Dr. C. Allen Atkinson
President

Dr. Atkinson has worked in the fields of ocean and aerospace engineering and software development for over 25 years at TRW, Logicon, and currently at SSA. He has analyzed and designed complex oceanographic and aerospace systems and managed teams that have delivered hardware and software to commercial and government customers. Dr. Atkinson is a recognized expert in simulation modeling, nonlinear programming, and object oriented software development, and is co-developer of the original EASy Geographic Information System. His doctoral research examined the small pelagic fish species in coastal California waters and yielded a generalized spatial, multi-species fishery model along with the implementation of unique, sophisticated algorithms for dealing with parameter uncertainty in population modeling.

Dr. Atkinson has analyzed ocean pollution problems involving fish farm operation, pulp mill and power plant waste water discharges into coastal environments, and offshore waste incineration. He has developed simulation models of fish populations and plankton ecosystem dynamics, and performed studies involving ocean optics, bioluminescence, and air-sea gas exchange. He has also performed system engineering analysis of Ocean Thermal Energy Conversion (OTEC) plants, underwater-launched submarine decoys and torpedoes, waste water outfall diffusers, surface effect ships, and submarine cable laying ships. His extensive aerospace background encompasses software development, engineering analysis, and management on advanced technology programs such as the National Missile Defense System and the B-2 stealth bomber. He developed battle management algorithms, performed system concept tradeoffs, built real-time software system prototypes, and delivered advanced operational software for man-in-the-loop Command and Control systems with emphasis on user interface and graphic displays.

Dr. Dale Kiefer
Vice President

Dr. Kiefer, after working as a researcher for the Scripps' Marine Life Research Group and Visibility Laboratory, joined the faculty at the University of Southern California and is now a full professor in the Department of Biological Sciences. He has earned an international reputation for his research in biological oceanography and remote sensing of the ocean. His research has been funded by numerous government agencies including the National Science Foundation, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and the Office of Naval Research.

Dr. Kiefer was involved in the founding of SSA and now works actively on our many applied oceanographic projects utilizing his particular expertise in at-sea data acquisition and bio-optical algorithm development for implementation within the EASy GIS software. He also provides overall direction to SSA's business development pursuits using his vast knowledge of applied and theoretical oceanographic problems. A particular specialty involves the application of remote sensing to such problems as indicated by his being a current member of the SeaWiFs Science team of NASA. He has published over 50 papers, which most often explore the fields of marine microbiology and optics. He has also obtained 3 United States patents for inventions in optical instrumentation and wave damping floats, resulting in the associated development and marketing of highly successful commercial products.

Mr. Frank O'Brien
Vice President

Mr. O'Brien is a seasoned software architect and designer who brings his wide ranging, applied software expertise in directing these activities at SSA. He developed the first application of our EASy GIS software, which involved the real-time mapping of submerged effluent plumes produced by pulp mills discharging wastes into the coastal waters off Eureka, California. Frank has worked in the field of software development for over 25 years as a programmer, systems analyst, and manager of teams on a wide variety of projects. He has worked for leaders in the fields of commercial and government software development including CDC, IBM, Rockwell, COMARCO, and Logicon. He recently completed SSA's development of a Web-based Fishery Information System for the Southwest National Marine Fisheries Service in La Jolla, California. Besides continuing his lead role in further development of our EASy GIS, he provides a continuous supply of elegant tools for the analysis and visualization of geographic information for use in our many environmental and engineering projects.

In his wide-ranging software roles over the years, Mr. O'Brien has earned a reputation as a highly creative and most productive force. He has managed a software operating division, served as technical manager of many large software contracts, and been a program development manager for marketing and proposal efforts. He managed a multi-company team of developers in creating a prototype version of the Joint Mission Planning System to be used in the deployment of all U.S Air Force and Navy aircraft. He has developed advanced software utilizing a COM-based architecture to integrate Internet and network-based components written in Visual Basic, Java, and Visual C++. He has also created software programs to display digital terrain data, aircraft navigation maps, and imagery. He has developed compilers, operating systems, simulation programs, simulation languages, and scientific analysis programs.

