I grew up in Mankato, Minnesota, the younger brother of a big sister and the son of an English professor and an elementary school teacher. My dad still remembers me teaching myself to use computers at an age when most kids were still learning to read, on the Apple IIe my mom brought home from her classroom each summer.
I earned my B.S. in Chemical Engineering at Iowa State University in Ames and started my career at Archer Daniels Midland in Clinton, Iowa, as a Production Assistant in the syrup refinery. ADM’s Midwest agricultural processing, spanning corn wet milling, ethanol, and solvent extraction, taught me how process hazards show up in real equipment, not on paper.
At Berwanger, I learned that a solid work ethic and the flexibility to accept new challenges are their own reward. At ioMosaic, I learned how to build engineering expertise from the ground up, starting with fresh graduates, and how to manage large-scale pressure relief system design projects. It was there that I developed my expertise in runaway reaction relief system design and two-phase relief and venting. I rose to Senior Partner and led the Relief Systems consulting group, delivering pressure relief and flare system design for reactive and non-reactive chemical, petroleum, and pharmaceutical clients. I later served as President and Principal Engineer of Chemitics.
A licensed PE in Minnesota and a certified professional project manager, I’m active in the AIChE Design Institute for Emergency Relief Systems (DIERS), as well as the CCPS community and the API Subcommittee on Pressure Relief Systems. I co-chair the API Task Force on Technical Report 522.
Today I’m Director of Process Technical Consulting at Cognascents, where I develop the engineering team’s technical expertise, with a particular focus on expanding the firm’s runaway reaction and two-phase relief and venting design capability, and build AI-enabled engineering workflows. I’m at my best turning capable young engineers into confident experts and finding better ways to deliver rigorous work. I live in Katy, Texas, with my wife, Phoebe, and my daughter.