President

• Jun 2021 - Present

Gen3 CSP Principal Investigator

• May 2018 - Present

Principal Investigator for Brayton's U.S. Department of Energy-funded Gen3 CSP program, targeting the design and megawatt-scale demonstration of an integrated CSP facility with a gas-phase heat transfer fluid and thermal energy storage that enables off-sun generation.https://www.energy.gov/eere/solar/generation-3-concentrating-solar-power-systems-gen3-csp

Principal Engineer

• Sep 2012 - Present

• Principal Investigator responsible for the successful execution of SunShot programs:‒ Solar Receiver with Integrated Thermal Storage for a Supercritical CO2 Power Cycle, an ongoing 36-month APOLLO (Advanced Projects Offering Low Levelized Cost of Energy Opportunities) Department of Energy funded program to develop a concentrating solar power system that generates electricity after dark‒ High-Efficiency Low-Cost Solar Receiver for use in a Supercritical CO2 Recompression Cycle, a 39-month SunShot program funded by the Department of Energy to develop a high-temperature solar absorber to run a high-efficiency next-generation power cycle. This program concluded in 2016 having met or surpassed all technical objectives while remaining on-schedule and on-budget. This work resulted in invitations to present at the DoE’s 2016 SunShot Conference and to join an advisory consortium to help inform the DoE’s 5-year research funding plan into concentrating solar power • Develop, program, and exercise mathematical models to evaluate and optimize complex systems, including:‒ High-fidelity finite-difference numerical models to evaluate conjugate heat transfer and thermodynamic systems in both steady state and transient operation ‒ Stochastic/Monte Carlo simulations of physical systems to generate performance predictions on the basis of imperfect or variable input data (e.g. flux profiles derived from statistical optical ray tracing)‒ Multivariate models of integrated systems which are solved via various convergence algorithms (e.g. Newton-Raphson matrix inversion)• Develop and implement User Interfaces that enable models to be used as design tools across the business• Perform statistically-based data analysis to identify trends and contributing factors, and to enable the extrapolation of collected data to future scenarios• Generate detailed economic value propositions for proposed designs and systems Show less

R&D Program Manager

• Jan 2012 - Present

‒ Responsible for the direction and growth of the company’s Concentrating Solar Energy portfolio‒ Identify emerging technologies and the opportunities to integrate them within Brayton’s technical offerings‒ Identify funding opportunities (including Federal grants), conceive potential solutions, coordinate internal studies to establish a prospective project’s technical and fiscal feasibility, and generate/submit applications ‒ Meet with potential customers to understand their needs and identify how Brayton may enable their success‒ Generate marketing content to communicate the competitive advantages of Brayton’s key technologies‒ Author publications and give technical presentations at industry conferences to increase Brayton Energy’s name recognition, convey Brayton’s capabilities, and communicate learnings to the technical community‒ Mentor engineers to develop their ability to balance technical, programmatic, and budgetary considerations ‒ Employ Waterfall project management framework to define, track, and communicate project progress and results to the customer using tasks, subtasks, milestones, results, and assessment criteria‒ Employ Agile project management techniques to evolve from a highly uncertain initial concept to a final optimized solution through multiple iterations and course adjustments based on data and feedback‒ Coordinate among multiple stakeholders including the customer, end-user, manufacturing partners, management, research partners, and internal resources to ensure an optimal solution‒ Coordinate with other managers to share cross-functional resources between projects‒ Maintain a budget by prioritizing key efforts, managing scope creep, pacing workflow, delegating tasks to the appropriate resources, and leveraging common efforts among multiple projects‒ Document and present engineering efforts, results, and conclusions in official reports and presentations Show less

Senior Aero-Thermal Engineer / Senior Mechanical Engineer

• Dec 2008 - Sep 2012

• Specify and oversee testing for various projects, including combustor performance testing, solar receiver efficiency testing, and component durability testing with respect to creep, fatigue, and corrosion• Technical lead for multiple hardware development efforts, including heat exchangers for nuclear applications and a novel combustor configuration for a back-fired gas turbine fueled by solid biomass particles

Performance and Systems Engineer

• Sep 2000 - Dec 2008

FlexEnergy (formerly Ingersoll-Rand Energy Systems) is a leading manufacturer of microturbines for backup and distributed power generation. The highly flexible design may be operated using a wide variety of conventional and alternative fuels. While there my responsibilities included: • Developed and designed alternative fuel conditioning skids to remove contaminants from biogas • Applied Kepner-Tregoe Problem Solving methodology to determine root causes of failures • Led engineering efforts for air-cooled swirlerhead design, anti-inlet-icing investigation, and cogeneration VAVE • Evaluated production and fielded microturbines and diagnosed performance shortfalls via statistical data analysis • Developed, maintained, and applied a GasTurb cycle model for use in evaluating engines and design changes • Applied statistical methods to develop life predictions for key micro turbine components Show less