Management

Ambient has built a strong team of operational and financial professionals that provide a sound management team with extensive experience in industry and project management. The management team is well augmented by a solid technical team with experience in pioneering advances in the telecommunications and the communications industry. The team continues to develop, with new skills and capabilities being added to support the drive to widespread smart grid adoption.

John J. Joyce, President & CEO
Mr. Joyce leads the organization. He has over 25 years experience as a senior executive working with international utilities and financial industries. Mr. Joyce has held senior positions with companies such as ABB, Price Waterhouse and Citicorp. He has extensive international experience in business development, consulting and financial markets. From November 2000 through August 2001, Mr. Joyce was the Chief Operating Officer of the Company. In September 2001, Mr. Joyce assumed the leadership of the Company.

Prior to joining Ambient, Mr. Joyce served as Senior Vice President of ABB Financial Services Inc. while also serving as President of Financial Consulting - The Americas, where he led the global energy consulting practice within ABB Financial Services. A CPA in the United States, Mr. Joyce holds an MBA from the Stern School of Business, New York University, where he majored in Finance and International Business.

Mr. Joyce is a founding member of the Universal Powerline Association (UPA). He is also active in the Edison Electric Institute (EEI), Utilities Telecom Council (UTC) and GridWise Alliance.

 

Ramdas Rao, Chief Technology Officer

Mr. Rao has lead the Company’s technology team since 2000. He has experience in various senior management positions within the technology industry. Prior to Ambient, Mr. Rao was the Chief Information Officer at Mullen, Inc. a large advertising agency based in New England. From November 1995 through February 2000, he was the President and Co-Founder of Gaialinks, Inc. a company engaged in the development of network management software tools that also provided network analysis for large heterogeneous, multi-vendor, multi-protocol networks and systems.

Mr. Rao represents Ambient on the IEEE PHY/MAC Working Group, formed to develop standard(s) for a common standard for BPL equipment to coexist and/or interoperate. He is also the Chairman of the Universal Powerline Association's (UPA) Access Working Group and the Co-Chairman of the United Power Line Council's (UPLC) Technical Action Committee. Mr. Rao has also presented at a variety of PLC industry events and has published articles on Power Line Communications.

Mr. Rao also was affiliated with Boston University's Office of Information Technology where he held a variety of positions including, Associate Director, Network Systems, and Network Systems Manager. Mr. Rao received a B.S. degree in Computer Engineering (Cum Laude) from Boston University, College of Engineering in 1988.

 

Mike Quarella, Vice President of Operations
Mr. Quarella came to Ambient in 2005 from Verso Technologies, formerly MCK Communications and has led a long distinguished career in start-up/development stage operations and manufacturing.

Mr. Quarella has introduced risk management techniques in support of new product introduction practices to meet time-to-market, quality, and cost requirements at Ambient. Mr. Quarella is also responsible for developing and maintaining a highly responsive and dedicated customer service organization.

 

John Burruss, Vice President of Services
Mr. Burruss came to Ambient from Siemens, where he served as Vice-president, Solutions Management for Chantry Networks, a provider of manageable WiFi access products acquired by Siemens in 2005; before the acquisition, Mr Burruss served as Chantry’s Vice-president, Operations.

Mr. Burruss has held positions in customer support and engineering management at a variety of New England-area start-ups, including Gotham Networks, IronBridge Networks, and Wellfleet Communications. Mr. Burruss began his career at Bolt, Beranek, and Newman Inc, where he specialized in high-level protocol design and network management. He holds an undergraduate degree from Harvard College and a graduate degree from Princeton University.

 

Dr. Yehuda Cern
Dr. Cern is the inventor of Ambient’s coupling technology and a major technology resource for the advancement of BPL. Dr. Cern has extensive experience in R&D and new product development. He founded a forerunner of Ambient in 1999 to pursue an invention that enabled power line telecommunications.

From September 1997 to January 2000 he worked as Chief Technology Officer of Ambient’s subsidiary, Ambient Ltd. Prior to his employment at Ambient, Dr. Cern served as COO and CTO of AirOptics, Inc., an infrared communications company located in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. From 1991 to 1993, Dr. Cern served as R&D Manager of News Datacom Research Ltd., a subsidiary of News Corp located in Israel. In 1976, he founded and served as Chief Scientist of Micro-Shev Ltd., which developed, produced and marketed medical diagnostic equipment for sensing brain potentials.

