into the realm of business process consulting, leading to working for exida.

Jon Keswick has more than 15 years of professional experience working in various control, automation and instrumentation vendor companies. His expertise includes in- depth knowledge of safety standards, with specific focus on safety instrumented systems and related equipment employed in the process sector. This includes applications in Oil and Gas, Chemicals, Pharmaceuticals and Power generation industries. Jon was instrumental in the successful uptake of programmable electronic systems employed in safety related applications during the mid to late 90’s across Europe and the Middle East, and worked in a senior lead technical role for a safety system vendor during much of this period. He comes directly from a role which involved international responsibility for the setup and development of a process safety business stream within a major international system vendor, and brings in-depth knowledge about the market, products and systems employed in safety related applications.

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• +44 (0) 24 76 456 195

Monica Hochleitner has over 20 years in Process Automation experience in the Offshore, Petrochemical and Chemical industries. This experience covers gas pipeline application (Gasbol), polyethylene and polypropylene operating companies (Polibrasil, Riopol & Politeno), system suppliers (Moore Products Co.) among others projects. Monica holds a BS degree in Electrical Engineering and has a MS degree in Production Engineering from the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (COPPE/UFRJ). Monica is a Certified Functional Safety Expert (CFSE) with extensive experience in Process Automation. She has authored and presented papers on key safety subjects. She is an active member of the ISA Section Rio de Janeiro. She also takes part in the ISA99 WG7 Committee and COBEI - Comitê Brasileiro de Eletricidade (CE-03:065.01).
Monica Hochleitner trabalha como Safety Engineer na exida.com LLC. desde 2007 e tem mais de 20 anos de experiência em Automação de Processos em indústrias químicas, petroquímicas e plataformas marítimas. Formada em Engenharia Elétrica em 1989, Monica tem especialização em Análise de Sistemas pela PUC/RJ, especialização em Gestão do Conhecimento pelo CRIE/COPPE e mestrado em Engenharia da Produção pela COPPE/UFRJ. Especializou-se em Funções de Segurança e obteve em 2008 a certificação CFSE - Certified Functional Safety Expert pelo Governance Board CFSE (www.CFSE.org ) o que lhe permitiu a participação em diversos projetos de Sistemas Instrumentados de Segurança no Brasil e no exterior. Nesta área, Monica realiza treinamentos, desenvolve atividades do Ciclo de Vida de Segurança conforme a norma IEC 61511 e ISA 84.01, além de ter publicado artigos e seminários em eventos de Automação. Monica é membro atuante da ISA Seção Rio de Janeiro e participa do Comitê da Norma ISA 99 (WG7) e COBEI ˆ Comitê Brasileiro de Eletricidade (CE-03:065.01).

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Eric Byres is a senior partner in Byres Research, which merged with exida in March 2009, and CTO of Byres Security. One of the world’s leading experts in critical infrastructure security, Eric has been responsible for numerous standards, best practices and innovations for control systems security. Eric’s work spans academic and industry domains. As the founder of the BCIT Critical Infrastructure Security Centre, he shaped it into one of North America’s leading academic facilities in the field of SCADA cyber security. At the same time, Eric has provided guidance to government security agencies and consulted with major energy companies on cyber protection for critical infrastructures. Eric is the chair of the ISA SP99 Security Technologies Working Group and the Canadian representative for IEC TC65/WG13, a standards effort focusing on an international framework for the protection of process facilities from cyber attack.

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David Fournier has over 35 years’ design analysis, control system product and application, and safety system experience in the nuclear industry, primarily in Canada but also in the U.S. and overseas. Because of his use of 61508 concepts in nuclear applications, Mr. Fournier joined exida as partner after retiring from Atomic Energy of Canada Limited, where he had been Principal Engineer (I&C), and company expert in real-time system design, categorisation (nuclear equivalent of SIL selection) and project manager for various large software projects. Mr. Fournier was a key design leader for control and safety systems currently operating in more than 12 CANDU plants, 5 BWRs and 4 PWRs.
Since joining exida, he has coached manufacturers to develop programs and products to readiness for certification, and participated in numerous SIL determinations and SIL verifications per 61508/61511.

