Center for Environmental Research and Technology

Gordon Bourns joined the company in 1973 and has managed various business units and operations with Bourns since that time. He was elected Chairman of the Board in December 1988 by the Company’s Board of Directors, and was also elected President in 1990. He now serves as Chairman of the Board and Chief Executive Officer.

As Chairman and CEO, Mr. Bourns heads a worldwide electronics corporation that produces more than 3,000 different products at 10 domestic and international facilities, with 3,500 employees worldwide. Mr. Bourns currently focuses much of his attention on strategic planning to accomplish the Company’s Mission. He has led the Bourns commitment to the Six Sigma quality process to assure the Company meets or exceeds customer requirements and specifications, while anticipating future needs through the continuous improvement of people, processes, products and services.

Mr. Bourns is the son of the co-founders of Bourns, Inc., Marlan and Rosemary Bourns. He became Vice Chairman of the Board in 1985, prior to becoming CEO in 1987. He presently serves on the Boards of Company subsidiaries throughout the world. Mr. Bourns is Chief Financial Officer of the Woodcrest Christian School System Board of Directors on which he has serves since 1993. He is a member and past chairman of the Board of Directors for the UCR Foundation.

Mr. Bourns holds a B.S. degree in electrical engineering from the University of California at Irvine and an MBS in finance/marketing from the University of California in Los Angeles.

Leo Breton is the Acting SBIR Program Manager for the Energy Efficiency Renewable Energy, U.S. Department of Energy. Mr. Breton manages the Small Business Innovation Research grants program and technology portfolio for DOE/EERE related to energy conservation and renewable energy, including vehicle technologies, solar wind, and building energy efficiency. Mr. Breton pioneered the field of real-world, in-use emissions and fuel economy testing for vehicles and engines in the mid 1990's when there was little interest and no budget for such a thing. He personally built the first system known as ROVER, and showed how diagnostic data from the engine, vehicle, driver, and location devices could be used and combined.

Mr. Breton received his M.S. of Mechanical Engineering from University of Maryland in 1990 and his B.A. in Physics with Honors from Clark University in 1985.

Virginia Field has been active in the struggle for clean air in Southern California for over 35 years. She has served in many capacities with Clean Air Now ever since helping to found the organization in 1969.  She served as the President from 1982 until 1989, and then again, from 1999 to the present day.  She has also served as secretary and chairman of the speaker’s bureau. Ms. Field also serves as Governing Board Member of the South Coast Air Quality Management District.

Jeff Jetter is a Principal Chemist at Honda’s Los Angeles R&D facility, where he is responsible for projects related to energy and the environment. Prior to joining Honda in 1991, he worked for 10 years at Unocal’s Science & Technology Center as a Research Chemist.

Mr. Jetter sets on the Board of Directors for the CRC (Coordinating research Council), and also manages several CRC research projects. He is a member of the advisory boards for the CSU Long Beach Chemistry Department, the CU Davis Institute of Transportation Studies, and the UC Riverside Center for Environmental Research and Technology.

Jeff holds patents in the area of emission measurement technology, and has authored numerous technical papers. He holds a degree in Chemistry from California State University, Long Beach.

Tim Johnson is Director – Emerging Regulations and Technolgies for Corning Environmental Technologies, Corning Incorporated. Dr. Johnson is responsible for tracking emerging moile emissions relations and technologies, and helps develop strategic positioning via new products. He has been with Corning for 24 years, and 14 years in the current position. He is an acknowledged expert and frequent speaker on diesel emission control technology and trends. In that regards, he received the 2007 and 2009 Lloyd L. Withrow Distinguished Speaker Awards from SAE (Society of Automotive Engineers), and in 2008 was awarded the Fellow membership grade by SAE. He is a recipient of California’s 2009 Haagen-Smit Clean Air Award.

Dr. Johnson is quite active in various advisory committee roles with various governments agencies, universities, and private organizations. He earned his B.S. and M.S. Engineering Degrees from the University of Minnesota in 1978 and 1979, and his Doctor of Science from MIT in 1987.

Martin Keller became the National Renewable Energy Laboratory's (NREL) ninth director on November 30, 2015. He also serves as the President of Alliance for Sustainable Energy, LLC.

Keller has joined NREL from Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) where he served as the Associate Laboratory Director for Energy and Environmental Sciences, which includes ORNL's programs in biosciences, environmental sciences, buildings technologies, transportation, climate change, manufacturing, and electrical and electronics systems. In 2006, Keller was recruited to ORNL from an industrial enzyme discovery and development company to lead the Office of Science-supported BioEnergy Science Center, in which NREL is a partner.

Keller earned his doctorate in Microbiology (Summa Cum Laude) from the University of Regensburg in Germany. He was appointed a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 2013. He serves on multiple boards and advisory panels, including the Science Advisory Board for the Council on Competitiveness.

Professor Kittleson is the director of the University of Minnesota Center for Diesel Research. He has worked for more than 30 years on improving performance and reducing emissions from engines. Current research interests include sampling and characterization of ultrafine and nanoparticles from engines and other combustion systems; development of advanced engine exhaust aftertreatment systems, production and use of biofuels including biodiesel, butanol, DME, Fischer-Tropsch liquids, ethanol, and biorudes; use of hydrogen produced on-board to modify combustion in engines; reduction of greenhouse gas emissions from transportation, and development of fast response sensors for engine control. He is a Fellow of the Society of Automotive Engineers.

