Advisory Board

NovaTorque Inc's Technical Advisory Board is comprised of a sage group of industry insiders. Their guidance and insight has proven pivotal to the product's development. Their industry contacts have proved invaluable in getting early recognition for NovaTorque Inc. and will continue to facilitate its subsequent commercialization.

Ken G. Wasson 

Ken G. Wasson is a founder of NovaTorque Inc. His core areas of expertise include magnetics design, motor design, field analysis, and the fabrication of ceramics and magnetic materials.
 
Mr. Wasson received a B.S. in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Wisconsin. He served as Production or Operations Manager for three companies prior to founding his own magnet production company in 1972.
 
Since selling that company in 1978, Mr. Wasson has been consulting to the motion control industry, designing magnet-based products and resolving resonance-related issues. Principal clients of Wasson Associates, Ken's sole proprietorship consultancy, have included most of the world's leading disk drive manufacturers. Mr. Wasson also co-founded a motor engineering and manufacturing company in 1987, which included an extensive laboratory for development and analysis of electro-magnetic devices and systems, with particular emphasis on fractional horsepower rotary electric motors.
 
Mr. Wasson has also served as VP and Technical Director of Product Development International, Inc., which was a holding company offering intellectual property for license. Since 1981, he, together with two other experts, has also presented over 75 short courses on the design of brushless spindle motors and electro-mechanical actuators. Mr. Wasson holds or is co-inventor of 11 patents with additional patents pending, and has published several articles and papers.

Dan Jones

Dan Jones

Dan Jones received his BSEE degree from Hofstra University in 1965 and a MS degree in Mathematics from Adelphi in 1969. Dan is considered by many industry leaders to be "a living encyclopedia of motion control engineering and marketing." This reputation has been gained through his forty years of work in a multitude of roles that include engineering, senior management, and marketing. His technical expertise includes DC motors, step motors, servo motors, AC motors, brush and brushless motors, electronic drives, and control systems in applications for the military, industrial and commercial markets. He is the past president of AIME (Association of International Motion Engineers) and is a past member of the Board of Directors of the Small Motor Manufacturers Association (SMMA). Dan is the President of Incremotion Associates, a firm that uniquely "combines the capabilities of engineers and marketing consultants whose expertise and energy is focused on the motion control and power conversion industries."

Richard Welch Jr.

Richard Welch

Richard Welch Jr. received his BSEE and MSEE degrees from the University of Minnesota specializing in electro-magnetic field theory. In 1970 he began his professional career in the electric motor industry at the former Electro-Craft Corporation. There he designed, built, tested and modeled high performance brush and brushless DC servomotors along with conducting extensive research on motor related issues such as mechanical resonance, dynamic braking, heat transfer, and power efficiency. In 1980 he became Manager of Research for Despatch Industries Inc. At Despatch, he acquired a hands-on, in-depth understanding of heat transfer and thermal issues by conducting numerous experiments on different products and materials using microwave, infrared, dielectric, and convection air ovens. Since 1985 he has been an independent consultant to both the electric motor and industrial heat processing industries. As a consultant he has worked on numerous design and development, manufacturing, cost saving, and application projects for several clients. In 1993 he became the Certified Motor's Instructor for the Association of International Motion Engineers (AIME). In this capacity he created several tutorials on different aspects of electric motor technology and taught these tutorials at numerous conferences and trade shows as well as to private industry. Richard is an Adjunct Faculty at the University of Saint Thomas. He has published more than 30 technical papers and articles.