Mr. Fournier holds a B.A.Sc. in Engineering Science and M.A.Sc. in Electrical Engineering from the University of Toronto. He is a Professional Engineer, registered in the Province of Ontario, and Certified Functional Safety Expert.

He is currently a Canadian delegate to the IEC TC45A Committee, member of WGA3 and WGA7, and chairing one of the working parties in WGA7. (These committees are responsible for standards such as IEC 61513, 61226 and 62138.)

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• +1-647-838-3377

Alejandro Esparza has over 18 years of experience in process instrumentation, control and automation, safety instrumented systems design and project execution. In his current role, he supports exida’s end-user services for the process industry, like hazard & risk analysis, SIL selection, SIL verification and SIS validation; he also gives training for exida. He previously worked for Foxboro & Moore Products. He is a graduate of La Salle University in Electro-Mechanical Engineering. He is a Certified Functional Safety Expert.

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• +52 1 55 54014844

Dave has over 30 years of experience in system and product development in the industrial controls (20 years), telecommunications and medical device industries. He currently provides independent evaluation, technical training and support to industrial automation vendors in the areas of functional safety, reliability and industrial automation security.  He has a wide breadth of knowledge in all phases of product development, with a strong focus on software.  He has experience in software development, system testing, quality assurance, UML modeling, communications protocol design, automated software testing, configuration management, process development and process improvement.  While working for Moore Products Co., Dave led a team in the development of an advanced configuration program which provides a sophisticated interface to configure and monitor distributed control systems, including full support for 4 of the IEC 61131-3 configuration languages.

Dave holds an M.S. in Computer Engineering from Villanova University and a B.S. in Electrical Engineering from Lehigh University.

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Gene Cammack is exida’s Director of Gulf Coast Region.  Mr. Cammack has 30+ years of experience in safety systems, automation and control systems in the process industries including Power, Refining, Chemicals, Pipelines and upstream Oil & Gas.  Before joining exida, Mr. Cammack worked for end users, engineering companies, and manufacturers in roles ranging from system design and solution development to business development and marketing.  Most recently, Mr. Cammack directed the Oil & Gas Corporate Account Management program for Siemens in the Americas.  He holds a BS degree in Nuclear Engineering from Texas A&M University and is a registered professional engineer in the state of Texas.

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Rudolf P. Chalupa has over 30 years of experience in electronic design, software development, and reliability analysis.  He has a B.S., in Electrical Engineering from Northwestern University and is a Certified Functional Safety Expert (CFSE).

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Mr. Close is a Senior Safety Engineer at exida with extensive experience in FMEDA analysis and IEC 61508 certification of mechanical functional safety devices.  He has over 40 years of experience in the design, manufacture and marketing of process automation equipment with focus on the control of final elements.  He is currently the Quality Manager for exida and is responsible for the content and management of the exida Quality Management System.  As Senior Safety Engineer he performs FMEDA analysis and acts as both evaluating and certifying assessor on IEC 61508 certification projects.  Prior to joining exida he was a manager in the Research and Development Department with Moore Products / Siemens Energy and Automation.  He has a Bachelors of Mechanical Engineering from the Pennsylvania State University.

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John Cusimano is director of exida’s security services division. A process automation safety and security expert with more than twenty years of experience, John leads a team devoted to improving the security of control systems for companies worldwide. Prior to joining exida, John led market development for Siemens’ process automation and safety products and held various product marketing positions at Moore Products Co. John started his career at Eastman Kodak Company, where he implemented and managed automation projects. John has a B.S. degree in Electrical & Computer Engineering from Clarkson University and holds a CFSE and CISSP certification.

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• +1-215-453-1720

Mr. De Los Santos has over 13 years of professional experience on the Oil & Gas business on safety process & control. As a Senior Safety Engineer at exida, he is responsible for performing process hazard analysis (HAZOP), PHA, SIL Selection, Safety Requirements Specification creation, SIL verification, Safety System installation verification, Project administration, and supports end user training. Mr. De Los Santos has previously worked in Venezuela, Brazil, Colombia, Italy, Algeria by Lasmo and ENI Oil company as a Safety Process Control Engineer in the project and operations department. He supported and led the construction, commissioning, and start-up of more than 12 facilities in the automation, safety process control, and project discipline.

