Carlos Fernandez-Pello, PhD 
Dr. Carlos Fernandez-Pello oversees all of Reax Engineering Inc.'s research and development projects as Technical Director. He received a PhD from the University of California San Diego in 1975 with a dissertation on fire spread. His post-doctoral work took him to Harvard and Princeton Universities where he conducted fire and combustion research. In 1980, Dr. Fernandez-Pello became Professor of Mechanical Engineering at the University of California, Berkeley where he has remained since. He has published several hundred journal and conference papers covering topics related to combustion, fire, and mini-scale power generation.
Chris Lautenberger, PhD, PE
Chris Lautenberger received an MS in Fire Protection Engineering from Worcester Polytechnic Insitute (Worcester, MA) with a thesis related to computational fluid dynamics modeling of fires, and a PhD in Mechanical Engineering (major area: Combustion) from the University of California at Berkeley with a dissertation related to materials' flammability and fire modeling. Dr. Lautenberger is skilled at applying numerical and analytical techniques to analyze various engineering problems. He has several years of experience developing and mantaining computer models covering pyrolysis, combustion, fire, heat transfer, and computational fluid dynamics, including programming experience in Fortran and C/C++.
David Rich, PhD
David Rich received a PhD in Mechanical Engineering (major area: Combustion) from the University of California at Berkeley, with a NASA sponsored dissertation related to ignition of solid fuels. Dr. Rich is currently an adjunct professor at Santa Clara University (California) where he teaches Fluid Mechanics, Combustion, and Fire Dynamics.
Dr. Rich is Reax Engineering Inc.'s experimentalist, regularly applying sophisticated experimental laboratory diagnostics in support of research and development. His primary area of expertise is development of experimental platforms for the study of fire phenomena such as igniton and flame spread. Dr. Rich is an expert in infrared (IR) thermography, particle image velocimetry (PIV), planar laser induced fluorescence (PLIF), gas chromatography, Schlieren interferometry, mass loss rate measurement during pyrolysis and combustion, heat release rate measurement by oxygen consumption calorimetry, high speed video, and in-situ gas sampling.
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