Team Members
Vern Fotheringham
Chairman, Chief Executive Officer & President
Vern Fotheringham has been a serial entrepreneur in the broadband wireless and satellite communications industry for over 25 years. He has created and built numerous successful ventures and contributed to large scale projects for major service providers, system vendors and software solution suppliers. He has also been a public policy and regulatory advocate for new telecommunications service rules and standards, and an inventor and creator of now globally adopted standards, innovative new products and services. Previously he was the President and CEO of ADAPTIX, Inc., a world leader in the development of the OFDMA technology that is now the core of the Mobile WiMAX and LTE broadband radio systems. Career highlights include: pioneering the wireless broadband industry as the founder of both Advanced Radio Telecom Corporation and WavTrace; direct participation with the international development of the cellular telephone industry in the US, Canada, Mexico, Germany, Sweden, Hong Kong, Brazil, Argentina, Venezuela and Bangladesh; creation and development of the mobile satellite, satellite radio broadcasting, and the direct to user broadband satellite industry with the following organizations: Omninet (MSS and RDSS L-Band), OmniTRACS (now Qualcomm Ku-Band mobile data), AMSC (now LightSquared L-Band MSS), NORCOM Networks (now Wireless Matrix L-Band mobile data), Digital Satellite Broadcasting Corp (S-Band BSS), Pentriad (Q-Band FSS), and IPB Satellite Services (IPStar Ku-Band DTH).
Bob McCambridge
Chief Operating Officer
Bob has over 25 years of executive leadership with leading wireless, technology and business services companies. He has successfully served as CEO, COO, CFO, Executive-in-Residence, and Independent Director of several leading public and private companies. His leadership and Board experience includes Spire Capital Partners, SkyMall, Freestone Capital Management, Key Business Services, Advanced Radio Telecom, OneComm, Ceridian and Control Data Corporation. Bob currently serves on the Gonzaga University Board of Regents and is the former Board Chair for Special Olympics Washington.
Nathan Kundtz, Ph.D.
Founder, Chief Technology Officer
Dr. Kundtz has an M.S. in electrical engineering and a Ph.D. in physics from Duke University. He is an alumnus of the intelligence community postdoctoral fellowship. Dr. Kundtz has authored or co-authored over 10 peer reviewed publications in the field of metamaterials, including work on the use of advanced structured materials in beam forming applications. His research has centered on the application of advanced concepts such as transformation optics to real needs and benchmarking the performance of such devices. This work has provided Dr. Kundtz with broad knowledge of the field of metamaterials and advantages and disadvantages of their use in real-world applications. He was born in Roanoke, Virginia.
John Schilling
Chief Financial Officer
John holds a B.S. in Electrical Engineering from the University of Washington and an M.B.A. with Honors from the University of Chicago Graduate School of Business. He is an experienced financial executive and management consultant with two decades of experience in starting, growing and managing technology companies. He has provided corporate finance, strategic advisory and acting senior executive management services to a variety of clients, advising and assisting them with mergers and acquisitions, capital formation, restructurings, startups and growth management. These include Broadstorm, Inc. (now Adaptix), Widemile, Inc., and ShareBuilder Corporation. John has more than 20 years of business experience in finance, operations, information systems, investment banking, and early stage ventures, and has been an advisor to several emerging technology firms in the Seattle area. John was born in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma.
Dan Reuster, Ph.D.
Vice President of Engineering
Dan holds an MSEE from Michigan Technical University, and a Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering from the University of Dayton. Dan has been employed as a government defense contractor since 1991. During this time he has worked on programs for the University of Dayton Research Institute, Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, Allison Engine Company, ARINC Inc., Riverside Research Institute, Spectra Research and Sierra Nevada Corp. Dan’s specialty is the study of electromagnetic phenomenology, computation, and visualization. He has published over 40 articles in the electromagnetic related field and spoken repeatedly at various annual conferences. Dan received the ACES 2000 paper of the year award for his work on iterative solutions to the MFIE and a United States Patent for a broadband antenna design. Dan was born in Chicago, Illinois.
