Mentor
Meet our mentor!
James Diaz-Gonzales, PhD
Bio
Dr. Diaz-Gonzalez specializes in control system design, Simulation and Validation of multibody dynamic systems, nonlinear system parameter identification and optimization. He also has experience in nonlinear vibrations, motion tracking, nonlinear state estimation, embedded systems and real-time implementation. He received his B.S. in Mechanical Engineering from Universidad del Atlántico (Colombia) in 2001, an M.S. from Puerto Rico University at Mayaguez in 2004 and a PhD in Mechanical Engineering from Michigan Technological University in 2009. Currently, Dr. Diaz-Gonzalez is the chief scientist in BMT Designers & Planners with 10 year of experience in government and industry control strategies development, project planning and implementation, fabrication, test and evaluation of advance mechanical systems including M&S and Laboratory Testing.
Co-Mentor
Kenneth J. Hintz
Kenneth J. Hintz received his B.S. degree in Electrical Engineering from Purdue University, West Lafayette, Indiana in 1967 and his M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in Electrical Engineering from the University of Virginia in 1979 and 1981 respectively. Since 1987 he has been an Associate Professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at George Mason University. He designed and established the Bachelor and Masters in Computer Engineering Degree Programs at GMU which were approved by SCHEV in June 1998 and 1999, respectively. The undergraduate Computer Engineering degree program was the first in the Commonwealth to fully integrate hardware description languages (HDL) into the curriculum.
Dr. Hintz holds 21 issued patents, 9 patents pending, is a Fellow of SPIE, a Senior Life Member of IEEE, and lead author on a book on Microcontrollers.
Before joining GMU, Dr. Hintz was with the Naval Surface Warfare Center, Dahlgren, VA, working in electronic warfare and radar signal processing where he designed and built the AN/ULQ-16, variations of which are still in production. Prior to working at NSWC, Dr. Hintz was with the U. S. Navy as a designated Naval Aviator stationed for 3 years in Rota, Spain flying Electronic Warfare Reconnaissance with Fleet Air Reconnaissance Squadron Two (VQ-2). During that time be became designated Electronic Warfare Aircraft Commander (EWAC) in both the EC-121 and EP-3E aircraft.
Dr. Hintz’ is currently funded by the Navy Postgraduate School under a grant “Automatic SIEV-Net Instantiation for Collection Planning and Execution by Orchestrated Resource Management (ORM)”
Dr. Hintz’ recently developed a patented method for pre-shot detection of barreled weapons based on his recent discovery of cavity induced modulation (CIM) which is being implemented by FirstGuard Technology under a $2.3M contract.
He has also developed methods for syntactic pattern recognition applied to ground penetrating radar images for landmine detection and classification (https://zonkil.gmu.edu/spr/). His other research interests are in X-ray, thermal, and visual, image processing. He is also analyzing data based on his Spring 2009 sabbatical “Analysis Of Trace Metals And Nutrients In Coral Reef Water Samples” (https://zonkil.gmu.edu/marine/).