The 2007 keynote speakers include:
![]() |
William Weyand Chairman of the Board and Chief Executive Officer - MSC Software Presenting: "MSC - The Proven Leader" Mr. Weyand assumed the role of chairman and CEO of MSC Software in February 2005. Mr. Weyand was Chairman and CEO of Structural Dynamics Research Corporation (SDRC) from 1997 to 2001. During that time, he redefined SDRC's strategic direction to capitalize on new growth opportunities, establishing the company as a market leader in Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) solutions. Under his direction, SDRC acquired seven companies. In 2001, he successfully facilitated the sale of SDRC to Electronic Data Systems (NYSE: EDS) for $1 billion. Prior to joining SDRC, Mr. Weyand served as Executive Vice President of Measurex Corporation, where he refocused the company's sales strategy to increase its market share to more than 50 percent. Previously, he held several senior sales and marketing positions at Cygnet Systems, Avco Corporation and Chomerics. Mr. Weyand also serves on the boards of Riverstone Networks (Nasdaq: RSTN), Ascential Software (Nasdaq: ASCL), Pavilion Technologies Inc. and Radiance Technologies. He serves on the board of the Ohio River Valley Chapter of the Arthritis Foundation and as a trustee of Nichols College. |
![]() |
Glenn Wienkoop President, Chief Operating Officer - MSC Software Presenting: "The Path Forward for Innovation" Mr. Wienkoop joins MSC Software from BDNA Corporation where he served as the president and chief operating officer. Mr. Wienkoop has held the position of president and chief operating officer at Portal Software where he was responsible for all company operations and the development of a new enterprise corporate strategy. He served as president and chief operating officer at Structural Dynamics Research Corporation (SDRC) prior to its acquisition by EDS in 2001. During his tenure at SDRC he led the transformation from a packaged software provider to an integrated enterprise solutions provider with Teamcenter becoming the PLM leader ultimately resulting in SDRC's acquisition. Before SDRC Mr. Wienkoop was the division president at Cognex Corporation. He also held several executive positions at Honeywell-Measurex Corporation including division president, executive vice president of marketing and engineering, vice president corporate business development, and vice president of sales and services. Mr. Wienkoop completed executive programs at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, California Institute of Technology and Stanford University. He holds an MBA from the University of West Florida and a masters and bachelors degree in engineering from Georgia Institute of Technology. |
![]() |
Dr. David E. Cole Dr. Cole is the Chairman of the Center for Automotive Research (CAR) in Ann Arbor, Michigan. He was formerly Director of the Office for the Study of Automotive Transportation (OSAT) at the University of Michigan Transportation Research Institute. He has worked extensively on internal combustion engines, vehicle design, and overall automotive industry trends. Dr. Cole's recent research has focused on strategic issues related to the restructuring of the North American industry and trends in globalization, technology, market factors, and human resource requirements. He was formerly a member of the Energy Engineering Board of the National Research Council and the U.S.-Canada Free Trade Pact Select Panel. He is also a director of the Original Equipment Suppliers Association, as well as a director of five automotive supplier companies. In addition, Dr. Cole is a member of the Executive Committee of the Michigan Economic Development Corporation (MEDC) and was recently appointed by Michigan's Governor to the Strategic Economic Investment and Commercialization Board and the Michigan Renewable Fuels Commission. He was named a co-chair of Detroit Renaissance's "Road to Renaissance" Project in the fall of 2006. At the University of Michigan he is a member of the Energy Research Council and Mechanical Engineering External Advisory Board. He is also a member of the Denso Foundation Board. Dr. Cole was formerly a director of the Automotive Hall of Fame and a member of the Board of Trustees of Hope College. |
![]() |
