President, Founder, Chief Engineer - Radius Engineering, Inc. - Salt Lake City, Utah - 1988 to 2001

• Founded company and built to $3.5MM in annual sales using only limited personal investment. Order backlog exceeded $4.5MM at the time of Mr. Nelson's departure.
• Developed Radius' closed-mold manufacturing technologies for advanced composite materials that are the foundation of Radius' business and are unequaled in sophistication and productivity in the world today. This allows Radius to count nearly every major aerospace company in the world, and the majority of composites research organizations, as customers.
• Oversaw all aspects of building and running corporation from choosing company name at inception and completing incorporation process, through negotiation and drafting of all large contracts to date. Includes all financial and facilities management, personnel issues, marketing and direct participation in all technology development.

• Invented, developed, and designed Trek Bicycle Company's OCLV line of road and mountain bicycles, and the manufacturing process (listen to radio soundclip). Marketed concept to customer, negotiated long term development and licensing contract, performed large majority of all product and process design and development including structural testing including design of tooling and production equipment. Was a $6MM business for Trek in first model year, and grew to about $45MM by fourth production year.
• Key inventor, designer, and developer of closed-mold carbon composite products and new processes that won gold medals in the last five Olympics, and won the last four Tour de France bike races. These include: the Trek 5500 road bike frame, the Trek 9900 mountain bike frame, the Swix "Falcon", "Cobra DHC" and "SGC 1100" Aerodynamic Carbon Fiber Ski Poles , and the Swix Sports "T" Grip Carbon Fiber Cross Country Ski Pole Grips
• Key developer of a range of closed-molded complex-shaped commercial products including: prosthetic hand, automobile seat back, golf club shafts, wood type golf club heads, iron type golf club heads, fishing rods, mountain bike swing arms, and key participant in in the development of archery bow handle and sailboard wing mast (see video clips golf shaft molding process).

• Developed or participated in the development of a wide range of carbon composite aerospace structures with closed-mold manufacturing techniques, including: Boeing 737 rudder rib; Bell Cobra transmission case, Comanche horizontal stabilizer, Comanche Pilot Door frame, Boeing Chinook IFIS beam, and Bell 407 helicopter tail rotor; Bell 609 Swashplate, V22 aircraft Flapperon; Sikorsky Cypher UMAV rotor blades ; Raytheon Aircraft Premier 1 business jet; Toyota Aircraft light plane; and Joint Strike Fighter.

• Tool design and construction including materials, machining methods, surface treatments, design methodology; injection port and resin gating design, cavity venting and vacuum port design, integral heating and cooling systems, bladder fitting design. 
• Internal pressure bladder design and fabrication for elastomeric and thermoplastic bladder materials formed by methods such as dipping and dispersion coating with lost cores, injection molding, thermoform shaping of films, heat sealing, and rotational molding. 
• Resin handling and injection/cure processing, including RTM injection system design and construction for Radius' unique dual/single cylinder designs, and its pail unloaders and meter mix designs. Includes vacuum systems and equipment for resin premold degassing, and mold and fiber form evacuation. Fiber preform construction and assembly.
• Press design and fabrication, including structural and pneumatic systems, press platen heating and cooling system design and construction. Process control system design and construction including distributed control systems and host PC software interface.

• Extensive experience in drafting and negotiating numerous large development contracts, including understanding of legal implications of every contractual term, and potential means of enforcement. These include: non-licensing contracts of $1MM to $3MM negotiated with Bombardier, British Aerospace, and Toyota Motor Sales/USA..
• Drafted and negotiated 11 major licensing agreements including those with Trek Bicycle Co., Callaway Golf Company, True Temper Sports, Johnson Controls Inc./Automotive Systems Division, Pure Fishing dba Fenwick, Swix Sports, and Raytheon Aircraft. These agreements produced a total royalty income to Radius of approximately $2.25MM, and also typically included contractual work ranging from $500K to $2MM each.

• Extensive patent application formulation, preparation, and drafting including detailed construction of claim language, and negotiation of final claim language through office actions and examiner meetings. 
• Defined strategy for management and protection of intellectual property including drafting nondisclosure/non-compete employment agreements including unique agreements for senior personnel and special situations.

Senior Engineer Composite Structures - Hercules Aerospace, Inc. - Magna, Utah - 1981 to 1988

• Galileo Space Probe Antenna Ribs Critical Design Review Stress Analysis
• Structural analysis for redesign on Hercules-built McClaren MP4 Formula One race car chassis.
• Lead engineer over four engineers and group responsible for structural analysis and design on a wide variety of composite structures including all military and commercial airframe, and naval structures. 

• Managed four-year $100 K/year IR&D project including extensive work on analytical fabrication process modeling for advanced composite structures, and software development of composite structural analysis methods. 
• Developed new single cure to replace two-step cure process for a 2 inch thick, 20 foot long cylindrical laminate (largest thick prepreg laminate cured in a single step at that time) used in a bomber rotary launcher shaft, resulting in significant cost savings. 
• Designed a variety of metal and composite tooling including tool design for fiber placed B1-B rear wing spar. 

