BMI SENIOR STAFF
Fred P. Brechtel, President
With more than 40 years of high-vacuum product experience, Fred P. Brechtel has been president and owner of BMI since 1986. He was trained as an electro-mechanical engineer in Germany and worked at a variety of high-tech companies and laboratories, including Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and Electrofusion Corp. He then started BMI, which specializes in offering aerosol technology products and services and producing high-vacuum ion pumps and high-vacuum brazing. He has completed extensive coursework at the American Materials Society and the American Vacuum Society.
Fred J. Brechtel, Chief Executive Officer
Fred J. Brechtel is an atmospheric scientist who manages the development of airborne particulate matter measurement technologies. He concentrates on improving our understanding of the role of ambient particulate matter in visibility reduction, human health effects and global climate. He holds B.S. and M.S. degrees in mechanical engineering from UC Berkeley and a Ph.D in atmospheric science from Colorado State University. He was an engineer with Varian Associates. His current focus is developing new miniaturized and cost-effective instrumentation to perform measurements of the physical, chemical and thermodynamic properties of particulate matter in the atmosphere.
(Click here for complete CV.)
Andrew Corless, Senior Design Engineer
Andy serves as the mechanical, software and electrical engineer on multiple BMI product development projects. He has developed a new Particle-into-Liquid-Sampler, particle counters and recently worked on a project to integrate multiple aerosol sampling devices into a package small enough to be deployed on an Unmanned Aerial Vehicle. He has expertise in microcontroller-based systems used to control various BMI products.
Stephen Dey, Mechanical Design Engineer
As a mechanical design engineer at BMI, Stephen is responsible for designing and testing aerosol sizing, counting and humidification instruments. He has worked on developing new electrical mobility sizing systems, as well as humidified tandem differential mobility analyzers to measure the size-dependent water uptake properties of ambient particles. He is BMI's in-house computational fluid dynamics (CFD) expert.
Gloria Tabarez, Office Manager
As the office manger at BMI since 2009, Gloria is responsible for all of our cost-accounting and internal audit needs. She provides leadership in product sales and marketing and in developing relationships with customers and making sure that their concerns are answered promptly. Gloria is highly motivated to ensure that we respond quickly and efficiently to our customers' needs.
Lorenzo Gamero, Senior Welding Specialist
The senior welding specialist at BMI since 2001, Lorenzo offers expert mechanical and electrical technician support to projects at BMI. He is a valuable part of our welding team, which manufactures welded stainless steel ultra-high vacuum assemblies and welds titanium in an argon atmosphere. All welding is performed inside a filtered-air laminar-flow bench to minimize the influence of impurities on weld quality.
Jonel Mora, Senior Brazing Specialist
Jonel has served as BMI's senior brazing specialist since 1994. In addition to vacuum brazing tasks, Jonel provides expert mechanical and electrical assembly support to fabrication efforts at BMI across all of our product lines. He has helped to assemble complex prototype devices. Jonel also provides vacuum leak checking expertise to our customers.
Tom Johnson, Material Handling Specialist
Tom provides expert inventory, procurement and overall material handling support to product fabrication efforts at BMI. He ensures that all product shipments are properly packaged and ready to ship with all the necessary supporting documentation. Tom also provides machining and instrument assembly support to various products.
Ed Sullivan, Senior Machinist
As our senior machinist and technician, Ed has a strong background in traditional machining. He also specializes in computer numerically controlled (CNC) machining. Ed brings many years of experience to our instrument fabrication methods.
In addition to our permanent staff, BMI partners with many other professionals and actively supports engineering students to spend their summers working as interns on interesting product development projects. We have employed these interns from the UC Berkeley Mechanical Engineering program: Sandeep Rai, Hong U. Lo, Stephen Liao, J. Brannon Smith and Eric SooHoo.