Thomas J. Lange Mr. Lange received a BSChE from the University of Missouri in 1978. He joined Procter & Gamble in May, 1978 as a Product Technical Engineer. Mr. Lange has spent his career modeling and simulating products and production systems; from how the aerodynamics of peanuts affect roasting, to how baby sizes affect the probability of a urine leak in a diaper. In 1994, Mr. Lange was recognized with a PRISM award (Professional Recognition of Individual Sustained Mastery) - P&G's highest technical recognition award for Engineering. In 1998, Mr. Lange was appointed Associate Director for Computer Aided Engineering (CAE) in Baby Care, and Reliability Engineering responsibilities for all P&G Paper goods including Always, Charmin and Bounty. In August 2004, Mr. Lange was appointed Director for Modeling & Simulation in Corporate R&D. In this position, Mr. Lange heads P&G's modeling & simulation efforts including CAE and Computational Chemistry efforts. |
![]() |
Thomas C. Tecco Mr. Tecco is the Director of Global CAE/Test Systems and Electrical for the Information Systems and Services (IS&S) organization at General Motors. He also has responsibility for Systems Engineering and the Designing Engineer initiative. Mr. Tecco joined General Motors from MacNeal-Schwendler Corporation (MSC), where he was Vice President and General Manager of the Automotive Group with responsibility for worldwide MSC automotive operations, including marketing, consulting, automotive application development and sales/support. Prior to MSC, Mr. Tecco was Vice President of Engineering with Automated Analysis Corporation responsible for the engineering services and commercial software groups. Prior to this, he was at Navistar International, where he oversaw the Vehicle Dynamics Group. Mr. Tecco has also been an instructor in the Manufacturing Engineering department at Miami University. Mr. Tecco received his Bachelor's degree in Mechanical Engineering from Tri-State University and a Master's in Mechanical Engineering from Ohio State University. |
![]() |
Clifford Hutton Mr. Clifford Hutton joined Whirlpool Corporation’s Corporate Technology Organization (CTO) in May 2004 as Manager, Simulation Based Design. Hutton joined Whirlpool from Visteon Automotive Systems, a full service supplier of consumer driven technology solutions for automotive manufacturers. While at Visteon, Hutton was as a Technical Fellow and Senior Engineer. Prior to joining Visteon, Hutton worked as a Senior Consultant at Parametric Technology, a global software provider, and as a Lead Design Engineer at Mitsubishi Electric corporation. Hutton holds a degree in Mechanical Engineering from Clarkson University, Postdam, New York, and a Master of Science degree in Industrial Manufacturing and Systems Engineering from the University of Michigan. |
![]() |
Peter S. Robison Mr. Robison joined IBM in 1995 and holds an Honours degree in Mechanical Engineering and a Masters degree in Business Administration from Warwick University. Mr. Robison served as an engineer officer in the Royal Navy and also worked for a few years in the defence industry. In his current role Mr. Robison is responsible for global strategy and direction of IBM's Global Automotive Industry as it relates to the Product Lifecycle Management domain, with specific focus on the Embedded Systems aspects. This includes alignment of capabilities across IBM's Industrial Sector, relationships with partners and leadership of pursuit teams in complex opportunities. |
![]() |
Knute Christensen Mr. Christensen is the Manager of the High Performance Computing (HPC) Partners, Solutions & Segment Marketing group at Hewlett-Packard. Mr. Christensen's team is responsible for the alliance relationships with HPC ISVs and solution providers and for worldwide HPC solutions marketing. An industry veteran with over 15 years of experience in HPC marketing, Mr. Christensen joined HP in 1996. Prior to that, he was at Convex Computer Corporation where he was responsible for marketing efforts in Computer Aided Engineering (CAE). Prior to joining Convex, Mr. Christensen was one of the architects and managers of the ACERC Supercomputing Center at Brigham Young Univeristy (BYU). Mr. Christensen has BSc and MSc degrees in Chemical Engineering from BYU, and did research on advanced numerical methods for Computational Fluid Dynamics. |
![]() |