• Design/Development of Boeing 767 Graphite Torsion Spring 
• Design, structural analysis, and process development for the production of a graphite torsion spring used in counterbalance mechanism on Boeing 767 doors.
• Lead engineer on pre-proposal efforts, and proposal preparation through the final qualification stress analysis, including tool design, and analysis of development and qualification programs.
• One of the largest sales volume and longest running composite structures production programs at Hercules Aerospace (now Alliant TechSystems). Pre-proposal work began in 1983, production in about 1986, and still in production. 

7 U.S. Patents Issued (12 as of 8/02')and 10 Pending With Most Licensed For Commercial Use

• Method of Making a Composite Bicycle Frame Using Composite Lugs, No. 5,624,519. Licensed to Trek Bicycle Corporation for OCLV line of bicycles.
• Method for Manufacturing Composite Shafts with Injection Molded, Rigidized Bladder with Varying Wall Thickness, No. 6,143,236. Licensed to Swix Sports and then to True Temper Sports, both for golf shafts.
• Composite Golf Club Shaft, No. 5,692,970. Licensed to Swix Sport and then to True Temper Sports both for golf shafts.
• Method of Manufacturing a Composite Golf Club Head, No. 5,985,197. Applied for during development pursuant to licensing agreement with Callaway Golf Co.
• Composite Backing Structure for Spray metal Tooling, No. 5,073,589. "Soft" tooling for closed-mold processing, developed with two Utah Technology Finance Corp. grants.
• Composite Pole Manufacturing Process for Varying Non-Circular Cross-Sections 
  and Curved Center lines, No. 5,534,203. Licensed to Swix Sport for downhill ski poles. Licensed to Pure Fishing dba Fenwick for fishing rods.
• Composite Pole and Manufacturing Process for Composite Poles of Varying Non-Circular Cross-Sections and Curved Center lines, No. 5,505,492. Licensed to Swix Sports for downhill ski poles.

• Composite Bicycle Frame And Method , No. 08/865,491, is a article patent on bike lugs with high interleave ratio plies; Method for Manufacture of Composite Bicycle Frame , No. 09/333,792 is a method patent on the fabrication process. Both applications cover a successor technology to Trek OCLV process.  Applications published as: Composite Bicycle Frame And Method Of Construction Thereof, No. WO09854046A2.
• Injection Molded, Rigidized Bladder With Varying Wall Thickness For Manufacturing Composite Shafts , No. 09/333,724. Licensed to Swix Sport and True Temper Sports both for golf shafts. Application published as: Method For Manufacturing Composite Shafts With Injection Molded, Rigidized Bladder With Varying Wall Thickness, No. WO09737725A2, and separately as: No. WO09737725A3.
• Method for Manufacture of Composite Aircraft Control Surfaces No. 09/471,620. Licensed to Raytheon Aircraft Co. for Premier 1 control surfaces. 
• Composite Golf Club Head No. 09/441,357. Applied for during development pursuant to licensing agreement with Callaway Golf Co. 

Bachelor of Science Mechanical Engineering - University of Wyoming - 1980

• Overall/Major G.P.A. = 3.83/3.97 (4.00 scale), President's Honor Roll six semesters, Dean's List two semesters Laramie, Wyoming
• Lab Assistant, Composite Materials Research Group, Mechanical Engineering Department.

Notable Publications

• R. H. Nelson, D. S. Cairns, Prediction of Dimensional Changes in Composite Laminates During Cure , 34th International SAMPE Symposium and Exhibition,  May 8-11, 1989. Note: First paper analyzing dimensional changes occurring in curved composites laminates during cure due to tool induced residual stresses, and thermal and resin chemical shrinkage strain.
• Milovich, D., Nelson, R., "Aerospace Resin Transfer Molding, A Multidisciplinary Approach", SME Technical Paper, Resin Transfer Molding for the Aerospace Industry Conference: March 1990. Note: One of first studies of aerospace RTM including testing and analytical process modeling. First analytical modeling of greatly increased resin flow on tool surfaces relative to inside fiber bed.

Professional memberships and Accreditations

• Licensed Professional Engineer, State of Utah
• Member, Industrial Advisor Board, Dept. of Mechanical Engineering, University of Utah
• LES (Licensing Executive Society)
• SAMPE (Society for Advancement of Materials and Process Engineering) 

Computer Skills

• SDRC IDEAS 3-D modeling software, Autocad 2000 including 3-D
• Visual Basic 6.0, PowerBasic 6.0 (Compiled multithreaded Basic) 
• Design, operation, and programming of Distributed Control System for use in machine/process control, including interface control programs on host PCs 
• PC hardware, operating systems through Windows 2000, Ethernet networks 
• HTML and web page construction/hosting including FrontPage 2000, 
  DreamWeaver 3.0, 
• Digital photography and image processing including extensive use of a large variety of hardware and software, including Adobe Photoshop 5.5 
• Word/Excel/Outlook,/Access 2000, WordPerfect/Quattro Pro 8.0.