He has a bachelor degree from the Bicentenaria de Aragua university (Venezuela) like System Engineer and he has completed a Master degree on Project Manager of the Catolica Andres Bello university (Venezuela). On parallel looking for the PMI (Project Management Institute) Certification. He is also Certified Functional Safety Expert (CFSE) & ISA Member.

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Griff Francis is a Senior Safety Engineer at exida 30+ years experience in the industrial control industry. During his career he developed products for control systems and later managed the development teams. Many of these products were certified for functional safety. He led the effort to get the control system compliant the EU EMC Directive. At exida, Griff performs FMEDAs (failure mode effects and diagnostics analyses) and product assessments for functional safety to IEC 61508. He has a Bachelors of Electrical Engineering from Bucknell University.

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Steve Gandy joined exida as VP of Global Business Development, from Metso, bringing with him 35 years of experience of industrial controls and safety experience.  Steve was responsible for sales and operations in Asia for Metso, setting up their India subsidiary and China energy and process team.  Steve was also responsible for managing Metso’s VAR partners in the region, as well as developing new markets in Vietnam, Egypt, Indonesia, Ukraine and Guam.  Steve was involved in securing a highly successful and profitable collaboration with BHEL, the leading supplier to the India power market, as well as negotiating a JV with one of the leading IPPs in China.

Prior to Metso, Mr. Gandy spent 15 years with Industrial Control Services (now Triplex) in the UK, initially as one of the designers of ICS’ early safety systems (ICS2000 and FGS2000) then as GM responsible for setting up ICS Technology to develop the flagship Trusted ICS.  As part of this role, Steve had to present papers at the IEE and Safety System Symposium on risk management.
Mr. Gandy’s earlier career started as a Student Apprentice at Marconi-Elliott in the UK, developing software for the Nimrod communications system.

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Dr. Goble has over 30 years of professional experience. He is widely recognized as an expert in programmable electronic systems analysis, safety and high availability automation systems, automation systems new product development and market analysis. He developed many of the techniques used for probabilistic evaluation of safety and high availability automation systems. He was formerly Director, Critical Systems at a successful North American safety company. His principle work responsibilities included strategic planning, market analysis, promotion and business management. Dr. Goble previously held positions in research and development including computer design, software design and development and engineering project management. Dr. Goble also teaches reliability engineering at the University of Pennsylvania. He has written two widely used books on topics of safety and reliability modeling including “Control Systems Safety Evaluation and Reliability.” He teaches many of the exida.com courses and ES35, an ISA professional course on safety and reliability. He is a fellow member of ISA. He has published many papers and magazine articles. Dr. Goble has a BSEE from Penn State, a MSEE from Villanova and a PhD from Eindhoven University of Technology in Eindhoven, Netherlands.

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John Grebe has over 26 years of experience in industrial and medical instrumentation. He has a wide breadth of experience encompassing New Product Development (both hardware and software), Manufacturing Engineering, Manufacturing Test, Quality Control, Process Definition, Process Improvement, Field Service and Customer Support and specializes in services and products to assist companies in cost effective development of safety-related products. He was formerly the Senior Director of Product Development for a firm creating decision support software for the Chemical Process Industries. Previous experience also includes over 10 years with a North American firm in the process control industry holding a variety of positions including Director of Systems Engineering, which he founded, and Director of Embedded Products. As an engineer his areas of expertise include functional safety, low-level analog signal acquisition, microprocessors and software architecture. Additional industry experience includes flow meter design for an industry leader. He holds nine U.S. patents on products in the process control industry. Mr. Grebe has taught for the ISA professional courses on safety and reliability. He also teaches topics in Engineering Management as an Adjunct Instructor for Drexel University’s Masters Program in Engineering Management. Mr. Grebe has a BSEE and a MSEE from Drexel University and a MBA from Villanova University.

