Mr. Johnson has over 38 years experience managing logistics and technology programs for the U.S. Air Force and for several commercial enterprises. His expertise ranges from business start-up to managing multi-million dollar programs for the government and for large corporations. As a Government program manager he worked several leading-edge technology programs, guiding major new aerospace systems through the R&D process to operational fielding.  As a civilian program manager he has developed over 37 programs with value exceeding $500 million over a 10 year period.  Mr. Johnson is a charter member of the CME Group and has directed all aspects of company growth since 2005.  Mr. Johnson is a retired USAF pilot with a distinguished combat record and extensive systems R&D experience.

Luke Daum (BS, PhD) – Senior Scientist

Dr. Daum is acknowledged as one of the leading Molecular Biologists in the state of Texas. As a scientist for the government at Brooks AFB in San Antonio, he led the development of Air Force protocols and authored operating instructions (OI’s) and standard operating procedures (SOP’s) for the extraction, purification, detection, typing, sub-typing and sequencing of influenza field isolates.   He designed novel primers and probes for the detection of influenza from clinical isolates/original specimens using traditional and real-time RT-PCR analysis. He also trained and managed laboratory personnel and was responsible for the daily operation, management and maintenance of the laboratory.  He was primary Investigator for the DoD on a project with the CDC to evaluate vaccine effectiveness and monitor genetic trends within worldwide influenza clinical isolates from 35 worldwide DoD sentinel sites. Dr. Daum joined the CME Group in 2007 and was lead scientist for development of the BioDNA and Forensic BioDNA system developed for the Air Force Research Laboratory. Dr. Daum currently manages a research laboratory at his company in San Antonio, Longhorn Vaccine & Diagnostics, as well as continuing as lead scientific advisor for the CME Group biotechnology programs.

Dave Love (BA, MS) – Program Coordinator / Senior Test Engineer

Mr. Love has over 42 years experience as a physiologist, system test and human factors engineer, program manager and test director. His work covers a broad spectrum, from laboratory testing of US Air Force electronic sensors and life support systems to flight testing of major USAF/Navy weapon and unmanned aerial systems for the Army’s Night Vision Laboratory. Mr. Love participated in the Royal Australian Air Force in-flight test of pilot life support systems and conducted initial flight tests of the first US and UK pilot chemical defense ensembles. He evaluated performance of autopilot software, Inertial guidance system, GPS, TV and IR sensors, data links, and interactive control software. He supported DoD acquisition programs for 16 years as senior test and associate principal engineer at Sverdrup Technology, Inc., a leading provider of advanced engineering and technical services, supporting the operation of aerospace and industrial test centers. Mr. Love formulated master plans test objectives and budget proposals for preliminary R&D for the USAF. He was responsible for all aspects of flight test missions, including design of test profiles, mission briefings and debriefings, mission execution and drafting reports. Mr. Love is a former USAF fighter pilot with over 3000 hours in eight aircraft types. He served as an instructor of aerospace technology courses for the USAF, FAA and at university undergraduate level. As a charter member and Program Coordinator/Senior Test Engineer for The CME Group since 2005, Mr. Love has coordinated technical programmatic support, integrating multiple scientific projects and utilizing High Performance Computing techniques and resources.

Judy Brown (BS, MBA) – Contracts Administrator

Ms. Brown has extensive business experience which includes financial planning, budget administration, preparation of contract proposals and business plans, and contract negotiation. Her accomplishments include guiding a team of corporate managers responsible for overseeing $66 billion in assets for a Fortune 100 company; managing transition of $34 billion in assets during four company acquisitions; analyzing international and domestic cash flow to guarantee availability of $3 billion in annual benefit payments; forecasting and preparing department budgets in excess of $2 million annually, then tracking budget to actual income and expenditures throughout the budget cycle. She negotiated vendor contracts and associated fee schedules which included a contract rewrite to convert 27 investment managers from six different contract formats to a standard contract and favorable payment arrangement. She has taught accounting at the University of the Incarnate Word in San Antonio. Ms. Brown has worked with the CME Group since 2005 and currently administers all CME Group contracts, oversees the company budget and day-to-day office functions, as well as manages personnel responsibilities.

James Chandler (BFA) – Interface Designer

After earning his degree from Sam Houston State University, Mr. Chandler began his professional career in the television industry as art director for an NBC affiliate station in Texas.  He later transitioned to Las Vegas and continued as a graphic artist and web designer for an ABC affiliate where he also began teaching graphic art and web design at Art Institute of Las Vegas. He moved to San Antonio and began work for the CME group as lead graphics designer in 2008. Mr. Chandler is currently responsible for web design and graphic art support for all CME Group publications. He continues to teach web development and 3d animation. He also has been published in an Autodesk Maya Animation book.

Bill McGaw – Project Manager

Mr. McGaw has over 20 years experience building, testing and managing a wide variety of leading edge IT systems while at the same time performing database design and administration of the systems. He provided a high-speed network infrastructure installation and developed an intranet based scheduling application for use by the USAF.  He performed application design, development, testing and deployment at the government site and then created the database design, administered database functions, and provided project management support to include complete documentation, implementation, and training. Mr. McGaw joined the CME Group in 2007 and was then selected for project manager and functioned as field lead for the BioDNA High Performance Computing Project. He currently manages hardware and software support of all CME Group projects and the CME Group facility.

