OUR TEAM
Todd Patten
Founder & President, U.S. Navy Veteran
As a member of the United States Navy, Mr. Patten served on the USS Flying Fish (SSN673), USS Parche (SSN 683), and Naval Research Laboratories (NRL). He has 20+ years designing, engineering, integrating, and operating submerged mobility systems including AUVs, payload systems, and towbodys. Over a 14-year period, he performed 50+ operational missions with submerged mobility systems effectively conducting applied research in real-world scenarios. During this period, he assisted in developing and implementing hundreds of undersea vehicle behaviors related to search and survey, obstacle avoidance, collision avoidance, homing and docking, autonomous ballast and trim systems, target acquisition, and fault management. Mr. Patten specializes in leading project execution, developing mission Concept of Operations (CONOPS), design and implementing system architectures and software systems including subsea and autonomous applications such AUV and AUV Payload systems. Mr. Patten holds multiple patents related to undersea systems. Mr. Patten holds a B.S. in Computer Science and M.S. in Software Engineering.
Jim Costopulos
Chief Executive Officer
Mr. Costopulos was President and equity partner at an industrial products distribution firm in Chicago, Illinois focusing on supply chain integration, distribution, and product management for industrial clients including John Deere, CNH America, and Kubota. Prior work included start-up ventures and senior management with several manufacturing and distribution companies. His experience in supply chain strategy, global logistics, and international business partnerships was instrumental in developing a business model for Global Oceans, a non-profit group based on optimizing the use of commercial maritime assets on a demand basis for ocean science. Mr. Costopulos received a B.S. from the University of California, Irvine and conducted graduate studies in marine science at San Diego State University and Hubbs-SeaWorld Research Institute.
Donna Taylor
Vice President of Engineering
Ms. Taylor is a decisive leader, adept at collaborating to establish a vision, discerning a path forward, and transforming it into strategic actions. She is responsible for planning and implementing business and engineering strategies, developing budgets and proposals, cultivating customer relationships, and overseeing daily operations. Ms. Taylor holds a B.S in Electrical Engineering and served as Chief Engineer and Program Manager for a large Aerospace Company. Ms. Taylor has 36+ years of experience designing, implementing, testing, and managing development of large scale, autonomous maritime systems. Ms. Taylor operated as Program Manager for multiple $100M+ US government contracts where she was responsible for cost, technical, schedule execution. She supported and led several government proposals, defined program budgets and integrated master schedules, directed daily program operations, managed subcontractors, and reported directly to customers and internal senior management. Ms. Taylor has underwater domain knowledge and a demonstrated expertise in leadership, organization, setting strategic vision, budget planning, and program execution.
Anastasia Goncharko
Corporate Secretary, General Counsel, Chief of Staff
Ms. Goncharko is responsible for ensuring compliance across the corporation with respect to legal requirements. She oversees internal implementation and execution of compliance matters and all corporate legal matters including working with outside experts on specific legal matters.
Ms. Goncharko received her Bachelor of Science in Ecology and Evolution from University of California Santa Cruz and her Juris Doctor from Whittier Law School in Costa Mesa, California. She is a member of the California State Bar.
Ken Watkinson
Senior Technical Fellow – Control Systems
Mr. Watkinson holds a B.S. and M.S. in Electrical and Electronic Engineering. Mr. Watkinson is responsible for the technology and engineering development vision at CoTs. He also oversees engineering product quality and deliverables. Mr. Watkinson founded a hydrodynamics company in 1993, building a highly successful organization delivering technology before exiting in 2007. Mr. Watkinson has 40+ years designing, integrating, and testing control systems for Submerged Mobility Systems, manned and autonomous unmanned systems. Mr. Watkinson’s experience extends to designing 6-degree of freedom (DoF) simulators with subsea forces effect integrating hydrodynamic analysis of submerged mobility systems.