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Mr. Landes has over 37 years of experience and extensive knowledge in the design, manufacture, application and support of industrial process control equipment.  Specialties include I/O, Communications, Fail Safe, and Safety Agency Approvals (FM, CSA, UL and CE).

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Michael is a Functional Safety & Security expert responsible for incorporating industry best practices for the security development lifecycle and the safety development lifecycle into a common process. He is certified to perform Achilles level 1 certification tests on industrial controllers. He consults with clients on improving their product development process to become compliant with ISO/IEC 51408, IEC 61508 and ISA Secure functional safety and security development lifecycle best practices. He analyzes existing development process and document gaps between current process and security development lifecycle best practices and advises clients on methods to improve process and close gaps. He also prepares safety and security cases providing arguments and evidence that a product or system meets the requirement for a given SIL or SAL level and teaches courses on IEC 61508, IEC 61511, ISO/IEC 51408 and ISO 26262 safety standards.

Michael holds a Masters in Business Administration from Penn State University, a M. S. in Computer Engineering from Villanova University and a B. S. in Electrical Engineering from Cornell University.

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Mr. Miller has over 17 years of experience in process instrumentation, control and automation, safety instrumented systems design and project execution with several large corporations in the Gulf Region including Honeywell, Exxon, and Siemens. Mr. Miller is a graduate of Texas A&M University with a B.S. in Chemical Engineering, and is currently the ISA - Bluebonnet (Austin & San Antonio) President. In his current position, Mr. Miller is a Partner/Senior Engineer with Exida and is responsible for various process safety lifecycle support applications.

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• +1-832-439-3793

Chris O’Brien is a Partner with exida.  He has over 20 years of experience in the design,
manufacturing, and marketing of process automation, reserve power systems, and
safety related equipment.  His main focus includes supporting new and existing
customers with their implementation of the IEC 61508 and IEC 61511 functional safety
standards, as well as reliability analysis for mechanical devices.

Mr. O’Brien is the author of “Final Elements and the IEC 61508 and IEC 61511 Functional
Safety Standards” and has been awarded 5 patents, including a patent for the industry’s
first safety rated pressure transmitter.

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• +1-215-453-1720

Eric Persson has over 20 years of experience as a hands-on IT Manager for multi-national companies, and over 5 years’ experience in the field of process control cybersecurity and Industrial Networks.  Eric comes most recently from the MTL Division of Cooper Crouse-Hinds where he was Industrial Networks Product Line Manager and Technical Support and Applications Manager for the Americas.  Prior to that Eric spent a number of years at Gould-Modicon as a Technical Support Engineer supporting a number of products that are now Schneider PLC systems. 

Eric holds a BS-CiS from Southern New Hampshire University, a Master’s of IT Management, and an MBA from Franklin Pierce University. Eric is CompTIA Network+ certified, and is actively working towards his CISSP certification.

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• +1-603-571-0141

Greg Sauk has over 30 years of experience and is responsible for performing FMEDA analysis on clients products and for incorporating industry best practices for the safety development lifecycle into a common process.  Mr Sauk consulst with clients on improving their product development process to become compliant with IEC 61508 functional safety standard and analyzes existing development process and document gaps between current process and IEC 61508 requirements.  He has a B.S., in Electrical Engineering from Pennsylvania State University and is a Certified Functional Safety Expert (CFSE).

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Todd Stauffer is responsible for exida’s alarm management products, services, and training portfolio. He has over 15 years of process control experience with applications in the chemical, pulp & paper, food & beverage, and life sciences industries. He is an editor and voting member of the ISA-18.2 standards committee on alarm management.
Prior to joining exida, he worked for Siemens Energy & Automation and Moore Products in various product management, marketing, consulting, and project engineering roles. He was the company’s subject matter expert on alarm management, HMI design, and control system security – publishing several papers and articles on these topics.