Edward  Salinas (BS, MS) – Bioinformatics Developer

Mr. Salinas joined the CME Group in 2007 while a graduate student at the University of Texas at San Antonio. To complement a strong background in math and programming, Mr. Salinas has chosen to broaden his field of graduate study to include Bioinformatics. Now a full-time CME Group employee, he has continued collaboration with Dr. Karmaker at UTSA in microarray analysis and was instrumental in developing the Phylogeny analysis module of the Forensic BioDNA System for the CME Group in 2008. With his expanded areas of expertise, Mr. Salinas is emerging as a direct assistant to both the lead system development programmer and the lead scientific advisor for molecular biology.

Shijie Yao (MS, PhD) – Database Lead Engineer

Dr. Yao has more than 17years experience in the scientific research field. He has published in excess of 20 peer-reviewed articles in major journals including Biochemistry, Nucleic Acid Research, and Journal of the American Chemical Society. He was selected and has presented at numerous national scientific conferences. In the course of his Ph.D. program, Dr. Yao studied novel DNA/RNA 3-D solution structures, and interactions with small molecules, by means of both experimental and computational techniques. Throughout his postdoctoral training, he extended the famous AMBER molecular force field to study DNA-Platium adduct structures. As Application Scientist and Senior Application Scientist in the pharmaceutical industry, Dr. Yao conducted anti-cancer drug research for 12 years, applying a wide variety of computational techniques, ranging from high-level quantum mechanics to massive molecular dynamics simulations to homology modeling and ligand docking. Dr. Yao also worked as Senior Software Engineer in commercial software companies, focusing on software development on client-server architecture. Dr. Yao joined The CME Group in 2009 and is currently Database Lead Engineer.

Jeffrey Saxe (BS, PhD) – Sr. Bioinformatics Researcher

Dr. Saxe has over 25 years of experience in scientific software development and High Performance Computing.  He has over 21 years of experience working at pharmaceutical companies and at the National Cancer Institute.  Dr. Saxe helped to get High Performance Computing established and accepted in the biomedical field when in 1986 he was hired by Cray Research, Inc. to go to the NCI with the Cray supercomputer being purchased by the NCI, the first supercomputer to be used strictly for biomedical research.  While there he ported, optimized, and wrote a tremendous amount of software for use by the researchers at the NCI.  He later moved to Sterling Drug, Inc. where he was a Sr. Research Investigator, then moved to BioNumerik Pharmaceuticals, Inc. where he was the Dept. Head of Computational Chemistry, leading a group of researchers involved in the discovery and development of anti-cancer agents.  Dr. Saxe is listed as an author on 18 publications, 2 book chapters, and 26 abstracts.  Dr. Saxe has also taught chemistry courses as an Adjunct Professor at colleges in San Antonio.  Dr. Saxe joined The CME Group, Inc. in 2009 where he is Sr. Bioinformatics Researcher.

E. Lynette Kizer (BS, MS) – Application Software Lead Developer

Ms. Kizer has over 20 years experience in the computer science field, including software engineering, systems analysis, web, application and database development, and education. She has worked in the pharmaceutical and aerospace industries as well as for the Department of Defense, Army and Air Force branches. She designed and implemented a genetics database utilized in analysis of organism viability after duplicate manipulation. Her vast experience includes development of database interface to support animal genomic research data collection, software application, design and development of spacecraft avionics systems, and web application development of enterprise-wide systems, including scholarships, customer management web applications, competitive analysis, information technology and financial applications. Her expertise includes programming and application development of machine and assembly languages, C, C++, Fortran, Perl, and Java. Ms. Kizer’s Relational Database Management Systems knowledge in database design, development, and interface includes Oracle, Sybase, MS Access, PostgreSQL, MySQL, and SQL Server. Ms. Kizer has been certified in handling low to medium risk radioactive isotopes. Ms. Kizer is a Ph.D. candidate, specializing in Bioinformatics and Computational Biology with extensive coursework in Chemistry, Genetics, Molecular Cell Biology, Computational Mathematics, Research Statistical Methods, DNA, RNA and Protein Wet Bench Techniques utilizing gel filtration, electrophoresis, Western blots, and various incubation/extraction techniques and applications. As a member of Iowa State University’s faculty, she served for three years as Head Instructor for Data Structures and Introduction to Operating Systems. Ms. Kizer joined the CME team in 2009 and is currently Application Software Lead Developer.

Nancy M. Neira (BS) – Bioinformatics Developer

Nancy M. Neira recently joined, The CME Group, Inc. after her move from Salt Lake City, Utah.  Her professional experience covers several years in the Medical Field and U.S. Army.  In addition to military experience, Ms. Neira has been in the Medical Device Software Industry, with embedded programming background, Multiple Operating Systems, RTOS (Real-time and Multi-threading Environment) since 2000.  Experienced in Scientific, algorithmic development (OpenSource and IDE tools) and Six Sigma Software Tools for Data Analysis and Statistical reports for Management and Project Leads.

Ray Champion (BS) – Bioinformatics Developer

Mr. Champion joined the CME team as a bioinformatics developer in 2009.  He has over ten years experience in the computer programming and information technology field.  He received his Bachelors of Computer Science from Baker College in 2007.  His primary application architecture specialty is Java Platform, Enterprise Edition.  After retiring from the military he was employed as a software test engineer where he developed test plans and coordinated the testing process for the Information Operations Technology Repository, a knowledge-sharing effort for the US Defense Department.  Prior to joining CME, he was employed as a network defense analyst, where he provided research, analysis and recommendations in support of the cyber mission at the Network Warfare Squadron at San Antonio, TX.  Mr. Champion is a retired US Navy Petty Officer who was deployed on a cruiser, a destroyer and a mine hunter.