Brian J. Cox Mr. Cox is currently Vice President of INCAT North America PLM Business Development and Operations. Prior to this position he led the Aerospace and Defense Vertical at INCAT. Mr. Cox started his career at Grumman Aerospace Bethpage (Now Northrop-Grumman) where he held various positions in Manufacturing and Quality over his 15 years at Grumman Aerospace. Mr. Cox supported PLM for IBM in Asia Pacific during his 5 years with IBM. At IST (one of the companies that came to form INCAT) Mr. Cox was responsible for Business Development for Software sales. Following his time at IST Mr. Cox worked for Advanced Enterprise Solutions where he was responsible for the Eastern/Western Region Business Development Team until the successful sale of the company to MSC Software. |
![]() |
Tejas Karmarkar Mr. Karmarkar is working at Microsoft as a Solution Specialist covering manufacturing industry in US. Mr. Karmarkar comes to Microsoft from Altair Engineering Inc. where he held various positions selling engineering simulation solutions for digital product development. Prior to joining Microsoft, Mr. Karmarkar held the position of Account Manager at Altair calling on the automotive suppliers in Detroit. Mr. Karmarkar graduated from the University of Toledo with a Masters degree in Mechanical Engineering. |
![]() |
Marcel Staniak Mr. Staniak graduated from Marquette University with a B.S.M.E. in 1988. Upon graduating he was employed full-time by Allen-Bradley (Rockwell Automation), in Milwaukee, WI. Working by day as a development engineer, he attended Marquette University Graduate School in the evenings studying subjects relevant to his passion: the design and analysis of modern racing cars. His studies included advanced vehicle modeling using Adams, and finite element analysis of advanced composite materials. As part of his studies he performed full-vehicle dynamic simulations and FEA analyses on Dan Gurney's Eagle MkII GTP race car. Mr. Staniak's career led him to the UK, where in 1991 he was employed by Lola Cars as their first FEA analyst. There he established modeling methods for advanced composite structures and metallic components, applying them to Champ Cars, WSC, F3000, and Formula 1 cars. He also implemented Lola's first CFD program. In 1995 he returned to the USA to work for Dan Gurney's All American Racers - this time as an employee in a design capacity - contributing to the MkV Champ Car. He has since enjoyed working for such famous constructors as Penske Cars, Stewart Grand Prix, and Jaguar Racing, in capacities ranging from Senior Design Engineer to Head of Vehicle Dynamics. Currently employed by seven-time (soon to be eight!) Champ Car Series Champions Newman Haas Lanigan Racing, long-standing power-users of Adams software, Marcel has championed computer-aided-engineering methods throughout his career. His presentation will share the Newman Haas Lanigan Racing perspective of Virtual Product Development in the ultra-competitive world of Champ Car engineering. |
![]() |
Dr. Reza Sadeghi Chief Technology Officer - MSC Software Presenting: "Engineering Tools to MD Solutions - Enabling Productivity for Competitive Advantage" Dr. Sadeghi is currently the CTO of MSC Software, with responsibility for strategy and development of all MSC core technologies (Nastran, Marc, Adams and Dytran). Prior to the merger of MARC Analysis Research Corp. and MSC Software, he was responsible for the company's overall operations. Before joining MARC Analysis Research Corporation, he was responsible for the simulation methods group at Goodrich aerospace, where he led the development of a number of math based tools for design and manufacturing of commercial and military jet engine nacelle structures. He has more than 10 years of teaching experience in the filed of Computational mechanics and math based modeling. He has been asked to serve on a number of science and technology review boards, among them the U.S. Department of Energy and the U.S. Department of Defense, as well as authored a number of papers in the field of computational mechanics and math based modeling. |
![]() |
Douglas Peterson Mr. Peterson is currently Senior Vice President of Software Development for MSC Software and is responsible for the SimEnterprise products at MSC. Mr. Peterson joined MSC Software in 2002 following MSC Software's acquisition of Mechanical Dynamics, where he served as vice president of product development and chief technical officer for five years. Mr. Peterson joined Mechanical Dynamics following Mechanical Dynamics' acquisition of StatDesign, Inc., where he was an original founder and served as president for five years. He holds bachelor's and master's degrees in mechanical engineering from Brigham Young University. |













