Table of Contents
Brian
Feldman's
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Biography
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I was born March 21, 1983 in Allentown, PA, which is where I lived until I graduated high school. I spent 13 years of my life in the East Penn School District getting educated from Kindergarten to 12th grade. Some of my more notable accomplishments during this period of time include participation in:
In short, I participated in just about every single academic competition offered by Emmaus High School. The Emmaus High School teams always did very well at every competition they participated in, and much of the time cleaned the clocks of most other schools. I also took advantage of many of the fine Advanced Placement courses offered by Emmaus, including:
Between this and statistics and economics courses from Moravian College that I took while in high school I entered college with 53 credits. Some of the other extracurricular activities I participated in during High School included Boy Scouts, delivering newspapers and computer consulting. In 1999 I started working at a company called Bioscience as their computer consultant - building their website, computer network, and assisting the employees with any issues they had. I decided to go to college at Penn State because of its fine location in the wonderful state of Pennsylvania, value for the money, Schreyer Honors program, and good reputation. I spent a total of 5 semesters there taking classes in the field of mechanical engineering because I've always been interested in cars. At Penn State I participated in the FutureTruck Hybrid Electric Vehicle program, SAE, ASME, and presented a paper about our FutureTruck HEV to the SAE World Congress in 2003. From May until December 2002 I was on a co-op assignment at GE Power Systems in Schenectady, NY. I worked in the Generator Services, New Product Introduction group designing and testing instrumentation to reduce the downtime of generators during generator servicing. I applied for 6 patents during my tenure in Schenectady related to the designs of the instrumentation I working with. I split my time between Power Systems downtown and the Global Research Center in Niskayuna. From May until August 2003 I was on a co-op assignment at GE Conmec in Bethlehem, PA. I worked on developing rough performance calculations for centrifugal compressors that customers wanted rerated to increase performance. I also developed software to plot the compressor performance curves used in reports. In Spring of 2004 I completed the bulk of my research for and wrote my Honors Thesis on Diesel Engine Modeling with WAVE for FutureTruck. This wonderful little gem provided the FutureTruck team with a semi-accurate computer model of the 2.5L Detroit Diesel engine they were using in their hybrid electric Ford Explorer. The model would allow for emissions, fuel consumption, temperature, and performance calculations throughout the entire operating range, which would enable design decisions to be made for the emissions system and computer control of the hybrid system. In May of 2004 I managed to graduate from Penn State with a Bachelor of Science in Mechanical Engineering with distinction and honors (3.75 GPA). In June of 2004 I started working for the Goodyear Tire & Rubber Company in Akron, OH. I was on their rotational development program and worked in Global Bias Tire Development, Tire Testing, and Off-The-Road Tires. In Global Bias my main project was converting an old DOS-based piece of software into a nice, easy-to-use Excel spreadsheet. In Tire Testing I made a lot of interesting (to some) spreadsheets for calculation of SMERF (Standard Mean Effective Rolling Force) values for tire rolling resistance machines. I developed a crosstalk equation for one of the rolling resistance machines to cut in half the amount of time it would take to test the rolling resistance of a tire. And in the Off-The-Road tire department I developed an easy-to-use Access database for measuring the performance and keeping track of tires out in the field so engineers would have data to answer all the questions they could possibly ask right at their fingertips. Goodyear laid me off in February 2005, less than 8 months after hiring me due to a lack of open positions and "poor fit with the Goodyear corporate culture."
Did the person responsible for this fit in with their corporate culture?
In April of 2005 I signed on with Progressive Insurance as a Pricing Analyst up in Mayfield Village, Ohio. Pricing Analysts perform rate indications, compile rate filings, mix reports, and do a whole host of data analysis to determine how auto insurance prices should be set in every state. The calculation of auto insurance rates is very interesting, and now I see how some companies might think they can save me hundreds of dollars on my insurance with a rate that's three times what I'm currently paying. In May of 2005 I earned my pilot's license. I most often fly Cessna C-150's and I've been checked out to fly larger Cessnas as well. Man has wanted to fly for thousands of years, and since I lived 20 minutes away from an airport that teaches people how to fly and I had money and time to do it, I figured now was the time.
I'm a little bit better at flying than that guy from Goodyear
After working at Progressive for a couple of weeks, I saw some room for improvement in the way that data was ordered and imported, so I took it upon myself to develop the necessary code to improve this process - which could have been used by many people in the department to reduce errors and greatly increase efficiency. Unfortunately the management did not see the need for this kind of improvement. I decided that my talents were being wasted and my efforts were completely unappreciated at Progressive. In August of 2005 I took action and made the switch to become a Performance Development Engineer for diesel engines at Cummins in Jamestown, NY. I updated software calibrations for diesel engines to fix performance issues and worked with issues concerning the exhaust and aftertreatment system. My major accomplishments at Cummins centered around improving processes to make the work done by myself and the rest of my department much easier. The coolest process improvement project was developing an Access database to assist in automatically modifying the appropriate engine software calibrations with the appropriate updates. Aside from some other minor process improvement projects, engine tests, and analysis of large datasets, I automated much of the process of creating the documents that describe the engineering changes that need to be made. In fact, my job was much more enjoyable after I automated significant portions of it. Once in a while I even got to ride around in trucks with a laptop tied into the ECM so I could view and change parameters while the truck was on the road. In May of 2007 the patent application was filed for the Advanced Capacitance Paddle that I developed back when I was a co-op at GE several years prior. I'll post the number and a link here as soon as the patent gets granted.
And then I moved here! Welcome to Pittsburgh!
In January 2008 I left Cummins to pursue a Master's Degree in Engineering and Technology Innovation Management at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. The program combines business and innovation classes with engineering classes. The curriculum is very moldable to one's interests and therefore I found it to be the best program since I didn't think that an MBA or a straight advanced engineering degree would fit my needs. I took classes in areas such as business strategy, entrepreneurship, green building design, real options, sustainability, human factors, fuel cells, integrated product development, and knowledge management. In May 2008 I began work as a research assistant to study the process of knowledge reuse for innovation at Alcoa at the Alcoa Technical Center right outside of Pittsburgh. I researched how innovation happens and the necessary elements to bring innovative ideas to fruition and profit from them. I also led projects to determine the feasibility of using more aluminum in consumer electronics devices to make them greener in addition to providing another benefits. In December 2008 I finished up my classes at Carnegie Mellon and shortly thereafter founded Feldman Consulting Enterprises, LLC to develop innovative solutions for a variety of problems. Feldman Consulting Enterprises, LLC relocated from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania to Macungie, Pennsylvania in the summer of 2009 in the pursuit of more lucrative business opportunities. My goals include figuring out how to make a difference in the world and use my talents to the best of my abilities so that the millions of dollars will follow.
Brian Feldman - 11/11/2009
Cell: 484-695-5651
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