David M. Caditz

Ph.D. Physics

David holds a Doctorate in Physics from Stanford University (1990) and a B.S. in Physics from Massachusetts Institute of Technology (1983). As an instructor and scientist at Montana State University, David focused on research in astronomy and high-energy astrophysics.

David was the Director of Technology Education for the NASA/CERES Program where he pioneered one of the first online classrooms and co-authored one of the first online textbooks in astronomy. David has authored over 35 papers in astronomy, statistics, network theory and game theory and holds a patent in wireless networking technology.

David was recruited by Hookupaa Technologies, Inc., a San Francisco based tech startup, where he developed algorithms for improving the speed and efficiency of satellite data networks. Throughput improvements were based on reducing ALOHA protocol network traffic through preemptive HTML requests, ACK optimization, and server-side proxy based HTML compression.

As a software consultant, David worked on numerous enterprise-level business management software projects, online scheduling and appointment booking software, one of the first online restaurant ordering systems, and inventory mananagement systems. He is also active in the areas of power electronics, solar energy, battery management systems for electric vehicles.

More recently, as a founding member and Chief Technology Officer of Jury Science, David oversaw the development of game theory-based algorithms for courtroom jury selection. Such algorithms can potentially revolutionize how parties to a litigation select jurors from a jury pool.

David was a founding member of the Stanford University Solar Car Project and performed volunteer work as Director of Technology Education at the San Francisco Palace of Fine Arts Innovation Hangar. David actively mentors high school and college students in technology-related educational programs.

Ron Newman

M.S. Computer Science

Ron holds a Masters of Computer Science degree from North Texas State University and is a former IBM Senior Associate Programmer. At IBM Ron worked in Advanced Application System Design where he evaluated research and developed proof-of-concept prototypes around selected technologies coming out of universities and IBM labs for application to business software. Ron acted as technical liaison between IBM Dallas and IBM Boca Raton for development of a dedicated multimedia PC and developed a new type of multimedia graphical interface, with underlying engine, for a meeting scheduler based on the Tetris game, and was one of the developers of an object oriented “operating system” which overlaid OS/2 and provided web browser-type linking capability to all registered desktop applications.

As a consultant, Ron developed database-driven applications for visualization of fish telemetry, marketing research, and e-commerce. He is also a founder and lead developer of IdeaTreeLive, a network graph-based concept-mapping tool which is available online. IdeaTreeLive was the first online, real-time multi-user concept mapping application, and to date one of the few existing. It applies the familiar network graph paradigm to project management, enabling the visual depiction of task dependencies.

Other projects include:

• The World Happiness Meter, which collects subjective reports of well-being to investigate the effects on perceived well-being of events such as natural disasters or sudden economic changes.
• Member of an international development team spanning the U.K., France, and India on a patient-owned medical records system.
• The Prison Project, a pilot program presented to the Social Sciences Research Lab at the University of Louisiana Monroe, with the aim of providing employment to released inmates as part of an entrepreneurship training program, utilizing Collective Intelligence principles.
• Developed a system utilizing fuzzy logic for the smoothing of heart pulse rate sensor data and a hardware/software hybrid neurofeedback system for musicians.

Ron holds three patents, with an additional one pending, and has 25 IBM-published inventions. He was also awarded a 2nd Level IBM Invention Achievement Award.

Ron also holds an M.M.E. Music Education. As a musician, Ron performed in openings for Willie Nelson, Tricia Clark, and a tour of the Far East. He was a songwriter for Warner Bros./Yellowstone Park benefit project and Assistant Director of a Texas State Champion High School concert band.