Dr. Cern is also the Chair of the IEEE BPL Hardware & Installations WG sub-group for developing standards for BPL Hardware devices.

 

Thomas J. Dunleavy
Mr. Dunleavy is an advisor and consultant to the Company. Former Commisioner Dunleavy has had a long and distinguished career in both the public and private sectors, in both energy and telecommunications.

Mr. Dunleavy most recently served as a Commissioner for the state of New York’s Public Service Commission. While a Commissioner, Mr. Dunleavy championed causes through the National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners (NARUC) including regulatory and broadband issues. Mr. Dunleavy is also the former Vice Chairman of the Telecommunications Committee, State Chairman of the FCC/State Universal Service Join Board and both New York and NARUC’s representative on the North American Numbering Council (NANC as it is known, is responsible for the assignment of telephone numbers throughout North America). He remains active in NARUC.

Prior to his appointment as a Commissioner, Mr. Dunleavy served as Deputy Commissioner of New York City’s Department of Information Technology and Telecommunications, formerly known as the Office of Energy and Telecommunications. In this capacity, former Commissioner Dunleavy managed telecommunications administration for all Mayoral agencies, supervised New York City's five channel cable television network and administered New York City's cable television and telecommunications franchises. Mr. Dunleavy also started and co-chaired the Mayor’s Task Force on Network Reliability and founded the Mutual Aid and Restoration Consortium (MARC), made up of operating telecommunications companies and government entities. MARC played a key role in restoration of NYC’s telecommunications networks following the bombings at the World Trade Centre in February 1993 and again on September 11, 2001. While on the PSC, former Commissioner Dunleavy put together a similar statewide effort called NYTRAC (New York Telecommunications Reliability Action Council).

 

Rick Huang, Senior Director of Software Engineering
Rick Huang is the senior director of software engineering at Ambient, where he leads and manages software engineering, system architecture, and quality assurance organizations for the company. He has spent over 20 years in telecommunications, networking, and software industry. Before joining Ambient, he was engineering director at Sycamore Networks and Certeon.  In addition, Mr. Huang has held positions in a variety of product development, managerial, and architectural roles in Tellabs, Soapstone, and Nortel Networks.

Mr. Huang is a certified Scrum Master and an active member of Scrum Alliance. He received his B.Sc. degree and M.Sc. degree from Nanjing University, China and Carleton University, Canada, respectively.

Anna E. Croop, Director of Corporate Communications
Having been with Ambient Corporation since 2001, Ms. Croop heads the Company’s Corporate Communications department. Her responsibilities include overseeing public, media and investor relations, and the marketing and branding of the Company.

Ms. Croop’s educational background includes a Bachelor of Science degree in Business Information Systems with an emphasis in Marketing. She has over 15 years of technical and marketing experience in both public and private organizations as well as educational institutions. Ms Croop has worked for such companies as Coca-Cola and C-Bridge, a former subsidiary of Cambridge Executive Enterprises, providing technical and business consulting, marketing, event management and public relations.

She also participates in several industry organizations including the GridWise Alliance and the Utilities Telecom Council (UTC).

 

Dave Goldblatt, Director, Systems Architecture and Design
Mr. Goldblatt has spent over 20 years in the networking and telecommunications industry, from seed-level startups to established companies in a variety of developmental, architectural and managerial roles, including Gotham Networks, General DataComm, Locus Computing, and Racal-InterLAN.

His responsibilities at Ambient include providing technical insights to all aspects of Ambient’s product and development initiatives. He received his B.S. degree in Electrical and Computer Engineering from Clarkson University.

A member of the IEEE, Mr. Goldblatt also participates on several technical working groups for the industry organizations the Company belongs to.

 

Aron Viner, Director, Compliance and Standardization
Mr. Viner has had a long and distinguished career in global regulatory compliance. He came to Ambient from Aura Communications, Inc. Mr. Viner is responsible for regulatory compliance design, researching RF aspects of BPL technology, practical field measurements, BPL equipment certification, liaising with government regulatory agencies and national and international standard organizations.

Mr. Viner is also actively involved in the IEEE and chairs the IEEE EMC BPL standards development working group as well as participating on the MAC & PHY working group. Most recently, Mr. Viner joined P2030, an IEEE group formed to create standards for the smart grid.