RTI - For Building and Running Intelligent, Distributed Systems

Gerardo Pardo is CTO at RTI, he has been with the company since it was founded, held various positions in research, development, consulting, and became the CTO in 1998.

Gerardo was the main developer of the original versions the RTI Connext DDS product line. He started this work while still working on his Ph.D. at Stanford and carried on the product at RTI.

Gerardo leads RTI's standardization efforts and he is the main author of the OMG Data Distribution Service Standard (DDS), the OMG Real-Time Publish Subscribe (RTPS) Protocol standard, the DDS Security Standard, and many of the other (currently 7) DDS-related standards. He also chairs the OMG revision task forces for these standards.

In 2005 Gerardo founded and still co-chairs the Data-Distribution SIG within OMG. This is the group that oversees the DDS standard family. In 2009 he was also elected to the OMG board of directors where he still serves.

Prior to joining RTI, Gerardo worked in distributed sensor systems and robotics at CERN (Switzerland) and HP Labs in Palo Alto California.

Gerardo is considered an expert on security, middleware, and publish-subscribe systems. He has been the Principal Investigator on more than a dozen research grants, including SBIR and ATP grants, has authored five patents and over 50 technical papers, journal articles, and conference sessions on the topic of real-time and secure distributed systems.

Gerardo completed his Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering and an MS in Computer Science both at Stanford University. He also holds a BS and an MS in Physics from the University of Granada (Spain) and he was awarded the National 1st Prize Physics award.

David has over 25 years of experience in distributed, real-time and embedded systems. He joined RTI in 2005 and is responsible for the company's product management and vertical market development. Prior to RTI, he was vice president of marketing at a real-time middleware startup that was acquired by Borland Software Corporation. He was also director of product marketing at Green Hills Software and Mentor Graphics and a senior product marketing manager at Wind River Systems. David began his career as a software engineer at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL), where he was responsible for the design and implementation of several distributed real-time applications.

David has a BA in Computer Science from the University of California at Berkeley.

Download high resolution photo

Edwin de Jong brings more than 25 years of experience in the software industry, having held various positions in R&D, marketing, and sales. He has been leading RTI’s sales team since 2013, driving the company’s growth and tripling overall revenue from software and services sales. As a result, RTI is used in over 1500 designs in autonomous vehicles, medical devices, robotics, transportation, industrial automation, and defense, making the company the largest software framework provider for smart machines and real-world systems.

Edwin joined RTI in 2005 following RTI's acquisition of 4TEC, a company he co-founded and led as CEO. 4TEC provided an elastic caching platform for real-time applications with sub-millisecond latency. The company's customers included major system integrators, such as Thales and Northrop-Grumman.

Prior to 4TEC, Edwin worked in various R&D roles for companies such as Thales, SGI, and Philips. He authored dozens of technical papers, journal articles, and conference sessions. His fields of expertise include systems architecture, distributed real-time systems, high availability, networking and communication protocols, databases, and system modeling and analysis.

Edwin holds a PhD in Computer Science from Leiden University, The Netherlands.

Mark joined RTI in 2003 and is responsible for growing the global operations of the Services organization worldwide, which includes educational, consulting, and field services.

He’s led the professional services department for the past 9 years and brings over 30 years of experience in technical and customer-facing leadership roles and participates as a member of RTI’s Executive Management Team.  He works closely with RTI’s CEO and top executives in formulating current and long-range strategies, and objectives to achieve synergistic functional alignment and attainment of financial and strategic goals all while maximizing company return on investment.

Mark is passionate about customer success and is responsible for translating global business priorities into operational tactics in order to guide the services business to exceed established goals.  He manages the services product portfolio with the principle goal to work closely with our growing customer base, and accelerate their time-to-value ensuring they maximize the value realized when leveraging RTI technology.

Mark’s previous experience includes positions at Wind River Systems (Sr. Field Applications Engineer) and the Applied Physics Laboratory (System Design Engineer) designing embedded real-time systems, and leading the development of multiple intelligence systems, and high-performance embedded software subsystems for numerous US Navy programs including the Cooperative Engagement Capability (CEC) and Ship Self-Defense System (SSDS).

Mark graduated with a BSEE degree from Virginia Tech, Magna Cum Laude, and a MSEE from Johns Hopkins University.

