Biographies
Dan Flynn
Dan Flynn is President and co-founder of Accipiter Systems. Dan has over
26 years of industry experience moving product from concept to production.
Previously, Dan was a Director of Engineering at Marconi Communications
(formerly known as FORE Systems) for the Enterprise Product Group. His
responsibilities included the development of Switch Control Processors, Gigabit
Ethernet port card, ATM firewalls, 20 Gbps ATM switch, and ATM Network Interface
Cards (NICs). Dan has successfully led system, software, hardware and ASIC
developments. Dan has ten years of experience designing communications
equipment for the datacom and telecom markets. Dan has worked under
contract with Lockheed Martin Maritime Systems & Sensors to design
next-generation and secure data communications systems for DARPA and Air Force
efforts. Dan holds an M.S.E.E. from the University of Akron, and a B.S.E.E
from Cleveland State University.
David Drury
David Drury
has over 30 years experience in creating and growing new businesses, and at
present is CTO at Accipiter Systems. David joined Fore Systems (now Marconi) in
1991 as European General Manager to create their European operation and grew
that business from start to over $150M per annum in six years. He moved to the
US as VP of Marketing for FORE and oversaw a period in which the company
regained strong growth and market visibility. Most recently he was VP Technology
Strategy at Marconi and had direct responsibility for all marketing aspects of
an advanced communication project. Prior to FORE/Marconi he was founder and
Managing Director of Camtec Electronics Ltd, a U.K. pioneer of X.25 networking
products for LAN and WAN deployments. Earlier at GEC (U.K.) he led the sales and
marketing for a new department he created for the design and manufacture of
instrumentation compliant with the CAMAC international standards. He was more
recently founder president and chairman of the MPLS Forum and is a very well
known speaker at numerous conferences. David holds a Bachelors Degree in Physics
from Manchester University (U.K.) and a Diploma in Management & Business Studies
from University of Croydon U.K. He is a Member of the British Institute of
Management, the IEE and a Chartered Engineer.
Eric Helmsen
Eric Helmsen
is Engineering Vice President and co-founder of Accipiter Systems. Eric
brings over 14 years of industry networking experience to Accipiter Systems.
Prior to co-founding Accipiter, Eric worked as a Principal Engineer and
Engineering Product Manager at FORE Systems/Marconi, where he led hardware,
software, and diagnostics engineers in the architecture of a 20 Gbps hybrid ATM
and Ethernet switch using network processors. Eric’s engineering
background includes developing control processors for network switches, having
taken 7 different designs from concept to customer, and VHDL design. Eric
holds a patent for his invention of a digital filter used for timing
synchronization in network switches. Eric holds an M.S. in Electrical and
Computer Engineering and a B.S. in Computer Engineering, both from Carnegie
Mellon University.
Steve Bachor
Steve Bachor
is a Principal Engineer for Accipiter Systems. Steve provides
over 20
years of diverse and successful network and process control design, and
implementation experience. Steve has worked at Marconi Communications as a lead
design engineer on a hardware and software based firewall product for
Asynchronous Transfer Mode (ATM) networks (the SA-400) by January of 2002.
Steve has spent over 15 years designing and implementing computer systems while
working in the development engineering and strategic engineering departments at
the Process Control and Nuclear Automation Divisions of the Westinghouse
Electric Corporation. Steve has designed and programmed computer systems
with various hardware, operating systems, and languages for low to high level
software layers. He has knowledge with network protocols, web interfaces,
embedded systems and code generating software. He has designed and implemented
user interfaces, database systems, redundancy systems, communications systems,
and device interfaces. Steve holds a B.S. in Computer Science from the
University of Pittsburgh and also worked for the Computer Science department at
the University of Pittsburgh.
John Rasmussen
John Rasmussen
is a Principal Engineer for Accipiter Systems. He was formerly a Principal
Engineer at Marconi Communications. Prior to working at Marconi
Communications, John has worked extensively for DOD contractors as a Principal
Engineer. John has designed backplanes for 480 Gbps core switches, and has
designed interface cards for a 20 Gbps provider edge switch. He has been a
hardware designer and/or Lead Engineer for small teams of people on several
projects. He has significant experience in getting products into production, as
well as practical R&D in computer design. John has strengths in board and
system design for processor and communication systems, involving the
specification of ASICs and FPGAs, is familiar with analog circuits, has design
experience in the development of control systems for the aircraft industry, and
has developed instrumentation techniques for the testing of high speed circuits.
John holds a MSEE from Ohio University and a BSEE from Case Institute of
Technology.
Sherry Kratsas
Sherry Kratsas is a Senior Engineer for Accipiter Systems.
She formerly developed software in the medical devices and
biotechnology industries. Sherry has experience in all stages
of the formal software development process, mostly in a
FDA-regulated and ISO 9000-certified environment. She also has
experience in device interfaces, graphical user interfaces,
databases, requirements analysis, object-oriented design and
parallel algorithms. Sherry holds a MS in Electrical
Engineering from West Virginia University with an emphasis in
Software Engineering and Electronics and a BS in Computer
Engineering also from West Virginia University.