Neill Smith, PhD
Senior Technical Fellow – Hydrodynamics
Dr. Smith specializes in the development of methods for predicting the hydrodynamic and aerodynamic characteristics of marine and airborne vehicles and implementation of these methods into computerized analysis and design tools. These methods are applicable to both vehicles with conventional geometries and those with unusual geometric characteristics. Over the past thirty five years, Dr. Smith has modeled a variety of vehicles including submarines, torpedoes, anti-torpedo devices, towed countermeasures vehicles (air and undersea), Seal Delivery Vehicles, surface vessels, aircraft and missiles. Dr. Smith also specializes in the modeling of the dynamics of both free-running vehicles and towed systems. Over the last 35 years, he has worked on over 50 vehicle design teams under contract to defense industry prime contractors.
Kimble “Skip” Mullins
Operations Manager, U.S. Navy Veteran
Mr. Mullins completed a distinguished 20-year career in the United States Navy where he served onboard submarines and at Naval Research Laboratories. He has 30+ years working with electrical and electronic systems designed for subsea applications. As a senior electronics engineering technician, he designs, assembles, integrates, and troubleshoots electrical circuits, performs troubleshooting and repair at the component level, and is experienced in micro-miniature soldering. In addition, he has 20+ years’ experience in the assembly, wiring, and soldering of wiring and components for PBOF applications. Mr. Mullins performed dozens of operational missions utilizing submerged mobility systems over a 10-year period.
Gary Bane
Chairman of the Advisory Board
Mr. Bane brings 50-years’ experience as a Senior Executive, Engineer, and Manager in the deep ocean and offshore technology business area to CoTs. Over his career, Mr. Bane served as the Director of Ocean Systems at Rockwell, General Manager for Interstate Ocean Electronics Oceanics Division, Vice President of Sonatech, Inc., and Vice-President West Coast Operations Nauticos. He is credited with delivering over 30 underwater vehicles systems, manned and unmanned, throughout his career and as the Director of Ocean Systems at Rockwell started the underwater vehicles as it is known today at Boeing, formerly Rockwell. Most recently, Mr. Bane chaired the Boeing Independent Review Team during the initial design of the Echo Voyager system. Mr. Bane is the sole representative of the Ocean Engineering industry to the State of California for Sea Grant programs and Ocean Resources Management Agency.
Jim Cavin
Advisory Board Member
Mr. Cavin brings 45-years’ experience as a Manager and Executive Leader in the deep ocean and offshore technology business area to CoTs. His principle area of expertise is offshore operations, specialized Concept of Operations (CONOPS) development and implementation, developing and executing large scale missions, and managing engineers and scientist in the development of advanced ocean technologies.Mr. Cavin meritoriously served his country for 30-years in the United States Navy, retiring as a Commander. Following his Naval career, he transitioned to industry taking on the roles of Project Manager for the development and operation of submarine deployed, subsea sensors to remotely monitor and track marine activity and as Deputy Program Manager for the development of a suite of advanced sensors to track biological, chemical, and nuclear contamination in the marine environment.
Andrew Burcham
Business & Technology Consultant
Mr. Burcham holds a B.S. in Electrical Engineering. He has 17-years in the ocean technology business starting at SPAWAR System Center, Pacific through his tenure in executive leadership at Liquid Robotics. Mr. Burcham is currently the President of Sensor Technology Engineering (STE) in Goleta, CA providing strategic leadership and extending their radiological detection products to the subsea environment. Andy supports CoTs in a key advisory role as a business leader.
Hua Lee, PhD
Scientist/Algorithms Consultant
Professor Hua Lee is currently Distinguished Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering Department at UC Santa Barbara. His research interests cover the areas of imaging system optimization, high-performance image formation algorithms, synthetic aperture radar and sonar systems, acoustic microscopy, microwave nondestructive evaluation, tera-hertz imaging, tomographic ground-penetrating radar imaging, medical sensing and telemetry, and reconfigurable medical ultrasound imaging systems. From 2007 to 2012, he served as Technical Director of the National Security Institute. Dr. Lee received the Presidential Young Investigator Award in 1985 for his work in imaging system optimization. He was elected Professor of the Year in 1992 by the Mortar Board National Honor Society. Dr. Lee is a Fellow of the Acoustical Society of America and IEEE.
We would love to hear from you!
Get in touch today.