Dr. Vardis M. Tsontos
Senior Scientist

Dr Tsontos has held research positions within the Shellfisheries Management Group at the Ministry of Agriculture Food and Fisheries laboratory in Lowestoft (UK) and the Biology Department of the University of Southern California. He has been involved in a wide range of projects, from the study and management of commercially harvested bivalve stocks to the development of information systems and use of GIS tools in ecological applications. His research interests focus on the issue of scale in ecology, the analysis of spatial-temporal pattern formation in ecological systems, and the implications of spatial heterogeneity for population level dynamics and ecological assessment procedures. In 1998 he began working for Systems Science Application in support of the Integrated Coastal Analysis and Monitoring System (ICAMS) while stationed at the Food and Agricultural Organization of the United Nations in Rome. During this project, he developed EASy project files, wrote the user's manual, and instructed participants in the use of GIS. More recently, he was responsible for developing and maintaining the database management system for our DWP reservoir field program. Dr Tsontos will be a key developer of SSA's Gulf of Maine Bio-geographic Information System that has recently been funded by the Sloan Foundation. Relevant technical skills include relational databases, GIS, programming, spatial data analysis and modeling.

Mr. Scott Grossman
Software Engineer

Mr. Grossman is an experienced software engineer with an extensive background in object-oriented programming, structured analysis and design, and software integration and test. He has expertise in many programming languages including C++, C, FORTRAN, Pascal, SQL, Assembler, and Ada, and has worked with Solaris, UNIX, Ultrix, VAX/VMS, X-Windows/Motif, Dataviews, Macintosh, MS DOS and Windows. He has applied this expertise to several of SSA's projects involving our EASy GIS, and provides our team with critical and unique skills in software/hardware system integration.

Mr. Grossman has defined requirements, developed software architectures, and designed, documented (to Mil-Std specifications), and implemented real-time and distributed software/hardware systems. Projects have involved systems for aircraft such as Boeing 7XX series, McDonnell Douglas MD90 series, and the F22 Advanced Tactical Fighter. He has also applied advanced software technologies to link physically separate Air Force laboratories so that they can operate in an integrated mode. He has provided on-site support for a software engineering environment consisting of a repository and more than 50 integrated COTS CASE tools including ASA Edit, Teamwork, In-Concert, Sybase, EzX, Sun Ada and many others. He was chief software architect and designer for a prototype Graphical User Interface for the Kinetic Energy Anti-Satellite Weapon System that was hosted on a network of Sun SPARC workstations.

Mr. Simeon Paul Ogle
Marine Engineer

Mr. Ogle recently began working for System Science Applications on our contract for the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power. He has been responsible for the field work investigating water quality in selected reservoirs. He has designed and implemented instrumentation packages for gathering the field data, organized and led the weekly survey cruises at the reservoirs, and processed and entered the data into our project database. He has also performed laboratory measurements to supplement the field work and analyzed the results for use in developing an integrated water quality monitoring and prediction system. Mr. Ogle has previously participated in biological, hydrographic and archaeological surveys in the Mediterranean and around the coast of the United Kingdom, including side-scan sonar surveys of a sunken WWII vessel and backed up the measurements with systematic dive surveys. While at Plymouth University he obtained a commercial and scientific diving license, and has experience diving and conducting underwater surveys,

Dr. Juli Berwald
Scientist

Dr. Berwald's major scientific interest is the interaction of biological organisms and light. Her work at System Science Applications has been directed towards developing models for remotely determining concentrations of algal and non-algal materials in natural waters. She has analyzed data sets ranging from the blue ocean off Kona, Hawaii and the Antarctic Ocean, to nearshore waters in Monterey Bay and Chesapeake Bay, and to freshwater in Los Angeles reservoirs. The focus of her dissertation was radiative transfer modeling in the ocean to describe the shape of the underwater light field.