Thomas Smed President

Thomas was born in the far north of Sweden in 1961 and started in the nuclear field at Forsmark Nuclear Power Plant in 1990 where he gained experience in reactor engineering and transient analysis. He initiated and participated in the development of Matstab, a program for 3D stability analysis in the frequency domain, entirely written in Matlab. He has served as the as the manager for the fuel department and the engineering department. He was project manager for a design reconstitution project and an extended power uprate project. He has also worked for Westinghouse as the manager for Engineering Services in Sweden.

Thomas holds an M.S. in Engineering Physics from Uppsala University, an M.S. in Eletrical Engineering from Auburn University, a Licentiate in Automatic Control from Uppsala, and a Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering from the Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm.

Thomas joined Studsvik as President in 2005.

Dave Kropaczek Chief Operating Officer

Dave received his Ph.D. in Nuclear Engineering from North Carolina State University in 1990. Over the last 20 years, his career has focused on methods and software development in the areas of LWR reactor physics, thermal-hydraulics, and nuclear fuel cycle optimization. Dave has held a broad array of engineering, research, teaching, and management positions during this time while employed at Westinghouse, North Carolina State University, Studsvik, and General Electric.

In 2007, Dave returned to Studsvik with the opening of a new United States office, after having led the Advanced Methods group at GE Global Nuclear Fuel. During his career, Dave developed several codes and methods for analysis and optimization of PWRs and BWRs that are in production use worldwide.

Dave is the author of over 45 technical papers and 25 US and international patents. Dave served as General Chair and Technical Program Chair for the Advances in Nuclear Fuel Management ANS Topical meetings and is a past Chair of the ANS Reactor Physics Division. He has been a technical reviewer during the past 20 years for the Journals of Nuclear Science and Engineering and Nuclear Technology.

Dave now serves as Chief Operating Officer and head of product development at Studsvik Scandpower.

Arthur DiGiovine Vice-President Marketing & Business Development

Art began his career at Yankee Atomic Electric Company as a PWR core designer. In his 10 years at Yankee, he was also involved in methods development and licensing of reactor analysis methods with the United States Nuclear Regulatory Commission. In 1987, Art joined Studsvik where he began the customer technical support group and development of the CMS training course for Studsvik products. In his time at Studsvik, Art has traveled to over 20 countries in technical and support capacity, garnering a deep understanding of the varied needs of the commercial nuclear analysis marketplace. Art holds both a B.S. and M.S. in Nuclear Engineering from University of Massachusetts and business education at Wharton School of Business.

As a member of the American Nuclear Society for over 30 years, Art has authored numerous technical publications and served on many technical and organizing program committees for professional society meetings. Now responsible for marketing, branding of Studsvik products, as well as business development of new customers and new areas; Art has over 30 years of technical and business experience in the commercial nuclear analysis field.

Jerry Umbarger Chief Financial Officer

Jerry joined the reactor physics group of Consumers Power Company upon receiving his MS in Nuclear Engineering from Iowa State University. During his eight years at Consumers Power, he held both BWR and PWR reactor physics analysis positions and was manager of reactor physics and reactor engineering. Upon leaving Consumers Power, he became Manager of Analytical Services for NUS Corporation where he was responsible for consulting services provided by NUS in the areas of spent fuel criticality and engineering analysis. Jerry joined Studsvik in 1986 and has held varying management roles in support, training, contracts, and QA. Jerry also has received an MBA from Northeastern University.

Jerry currently serves as Chief Financial Officer for Studsvik Scandpower.

Kord Smith Vice-President of Technical Development

Since receiving his Ph.D. in 1980 from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Kord Smith has been among the most influential minds in nuclear reactor analysis. His work as a graduate student produced a method of nodal reactor analysis still used by fuel vendors in production analysis codes. Soon after joining the Studsvik team in 1984, Kord led the development of SIMULATE-3, now the industry standard for light water reactor core analysis. As a Senior Engineer in theoretical methods development and computer code production, Kord pushed reactor analysis methods into new areas, developing several key physics methods and engineering features now found in SIMULATE and other Studsvik products.

In addition to his technical expertise, Kord is involved in product marketing and customer support for Studsvik nuclear reactor analysis products, as well as customer training and engineering analysis projects. Kord has published over 100 technical papers for conferences and archival publications, including many ground-breaking numerical techniques.

Kord now serves as Vice-President of Technical Development for Studsvik, and remains highly involved in methods development and analysis projects.

Joel Rhodes Manager of Methods Development

Joining Studsvik in 1991 after receiving a Ph. D. in Nuclear Engineering from Purdue University, Joel Rhodes has worked on many of the Studsvik core products including SIMULATE-3, X-IMAGE, SIMULATE-3K, and SIMULATE-3R. For the last 10 years, he has been heavily involved in CASMO-4 and CASMO-5 lattice code development and cross section library generation.

Joel currently manages the methods development group at Studsvik, pioneering the development of next-generation lattice physics codes and nodal core simulators.

Axel Becker Manager of Support & Services

Axel Becker has studied Nuclear Engineering at the Technical University in Berlin. During his studies he focused on thermodynamic and reactor kinetic software development. Working as a research assistant for probabilistic and risk analysis at the Institute of Nuclear Technology he finished his Ph.D. with a thesis on automated fault tree analysis. 1983 he started his professional career at the utility in Hamburg (Germany) working with BWR in-core fuel management, core monitoring and reactor physics methods. In 1989, he joined a software company developing information systems for technical
applications being responsible for the business division for utilities and petroleum companies.

Since 1995, Axel Becker has been the manager of the German subsidiary of Studsvik Scandpower and he now oversees support and services for Studsvik Scandpower.

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