MAY 27, 2009 — ARLINGTON HEIGHTS, IL — The Institute of Environmental Sciences and Technology (IEST) has announced its new officers for the one-year term beginning July 1, 2009.
Michael Rataj moves from the position of President-elect to IEST President. Rataj has been involved in the contamination control industry for 12 years since taking over as QA Manager for Aramark’s Chicago cleanroom plant. Rataj holds an MS in biology from the University of Illinois and an MBA in operations management from the Illinois Institute of Technology Stuart School of Business. He has served as IEST Membership Vice President and is chair of Contamination Control (CC) Working Groups (WG) CC003 and CC023.
New officers are: Matthew Smyers, Fiscal Vice President and Carl Moran, Education Vice President (Design, Test, and Evaluation/Product Reliability).
R. Vijayakumar moves to the role of President-elect. A Senior Member of IEST, R. Vijyakumar has served as IEST Fiscal Vice President and chair of Contamination Control (CC) WG-001, 002, and 034.R. He has managed and successfully led departments and divisions of companies in various technical and business aspects of the contamination control industry for more than 25 years. Vijay is now president of Aerfil and holds an MS and a PhD, both in mechanical engineering, from the University of Minnesota.
Matthew Smyers is Vice Chair of IEST CC WG-006 and a voting member of CC WG-001, 002, 007, 013, 034, 036, and 200. He is the training and safety manager for Technical Safety Services (TSS). While working as a cleanroom testing technician for the past decade, Smyers has also been a gaffer, lighting scenes in movies and commercials.
Carl Moran is a voting member of Design, Test, and Evaluation (DTE) WG-009 and an observer in DTE WG-033. He started working for W. L. Gore & Associates, Inc. to aid in the start-up of their new Microwave Transmission product line. Moran has since developed Gore’s test lab, which has grown to service the company across divisions. Currently Gore’s test lab leader, Moran is heavily involved with aerospace testing and has worked on qualification programs from the Cassini satellite mission to Saturn to the Mars Rovers, including GPS, radio, and television satellites, as well as the International Space Station, the Hubble Space Telescope, and the James Web Space Telescope.
Remaining on the Executive Board are Roger Diener, Education Vice President (Contamination Control); Greg Winn, Membership Vice President; Christine Peterson, Technical Vice President (Design, Test, and Evaluation/Product Reliability); Gary Knoth, re-elected as Technical Vice President (Contamination Control); and Charles W. Berndt, moving to the role of Immediate Past President; R. Vijayakumar moving to the role of President-elect; and Roberta Burrows, Executive Director.
Founded in 1953, IEST is an international not-for-profit technical society of engineers, scientists, and educators that serves its members and the industries they represent (simulating, testing, controlling, and teaching the environments of earth and space) through education and the development of recommended practices and standards.
IEST is an ANSI-accredited standards-developing organization; Secretariat of ISO/TC 209 Cleanrooms and associated controlled environments; Administrator of the ANSI-accredited US TAG to ISO/TC 209; and a founding member of the ANSI-accredited US TAG to ISO/TC 229 Nanotechnologies.
More information about IEST can be found at www.iest.org.