Dr. Finzel is the Chairman of the Chemistry and Biochemistry Department at Hofstra University and has served in this position since 1990. He served on the faculty in this Department from 1981 to 1990. Dr. Finzel’s research interests have focused on the mechanisms of organic reactions. He has extensive experience on the use of kinetic methods and nuclear magnetic resonance to study mechanistic pathways. He also has considerable expertise in computational chemistry and teaches courses on this subject.
Dr. Finzel has been an active participant in the American Chemical Society over the past 25 years. He chaired the New York Section of the ACS in 1989 and served on the Board of Directors for nearly 10 years. He chaired the Middle Atlantic Regional Meeting of the ACS in 1995, and served for five years on the jury of the prestigious Nichols Medal. Dr. Finzel has published numerous papers in prestigious journals, including the Journal of the American Chemical Society and the Journal of Physical Chemistry. Dr. Finzel has been involved with research on the TCP technology for over three years. Dr. Finzel received his B.S. degree in Chemistry and an M.S. degree in Organic Chemistry from Eastern Michigan University. He earned his Ph.D. in Physical Organic Chemistry from Northwestern University.
Michael Roberts is a senior engineer in the Gasification and Gas Processing Group of the Gas Technology Institute (formed with the merger of Gas Research Institute and the Institute of Gas Technology). GTI is the leading research, development and training organization serving the natural gas industry. Mr. Roberts is in charge of the Membranes and Separations Technology Group. He is currently conducting research for the conversion of chicken litter to energy and fertilizer with primary funding by the U.S. Department of Agriculture. GTI recently demonstrated that chicken litter can be gasified to produce hydrogen and generate electricity using a solid oxide fuel cell. Mr. Roberts is also managing a project for the gasification/reforming of Illinois coal using a novel low-temperature plasma technique. He also provided an update on his current project for hydrogen production from a biomass gasifier using a hydrogen selective membrane to the Minnesota Renewable Hydrogen Initiative Forum.
Mr. Roberts has extensive plant operational experience including either design, construction, operation, and/or assistance with the following processes: A cyclic oxygen enrichment of combustion air, 4,000 SCFH; a fluidized-bed hydroretort, 1 t/d; the U-GAS® ash agglomerating coal gasifier, 6 t/d; a moving bed HYTORT® retorting process, 24 t/d; a coal wet carbonization reactor (2,000 psig), 1 t/d; a peat wet carbonization slurry process, 1 gpm; an air partial oxidation reactor, 2,000 SCFH; a mixed plastics pyrolyzer, 1 lb/h; a METHANE de-NOX® reburn installation, 375 MMBtu/h boiler; a biomass gasification plant, 100 t/d; Morphysorb gas processing, 1 MMscfd; and a Thermal Conversion Process (TCP), 7 t/d.
Mr. Roberts conducted some of the first confirmation tests in 1998 for the TCP process on a bulk sample of asphaltines, as a contractor for CWT. More recently, Mr. Roberts has been GTI’s liaison for TCP operations at the Philadelphia Naval Business Center plant site. Mr. Roberts has over 35 years of process, design, energy, and environmental engineering experience. He received a B.S. and an M.Ch.E. degree in Chemical Engineering from the Illinois Institute of Technology. He was awarded a NATO Advanced Study Institute Grant to lecture in Turkey in 1993. He is a professional engineer in Illinois and New Jersey. Mr. Roberts holds two patents and has published extensively on energy, process and environmental topics.
R. James Woolsey is a former director of the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency and currently a Vice President at Booz Allen Hamilton, an international management consulting firm, which he joined in 2002. Mr. Woolsey heads a team within Booz Allen's Global Strategic Security practice that helps companies protect themselves from potential threats and vulnerabilities. Before joining Booz Allen, Mr. Woolsey enjoyed a distinguished career in both public service and private legal practice. His career in government service has included high-level positions in two Republican and two Democratic administrations. In addition to serving as Director of Central Intelligence, he served as Ambassador to the Negotiation on Conventional Armed Forces in Europe (CFE), Under Secretary of the Navy, General Counsel to the US Senate Committee on Armed Services, and Delegate at Large to the US-Soviet Strategic Arms Reduction Talks (START). He has been a member of numerous defense and security related commissions including the Rumsfeld Commission to Assess the Ballistic Missile Threat to the US, and the National Commission on Terrorism. In the private sector he practiced law for 22 years as a Partner in the law firm of Shea & Gardner in Washington, D.C.
In September 2002, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg and Fire Commissioner Nicholas Scoppetta named Woolsey Chief Advisor to the newly created FDNY Terrorism Preparedness Taskforce. The Taskforce examines and evaluates the FDNY's terrorism preparedness capabilities. In 2003, Consulting Magazine named James Woolsey to its annual list of top 25 consultants in the United States. Mr. Woolsey received his B.A. degree from Stanford University, Phi Beta Kappa (With Great Distinction); an M.A. from Oxford University, where he was a Rhodes Scholar; and an LL.B. from Yale Law School, where he was Managing Editor of the Yale Law Journal.
