Marlow has many qualified engineers with experience working with universities.
Jeff Sharp, Ph.D.
Chief Scientist and Senior Member of Technical Staff, Materials R&D
Dr. Sharp joined Marlow in 1995 as a member of the technical staff, and is now chief scientist, a senior member of the technical staff, and leader of the Materials Research and Development team. Dr. Sharp’s degrees are a Bachelor of Science in physics (1986) from the University of Central Arkansas and a Ph.D. in physics (1992) from the University of Tennessee. Immediately prior to joining Marlow, he was a National Research Council Postdoctoral Fellow working at NIST, Gaithersburg.
In recent years Dr. Sharp guided the initiation, development and scale-to-production of Marlow’s proprietary MAM/MAM+ formulation of bismuth telluride alloys. During that same time, he also conceived new device formats that are now being prototyped. Currently Dr. Sharp is leading a team that will put in place a high volume, high-performance bismuth telluride production process to support new business opportunities. In addition, he leads Marlow’s quest for new thermoelectric materials with dramatically higher performance for both cooling and power generation, collaborating with several universities and national labs in this effort. Dr. Sharp’s managerial responsibilities include peer review activities, intellectual property assessment, and technology strategy/roadmap development.
Jim Bierschenk
Senior Manager and Chief Engineer, Product and Process R&D
Jim Bierschenk is a 1984 graduate of the University of Texas with a Bachelor of Science degree in mechanical engineering. He joined Marlow in January 1987 and is currently a senior member of the technical staff, senior manager and the chief engineer in the Corporate R&D group. Jim has more than 20 years experience designing thermoelectric coolers and thermoelectric cooling systems and more than 14 years technical management experience. His design and management experience encompasses all markets served by Marlow including industrial, telecom, defense, space, medical and consumer. He has authored much of the internal thermoelectric design software used at Marlow and is also the recipient of five U.S. patents related to thermoelectric coolers. In addition, he has numerous patents pending covering both thermoelectric cooling and power generation.
Mike Gilley
Product Engineer, SMTS
Mike Gilley has designed numerous TE applications for Marlow Industries—both single and multistage devices, and multiple device heat transfer systems using air and liquid heat exchangers. These applications have spanned markets for cooling and power generation including military airborne and man-portable systems, manned space flight and satellites, telecommunications and commercial markets. These applications require a combination of analysis and process development. His work in thermal analysis includes natural and forced convection for gasses and liquids, boiling and condensation heat transfer, heat exchanger design and optimization, manifold design, and radiation enclosure and finite difference heat transfer modeling. He has developed processes that utilize high and low temperature joining materials and fluxes, plating and cleaning chemistries, thin film and thermal spray coatings, and manual and automated process and assembly systems. He is also responsible for analyzing and modeling long term life data for the telecommunications market. Gilley has been awarded six patents in thermoelectric technology and received a Bachelor of Science degree in chemical engineering from Texas A&M University. Currently he holds the position of senior member technical staff.
John White
Sr. Member Technical Staff, Product & Process R&D
John White joined Marlow Industries, Inc. in April of 2000. Mr. White has over 25 years process, quality and laboratory experience in challenging, high technology research & manufacturing environments. At Marlow, Mr. White developed and characterized alternate joining technology processes for advanced thermoelectric cooler assemblies, and performed thermomechanical characterization of TE materials. In addition, Mr. White has successfully applied R&D principles, continuous quality improvements, design of experiments (DOE), statistical process control (SPC), process capability studies, and materials characterization at Texas Instruments, Inc., Eveready Battery Company, and MEMC Southwest, to improve the quality, cost, and cycle time of both development and production processes.
Robin McCarty
Ph.D., Sr. Engineer, Product & Process R&D
Robin McCarty recently joined Marlow in July 2007 after completing her Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Dayton and is currently a Senior Engineer in the Product and Process R&D group. She is currently developing more accurate thermoelectric device and system modes as well as expanding Marlow’s high temperature thermoelectric generator testing capabilities. She has three years experience working with multifunctional systems that included thermoelectric devices through her research with the Air Force Research Labs. Her system level perspective allows her to assess co-generation and multifunctional systems integrating thermoelectrics and other power generation, heating, and cooling systems through employment of entropy/exergy metrics. Her prior experiences include designing laser level instruments for Trimble where she invented a self-compensating system which reduced assembly time by 50% and was awarded three patents. She has developed several thermal characterization schemes to correct a laser level assembly at elevated ambient temperatures. She has taught Thermodynamics at the college level which further reinforces her knowledge and enthusiasm for thermal and mechanical systems.