Download high resolution photo

Bob Kindel has worked with RTI since 1997, initially as a collaborator on NIST-funded product development. He joined the company full-time in 2000 as a Sr. Applications Engineer. He has since held numerous customer-facing roles at RTI leveraging his analytical background and his passion for business. These include creating RTI's very first customer support organization, expanding the Services organization as VP of Services, operationalizing the worldwide sales organization, and transitioning RTI's business to a subscription business model. 

Throughout his career Bob’s focus has been on establishing the structures, processes and culture necessary to enable RTI to grow, while ensuring the success of RTI's ever-growing customer base. Bob currently serves as RTI's VP of Finance.

Bob holds a PhD from Stanford and an B.S. from MIT, each in Aerospace Engineering.

Catherine (“Cat”) joined RTI as an entry-level admin assistant and helped build the company from an 18-person local company into a global multinational.  Along the way, she progressed through several roles and is currently the VP of Operations managing Human Resources, IT, Corporate Execution, Corporate Governance, Facilities, and Administrative Services. She is also President of Real-Time Innovations International, Inc. with responsibility for the company’s international operations in North America, Europe, and APAC.  She manages RTI’s major offices in California, Colorado, and Spain. She is responsible for international management, RTI’s key processes in site selection and development, board management, corporate planning and execution, corporate policies, employee experience, and knowledge management. She managed due diligence for RTI’s corporate and IP acquisitions, and RTI’s ScopeTools division sale.

Cat holds a BS in Business Administration from San Jose State University and an MBA from Santa Clara University.

Barbara brings over 20 years of experience in marketing to RTI. Before joining the company as Vice President of Marketing, Barbara held leadership positions at Quantum, Stratus Computer, Sprint and Ford Aerospace. Most recently, she ran her own marketing agency for over 10 years where the agency provided services to business-to-business enterprises.

At RTI, Barbara oversees the Marketing team and is responsible for delivering overall marketing results for the company. Barbara's expertise includes brand experience, corporate and product messaging, content development, lead funnel management/demand generation, account-based marketing, PR and analyst relations, digital marketing, advertising, trade shows/events, social media, ecosystems and internal communications. She is responsible for RTI’s outbound marketing strategy and execution with a focus on strengthening the company’s market position, building RTI's brand awareness and increasing opportunities worldwide.

Barbara received a BA in English from the University of California at Davis.

Download high resolution photo

Jan joined RTI in 2006 and has over 25 years of experience in technical and customer-facing leadership roles at companies such as Sun Microsystems and VLSI Technology. He has led professional services, support, and engineering organizations and has experience in middleware, grid application and infrastructure software, operating system design and device driver and network chip development.

Jan came to RTI as a senior application engineer, providing training and consulting services to customers using RTI Connext software. Next, Jan developed a new support organization which achieved a record-setting 98 percent customer satisfaction rate. As the director of application services, Jan lead a team of application services engineers delivering system design and custom implementations using RTI Connext technology and middleware. In his current role of vice president of Engineering, Jan is responsible for RTI’s Research, Development and Support efforts. He leads a distributed engineering team of more than 65 people developing RTI Connext’s software, and is responsible for the software development processes and product quality.

Jan graduated with an MS equivalent degree in Electronics, Digital Communications (Summa Cum Laude) from KIHK in Geel, Belgium.

Download high resolution photo

Mr. Lyons is currently a Partner with the Ratio Group, a technology advisory and venture capital group working with Fortune 500 clients and the U.S. Government. He also serves as as Chairman of CypherPath,  a converged infrastructure virtualization company. He was former Chairman of Shadow Networks, Inc. a cyber security company acquired by Alcalvio in 2016; both are based on technology developed through a tech transfer partnership with Pacific Northwest National Laboratory. He is a strategic advisor to ICEYE, a SAR-based microsatellite data acquisition company and CEO of its U.S. data subsidiary driving machine learning for SAR data. 

Concurrently, Mr. Lyons is an Adjunct Professor at the Stanford University Departments of Management Science and Engineering and Civil and Environmental Engineering . Serving in the Stanford position since 1988, he was a co-developer of the Stanford Technology Ventures Program with Prof. Tom Byers and the founding professor of Technology Venture Formation. He also co-teaches,  with  Prof.  Ray  Levitt, Entrepreneurship  in  Civil  and  Environmental Engineeering. Both of these courses are some of the highest rated courses in the School of Engineering. He is the co-creator of the Stanford Innovation and Entrepreneurship two-week program for existing high tech companies produced and managed by the Stanford Center for Professional Development (SCPD). 