Robert Foster
Vice President of Advanced Products and Services
Robert Foster has been a developer of communications systems for more than twenty five years. His experience ranges from consumer devices and applications to large scale systems. He was CTO of Wavtrace, a manufacturer of millimeter wave access systems which he co-founded in 1996. As CTO he led development of the industry’s first TDD/TDMA based implementation for millimeter wave communications. He also directed the company’s regulatory strategy in the establishment of worldwide standards with numerous contributions to ETSI, IEEE 802.16 and the FCC. Wavtrace developed and deployed systems from 26GHz to 40GHz before being acquired in August 2000 by Harris Corporation, its largest shareholder. Mr. Foster continued with Harris as Chief Scientist where he managed the broadband access patent portfolio and served as chairman of the Wireless Communications Alliance engineering committee. Additional career highlights include development of FCC part 15 technologies as co-founder of American Wireless (900MHz) and 6015 (60GHz) and early stage contributions to Metawave, a producer of cellular smart antennas and SkyPix, a direct-to-home satellite broadcast system. He has spoken at numerous industry trade conferences and holds 10 patents.
Ryan A. Stevenson, Ph.D.
Director of Research
Ryan holds a B.S. in Biomedical/Electrical Engineering, and an M.S. and Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering, all from The University of Southern California. Ryan was a research scientist at Intellectual Ventures with the Center for Metamaterials; he contributed in several areas of the meta-antenna prototype development, including RF design, materials development, and fabrication. Prior to joining Intellectual Ventures, Ryan was a Senior Systems Analyst at Science Applications International Corporation where he worked in a number of aspects of digital communications systems. He also served as principal investigator of an IR&D project related to non-Foster matching of electrically small antennas; he was also a Member of Technical Staff at The Aerospace Corporation. Ryan also served as a principal investigator of an IR&D related to photonic integrated circuits. Ryan was born in Tarzana, California.
Adam Bily, M.S.
RF and Antenna Engineer
Adam has an M.S. in electrical engineering from the University of Washington and has been the principal RF design and test engineer during the development of the core Kymeta MSA-T technology. Before joining Intellectual Ventures Laboratory in 2010 to aid the development effort, he worked at Raytheon Space and Airborne Systems on various X- and Ka-band RADAR systems, gaining an understanding of component and system level performance and requirements. Adam brings a passion for leveraging full-wave simulation, which has greatly aided the development of the metamaterial beam-forming technology. Adam was born in Monterey, California.
Jeff Dallas, B.S.
Lead Engineer
Jeff holds B.S. degrees from the University of Washington in both mechanical and electrical engineering with concentrations in mechatronics and control systems. Jeff’s primary involvement with MSA-T technology has been the hardware and software design of the drive electronics along with the development of various test platforms. Prior to working for Kymeta, Jeff worked at Intellectual Ventures for the Center for Metamaterials and executed diffusion coupling studies for the experimental nuclear reactor company TerraPower. Jeff’s prior experience includes five years of military service as an Army Airborne Ranger at Fort Lewis, WA. Jeff was born in Wichita Falls, Texas.
Håkan Olsson
Senior Director of Marketing
Håkan holds a Masters Degree in Applied Physics and Electromechanical Engineering from Linköping University in Sweden. He also has a Marketing Professionals degree from Kellogg University in Chicago. His career over the last 20 years has been founded on developing and executing new unique business initiatives from ground up. He is specialized in bridging technological aspects of products with business modeling, Product Management and Marketing while involving global partner ecosystems. He most recently worked at Microsoft Corporation where he gained in depth experience in taking new software solutions to markets worldwide through OEM and Retail partners. Håkan was born and raised in Sweden and moved to Seattle in 1998.
Bob Shuman
Senior Director of Business and Program Development
Bob spent his career bringing innovative new products and services to markets around the world. In the last 15 years he has served as CEO, COO, EVP and VP for cloud-based product, Smart Antenna, Online Education, and VOIP companies. On the client side, he has been managing strategic account relationships of both public and private organizations such as Verizon, GTE, Alltel, Ameritech, Global Crossing, Washington State, Holland American Cruise lines, the FBI, U.S. Navy, Veteran’s Administration, and the Department of State among others. He has built teams to build, deliver and service products to global organizations. Bob has lead Account Management, Product Management, Operations, Project management, Customer Support and Development organizations.
Tom Freeman
Senior Director of Advanced Products and Servers Group
Tom is a recognized leader in delivering innovative products and services to markets around the world. In the last 15 years he has served as CEO, GM and VP for an Over-The-Top IPTV company, a Voice Interface and Applications company and an Automotive Applications company. Tom has a particular emphasis at the intersection of Infotainment, Telematics and Human Machine Interface for the Automotive, Hospitality, Television and Cruise industries. Tom’s portfolio includes the deployment of Kymeta’s technology in environments such as automotive, trucking, luxury vessel and other mobile verticals where consumers need connected content on the go.