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Mr. Thomas has over 36 years of professional experience. He is widely recognized as an expert in functional process safety analysis, including safety instrumented systems and high availability automation systems. He helped pioneer the use of HAZOP, fault tree analysis, consequence analysis, LOPA, and introduction of the SIS work process while at Air Products. He was formerly an Engineering Associate – Process Safety and Technology Manager for Safety Instrumented Systems at Air Products and Chemicals, Inc. His principle work responsibilities included assisting and mentoring process safety and process control engineers in hazard identification, the use of fault tree analysis, LOPA, SIL assessment, SIL verification, leading new technology hazard reviews, as well as to write standards and procedures to promote high quality and consistent results. He helped institute a managed system of standardized consequence analysis procedures and managed the development of a number of in house tools and models to support both likelihood and consequence analysis. He has served on a number of CCPS committees that have written guideline books, and is an original member of the CCPS Process Equipment Reliability Database initiative. He is a member of the CFSE Governing Board and is a senior member of ISA. He has authored numerous published papers.

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• +1-610-481-9681

Iwan van Beurden, CFSE is the Director of Engineering at exida. He supports exida’s End-user services, exida’s Manufacturer services, and exida certification activities. Mr. van Beurden is responsible for the development, maintenance, and certification of the exSILentia integrated Safety Lifecycle tool. He also performs IEC 61508 development support, Functional Safety Assessments, a variety of reliability analyses, SIL Selections and SIL Verifications. He also performs process gap analyses to determine the level of effort companies need to undertake for compliance with IEC 61508 or IEC 61511. He gives training for exida and is also an ISA instructor.

Mr. van Beurden previously worked for Yokogawa Industrial Safety Systems in Apeldoorn, the Netherlands. He worked both in the R&D and in the Operations department as a Safety Assessment specialist. He was involved with the implementation of IEC 61508 within Yokogawa Industrial Safety Systems dealing with SIS reliability calculations and the safety education of engineers. Mr. van Beurden is a Certified Functional Safety Expert (CFSE) and a member of ISA. He has published various papers and magazine articles. He holds a Master of Science degree from Eindhoven University of Technology in Eindhoven, the Netherlands, where he majored in reliability engineering and graduated cum laude.

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• +1-215-453-1720

Leigh Weber is a senior security engineer at exida.  A cybersecurity expert with a very strong enterprise and process control background.  Leigh provides leadership in creating cybersecurity solutions that work. 

Leigh is a key leader in defining cybersecurity standards for passenger rail systems throughout North America.

Prior to joining exida, Leigh created and deployed enterprise solutions for financial corporations, secure collaboration and training environments.
Leigh has managed teams of software developers, network analysts, and he has architected and implemented secure encrypted communications systems.

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Mr. Yozallinas has over 30 years of experience in industrial control systems and instrumentation and extensive knowledge in real-time software design and management of large development projects. He currently provides independent evaluation, technical training and support to Industrial Automation vendors in the areas of safety, reliability and industrial automation security.
He has a wide breadth of knowledge in many aspects of the product development process.  He has experience encompassing hardware development, software development, system testing, quality assurance, and process improvement.  Prior to joining exida, he spent over 30 years working with cross functional development teams in the design and support of new products, with 15 of those years in direct involvement with safety related systems.  Prior experience includes embedded software development and project management to achieve functional safety certification.

In addition to his roles as a development engineer and test supervisor, Mr. Yozallinas has worked on process improvement projects, leading an effort to significantly improve software productivity and quality by focusing on requirements traceability to the design and test phases.  He also assisted to introduce Agile processes to the software development teams.

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Dr. Clarke has over 12 years of experience in the oil & gas, chemicals, pharmaceuticals and biotechnology sector, and spent several years as a university teacher in the field of business and technical communications.

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Mr. Sonoda has over 30 years of professional experience. He is recognized as an expert in functional safety equipment certification, instrumentation design, new product development and product management/marketing. He was formerly Digital Solution Group Manager, Yokogawa Electric Corporation, a manufacturer of DCS, Safety PLC and instrumentation.  His principle work responsibilities included strategic planning, global market analysis, business management and product certification. Mr. Sonoda previously held positions in research and development including hardware design and development and engineering project management. He has published papers and magazine articles on functional safety.