Mr. Lyons received a Bachelors and Masters (equivalent) in Engineering Physics from Cornell University, an MSEE from Stanford,  did Ph.D research in Aero/Astro at Stanford (abd) and an MBA, with Distinction, from the Pepperdine Presidential/Key Executive Program. He is a graduate of the Stanford/AEA Institute for the Management of High Technology Companies and a Price-Babson Fellow in Entrepreneurship Education. 

Kevin Kopczynski is an experienced entrepreneur, executive and investor who is currently Senior Director of Corporate Development at First Solar (FSLR). From 2013 to 2016 he was President and CEO of Enki Technology, where he guided the solar materials company from the development to revenue stages and established key customer partnerships in the US and China that culminated with Enki’s acquisition by First Solar. Prior to Enki, Kevin was a Partner at RockPort Capital Partners, where he led venture capital investments in the power generation, oil & gas, materials and agriculture value chains. Kevin’s primary investments at RockPort were Enki Technology (acquired), GlassPoint Solar, New Leaf Symbiotics, Northern Power Systems (TSX listed) and REPOWER America. He previously held several operating and senior technical positions at IQuum, a molecular diagnostics company that was acquired by Roche.

Kevin began his professional career as a product design consultant at Arthur D. Little, assisting clients from startups to the Fortune 500 on consumer, healthcare and industrial product design efforts. He also serves as Executive Chairman of Ascension Industries, a closely held industrial manufacturing and filtration products company. Kevin earned a BSE with honors from Princeton University, an MS in engineering from Stanford, and an MBA with honors from UC Berkeley.

As Chief Executive Officer, Peter manages the long-term strategic growth of Globalstar, Inc. and its subsidiary company SPOT LLC. He is responsible for extending the quality and broadening the reach of the company’s portfolio of satellite voice and data solutions.

Peter has served as a director of Globalstar since 2004 and as Chair of the Audit Committee. He is CEO of Dalton Partners, Inc., a management consulting firm, and has served as CEO and director of a number of its clients. He also served as president of SPACE (Society of Private and Commercial Earth Stations), the satellite television industry trade association. As CEO of KLM Electronics he grew revenue more than twenty five times making it the world’s largest manufacturer of satellite television systems at that time. From November 2001 to September 2004, Peter served as chief executive officer of Clickhome Realty, Inc., a discount real estate and mortgage company.

Before that, Peter had more than thirty years experience in business management, turnaround management, and investment banking. He has been a board member of over twenty companies both public and private. His industry experience is broad-reaching, including food processing, medical products, semiconductor industry test equipment, telecommunications equipment, house-wares, ready-to-wear, concert lighting, and candles. Peter’s experience includes strategic partnering, mergers and acquisitions, and high growth situations. He has arranged significant financing for startups and growing companies through his own investment banking firm.

Peter holds a Bachelor of Science Degree in Accounting from La Salle University in Philadelphia, PA and is an executive fellow, Leavey School of Business, Santa Clara University.

Anjuli joined RTI in 2017 as RTI's first in-house legal counsel and she now serves as General Counsel and Secretary of the Board of Directors. Anjuli is responsible for managing RTI's legal needs, including drafting and negotiating customer agreements, managing RTI's risk profile, and overseeing RTI's corporate governance. Before joining RTI, Anjuli worked at a large New England-based law firm where she represented a broad range of technology clients and led several companies through successful acquisition transactions. She also served as the primary in-house counsel for two fast-growing Bay Area-based companies, where she provided counsel ranging from company formation through international expansion to eventual exit strategies.

Anjuli received her Bachelor's Degree from New York University and her JD from George Washington University, where she was a member of the law review. 

Karl-Thomas (KT) Neumann has 30 years of experience in the automotive industry holding former CEO positions at Opel, Volkswagen China and Continental. He also worked in the startup world with the Los Angeles-based electric vehicle startup CANOO, and now serves on various boards and as the automotive advisor on RTI’s Advisory Board.

Stuart Kozlick is a strategic advisor, executive-in-residence, within the Intellectual Property group at Fasken. An engineer specializing in medical technologies and devices and healthcare systems, Stuart is called upon to lead strategic initiatives to integrate and develop various complex medical device systems in the clinical field. He particularly specializes in strategic positioning and planning, operational excellence, process improvement, project management, and analysis and research. Stuart serves as the Healthcare advisor on RTI’s Advisory Board.