Ching Liu serves as Executive Vice President of SolarMax Technology, Inc. Ms. Liu has over 20 years of experience in global private equity investments. Ms. Liu has extensive experience in U.S. Non-Resident Alien investment vehicles and has worked with high net worth Asian clients with complex NRA taxation issues.

From 1994 to 2000, she served as Vice President and Premier Banking Manager of the Asian Segment at Wells Fargo Bank. She served as Vice President of Wealth Management at Merrill Lynch since April 2000.

Ms. Liu is an expert in asset-based financing and asset management for both private investors and Asian-based institutions. She provides private clients with diverse investment portfolios utilizing money managers, mutual funds, and hedge funds.

Information coming soon.

Information coming soon.

Dr. Matt Miyasato is the Deputy Executive Officer for Science & Technology Advancement at the South Coast Air Quality Management District.  He is responsible for the SCAQMD's Technology Advancement Office, Mobile Source Division, and Monitoring and Laboratory Analysis Division.  Dr. Miyasato’s principal charges are to identify, evaluate and stimulate development and commercialization of clean air technologies, develop and coordinate mobile source regulations, and to conduct ambient monitoring, source testing and laboratory analysis.

Dr. Miyasato received his undergraduate degree in Mechanical Engineering, and his Masters and Ph.D. in Engineering, specializing in combustion technologies and air pollution control – all from the University of California, Irvine. Dr. Miyasato has worked at Southern California Edison in the Nuclear Engineering Department and at General Electric, where he designed burners and combustion modifications for utility boilers. He was also a research scientist at UCI, where he managed the industrial burner research program and has publications on combustion phenomena, active control, and laser diagnostics.  Dr. Miyasato has also been a lecturer at UCI for the undergraduate air pollution control course.

Mitchell W. Pratt is lean Energy Corp.’s Chief Operating Officer and Corporate Secretary. Mr. Pratt has served as Clean Energy’s Senior Vice President, Engineering, Operations and Public Affairs since January 2006, and as Corporate Secretary on the Company’s Board of Directors since December 2002. Mr. Pratt has over 26 years of experience in the natural gas industry, and prior to joining Clean Energy, he was General Manager for the Natural Gas Vehicle Department at San Diego Gas & Electric and Southern California Gas Company, where he held a variety of sales and operational positions over his 18-year career. Throughout his career he has held diverse leadership roles ranging from customer satisfaction, financial and distribution operations, to public policy, sales and market development.

Mr. Pratt earned a B.S. in Chemical Engineering from the California State University at Northridge, and an M.B.A. from the university of California, Irvine.

During his 45-year career at Berkeley as a professor of mechanical engineering, Dr. Sawyer’s teaching and research have included rocket propulsion, energy conversion, combustion, air pollution, and regulatory policy. He has authored or co-authored more than 350 publications including two books. He chaired the Energy and resources Group and was selected to be the first Class of 1935 Professor of Energy at Berkeley. From 2003-2005 he headed the University of California Education Abroad Program in London. In January 2006, Dr. Sawyer left the University of California to accept the appointment by Governor Schwarzenegger to head the California Air Resources Control Board, a position he held through June 2007.

Currently he is the Class of 1935 Professor of Energy Emeritus at UC Berkeley. He is a graduate of Stanford and Princeton universities. He received the Berkeley Citation, the American Society of Mechanical Engineers’ Soichiro Honda Metal, and the California Air Resources Board Haagen-Smit Award. He is past president of the Combustion Institute, a fellow of the Society of Automotive Engineers, and a member of the National Academy of Engineering.

Dr. Daniel Sperling is Professor of Civil Engineering and Environmental Science and Policy, and founding Director of the Institute of Transportation Studies at the University of California, Davis (ITS-Davis). The Institute has over 150 faculty, staff and student researchers.

He has led ITS-Davis to international prominence by building strong partnerships with industry, government, and the environmental community, integrating interdisciplinary research and education programs, and connecting research with public outreach and education.

He is recognized as a leading international expert on transportation technology assessment, energy and environmental aspects of transportation, and transportation policy. He has testified 10 times to the US Congress and state legislatures, and provided keynote presentations and invited talks in recent years at international conferences in Asia, Europe, and North America. In the past 25 years, he has authored or co-authored over 200 technical papers and 11 books, including Two Billion Cars (Oxford University Press, 2009). He has made 500 professional presentations in his career, including many keynote talks in the past few years.

Sperling is an international expert on transportation technology, fuels and policy, with a focus on energy and environment. His research is directed at accelerating the global transition to cleaner, more efficient transportation and energy, and mitigating climate change. The award recognizes Sperling for his unique ability to bring together the top thinkers and strategists in academia, government and industry to develop new vehicle- and fuels-policy approaches that are models for the world.

Paul Weider has been with Shell Chemical Company for 20 years. Currently, he is a senior staff research chemist in the Chemical Process Development group where he provides basic scientific support for existing for Shell ventures and works to identify and develop new business opportunities.

Paul has spent the last decade working on the development and implementation of a commercial route to produce 1,3-propanediol. Prior to this position, he worked on the development of new polymer monomers, methods for producing new non-ionic surfactants, and new methods of cobalt-based hydroformylation of olefins to produce detergent range alcohols. Paul provided plant support to the startup of Shell Middle Distillate Synthesis (natural gas to diesel fuel) and the development of a new platinum-based hydrocracking catalyst. Paul’s areas of interest include using new in situ analysis techniques to discern process reaction mechanism as well as stream composition for intelligent process control.

Information coming soon.