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• +81(0)90-9133-4174

Dr. Scharpf has twenty years of professional experience and is widely recognized as an expert in chemical process safety, efficiency analysis and optimisation. He has led many safety lifecycle projects in chemical processing, energy and machine automation applications. He has developed and teaches several of the exida.com safety and reliability analysis courses and leads the consulting business in Australasia. He has published numerous reviewed journal articles as well as the leading textbook on SIL selection. He developed several of the cryogenic gas processing, combustion, and separation techniques currently used for hydrogen, synthesis gas, and power generation. He was formerly a Process Chemical Engineer with a Fortune 200 gas and chemical processing company. His principal work responsibilities have included research and development, project execution, and operations / manufacturing efficiency, safety, and reliability improvements in the bulk gas and specialty chemicals industry. He previously conducted research and development for an international oil production and processing corporation. He also teaches several process, energy, and safety related courses at the University of Otago in Dunedin, New Zealand. He has authored more than 15 US and international patents. Dr. Scharpf has a B.Ch.E. from the University of Delaware and a Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering from Princeton University, both in the United States.

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• +64-3-472-7707

Stephen Burke has been a Process Safety Systems Specialist for over 15 years and has worked in the field of Instrumentation and Control for over 30 years. During this period he has gained broad process control and safety systems knowledge working in a variety of roles for plant owner-operators, equipment manufacturers, systems integrators and control system vendors. He has been involved in process control and safety system design and implementation for many projects in the Power Generation, Oil and Gas and Chemical Industries. Steve has published numerous papers on Safety Instrumented Systems and regularly runs workshops on this topic throughout the South East Asian region.  Steve is ex-Moore Products and is well-known to many of us in exida, so please join us in welcoming Steve to the exida family.

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• +84987954497

Jack Gao joins exida as a Safety Consultant in our Asia Pacific region.  Mr. Gao has 8 years of experience in C++ and Java programming and is familiar with writing VHDL for Field Programmable gate array (FPGA) device. He is also familiar with using Matlab. And, in addition, has experience with digital and analog circuit design.

Mr. Gao joins us from Rockwell Automation Singapore where he was a senior engineer developing firmware.

He has also worked as R&D engineer for Robert Bosch Singapore, and Agilent Technologies functional safety features in accordance to the SIL requirement.  Mr. Gao holds a Master of Engineering in Electrical and Electronic Engineering.

Desmond is a CFSP with electrical and electronics engineering degree from NTU in Singapore.

He has over 18 years of professional experience in SIS design and Project Execution in the Oil and Gas, Chemicals, Petrochemical and Power Industry.
Desmond joins us from Emerson Process Management Asia Pacific where he was responsible for DeltaV SIS business development in the Asia Pacific Region.
Before Emerson, Desmond managed various roles ICS Triplex Asia Pacific.

Besides English, Singlish and Teo Chew, Desmond speaks and writes Mandarin.

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Mr. Koen Leekens is an accomplished Certified Functional Safety Expert with 18+ years’ experience in Functional Safety the Process and Automation Industry.

This experience covers working with and for blue-chip operating companies (EXXON, SHELL, CHEVRON, TOTAL, BP) major multinational engineering contractors (FLUOR, FOSTER WHEELER, JACOBS, HYUNDAI, DAIWOO) and automation system suppliers (EMERSON, HONEYWELL, INVENSYS).

Over 18 years, Mr. Koen Leekens has developed and implemented numerous functional safety training programs and seminars worldwide.

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Felix is a 42 years young Singaporean holding a PhD and Master in Chemical engineering as well as a BS in Material Science and Engineering.

Felix has 20+ years experience in the field of (process) management/engineering in the petro-chemical and chemical industry in various countries across Asia Pacific.

He joins us from Invista Singapore where he was the senior process engineer of the Cyclohexane Oxidation Unit and Utility Units.

Felix published 20 papers in international journals and conferences, including Chemical Engineering Science (CES), Separation Science and Technology, Industrial & Engineering Chemistry Research, etc. Paper reprints are available upon request.

Besides English, Felix speaks and writes Mandarin (Chinese).

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