Riggs Eckelberry — President and CEO

One of the inventors of the Company’s breakthrough technology, Riggs Eckelberry brings his veteran technology management skills to the alternative energy sector. As President and COO of CyberDefender Corporation from 2005 to 2006, he was instrumental in building the company and its innovative product line, helping to achieve initial funding and a public company filing (CYDE.OB). From 2001 to mid-2005, he helped launch and turn around technology companies as founder and President of TechTransform, a technology consulting firm. In 2004, he was a key member of the team that commercialized YellowPages.com, resulting in its sale for $100 million to SBC/BellSouth. In 2003, he helped make Panda Software a key player in the US market as the General Manager of its US unit. During the high-tech boom of the 1990s, he was responsible for the global brand success of the software product, CleanSweep; as Chief Operating Officer of MicroHouse Technologies, he drove record sales and a modernization of the company’s technology, helping to achieve a successful sale of the company to Earthweb; and as VP Marketing of venture-backed TriVida, he was a key member of the team that commercialized the company’s technology and achieved the sale of this technology company to BeFree, Inc. (now part of ValueClick: VCLK).

Vikram Pattarkine, Ph.D — Chief Technology Officer

Vikram M Pattarkine, OriginOil’s CTO, has a distinguished career spanning more than 25 years as a chemical-environmental engineer with expertise in processes related to waste treatment, nutrient management, water quality, and renewable energy. He has extensive international experience covering research, consulting, and training. He serves on several prestigious committees such as the Scientific and Technical Advisory Committee of the Chesapeake Bay Program and the Municipal Wastewater Treatment Design Committee of the Water Environment Federation. He has authored chapters in manuals, peer-reviewed papers, and made technical presentations at conferences worldwide.

Prior to joining OriginOil, Pattarkine was a senior vice president at Brinjac Engineering, Inc., an engineering design and consulting firm based in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. Before that he was director of process engineering at Columbia, Missouri-based Environmental Dynamics, Inc., a leader in the development, design, and manufacture of aeration systems for wastewater treatment. During the 1990s he led the Environment and Natural Resources Management consulting practice of Tata Consultancy Services, Asia’s largest consulting firm.

Pattarkine holds a Ph.D. in environmental engineering from Virginia Tech and a Master of Technology in chemical engineering from Nagpur University, India. He is an adjunct professor of environmental engineering at the University of Missouri and has also taught graduate students at Pennsylvania State University.

Paul Reep — Senior Technical Advisor

With more than 25 years of senior management experience in the high tech industry, Paul Reep has a proven ability for facilitating government and private sector partnerships, including a major multi-agency technology transfer initiative with the Departments of Commerce, Energy, Interior, Agriculture, and the Environmental Protection Agency. The result of this work is still ongoing at the Department of Energy, where bio-energy is a key mission area.

He currently is a member of the licensing team at the Stevens Institute for Innovation at the University of Southern California, where he works directly alongside researchers and scientists to identify and develop patent and licensing opportunities for USC inventions.

Expanded Bio >>

Scott Fraser — Vice President of Operations

Scott Fraser is responsible for transforming OriginOil’s technology into a viable product line, and leading the development of support services and best practices. As its CEO, he recently took local clean tech startup Global Cooling Solutions (now Assisted Energy Inc.) from concept to prototype and full product development in under 16 months. In the process, he was responsible for developing the company’s business model, obtaining funding and developing its channel strategy. The prototype progression itself, from concept, to bench scale, to industrial scale was accomplished in under 12 months using a progressive prototyping system that incorporates industrial scale longevity and results on mid-scale prototypes. Scott was also responsible for designing the company’s clean air compliance strategy with the California Air Resources Board and State and Federal Environmental Protection agencies for the product’s penetration into existing diesel emission control channels.

Fraser held a series of Channel Management and Senior Account Executive positions in high technology companies from 1991 to 2006. He was a key member of the team that executed the successful spinoff of Avaya from Lucent Technologies in 2000. At companies like Covad Communications, Nodus Technologies and Scientific Utilization Inc., his duties included developing, managing, selling, training and supporting solutions to customers, partners and resellers. Scott Fraser studied Business Administration and Physics at San Diego State University.

Dheeban Kannan, Ph.D — Senior Research Engineer 

Kannan recently completed his doctoral program at Pennsylvania State University, where he studied biofuel technologies. His cutting-edge work on photobioreactors to grow oil producing algae has great synergies with OriginOil. As part of his doctoral thesis, Kannan invented a novel solid catalyst process for the production of biodiesel, which is the basis of a patent and the core technology of a biodiesel startup company. The process would improve production efficiency of biodiesel and, unlike existing systems, can accept feedstock with high free acid content, such as recycled oil.  Kannan has published papers in peer-reviewed journals such as Fluid Phase Equilibria. He has presented at the International Conference on Properties and Phase Equilibria for Product and Process Design, the ACS Annual Green Chemistry and Engineering Conference, the BBI Biofuels Conference, and the NE Renewable Energy Conference. Kannan performed his master’s and doctoral research in chemical engineering at Pennsylvania State University. He obtained his bachelor’s degree in chemical engineering from Anna University, Chennai, India.

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