Todd Jochem, Ph.D. Email & Phone Number

Gibsonia, Pa, Us

Gibsonia, Pa, Us

Along with my son, Ben Jochem (Benjo), I (The Grand Tonto) host a weekly Crypto-centric YouTube show and Podcast called Internet Capital. (internetcapital.xyz) We talk about the major events of the week in the industry and where things are heading. Ben provides the deep analysis and I provide commentary from the common man, reasonable person perspective. He's definitely the brains of the operation!

Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, United States

Member of the Advisory Board with special personal emphasis on Research, Innovation, and Strategic Planning

In this role, I help technology oriented organizations identify markets and mature unmanned vehicle technologies to support customer requirements in those markets. Primarily, I work with companies involved in the DoD and government contracting space looking to win R&D and procurement business. I also have served as an expert witness in automated vehicle cases, helping to interpret patents for legal professionals, write briefings, and testify during deposition about patent technicalities.

Mars, Pennsylvania, United States

I develop the offensive strategy based on best-in-practices schemes, team talent, and opponent defenses. I coach coaches in technique and personally handle coaching the Varsity QB’s. I develop weekly practice plans, game scouting reports, and game plans, as well as call the offense plays during games.

Gibsonia, Pa

I began my coaching career in 2007 in the Pine-Richland Youth Football program. After moving to the school program in 2011, I worked with middle school through varsity quarterbacks on fundamentals and techniques, as well as with the offensive coaching staff to build the structure and concepts of Pine-Richland’s record setting offense. P-R’s emergence as a public school football power in Pennsylvania aligned with the development from 2012-14 of QB Ben DiNucci. In 2014, DiNucci had the most prolific passing year in PA history and led P-R to the state championship game. DiNucci set state records for most yards passing (4269), completions (278) and TD’s (46) in a season. DiNucci went on to the University of Pittsburgh and then James Madison University and led the Dukes to the 2020 FCS National Championship Game. In the spring of 2020, DiNucci was drafted in the 7th round by the Dallas Cowboys.After DiNucci, Phil Jurkovec led Pine-Richland from 2015-17 and became only the second WPIAL player and only sophomore to pass for more than 2000 yards and run for more than 1000 (twice, in 2015 and 2017). In 2017 Jurkovec capped off his career by leading Pine-Richland to their first football state title, a #10 national ranking by MaxPreps, and like DiNucci, finished the year as the PA Gatorade Player of the Year. Jurkovec finished his career with 11,144 total yards, 8202 passing yards, and 71 passing TD’s. Jurkovec began his collegiate career at Notre Dame and is currently the starting Quarterback at Boston College.P-R's most recent quarterback, Cole Spencer, led P-R from 2018-2020 and broke DiNucci’s career passing TD’s record with 84 as well as set the career record for wins by a QB with 32. Spencer finished his career with over 8500 total yards and 111 TD’s. In his senior campaign, Spencer led the Rams to their second state championship, a #24 ranking by MaxPreps, and was named PA 5A Player of the year. Spencer is attending the University of Pennsylvania to wrestle.

My role at Skeyes was to provide corporate stability and focus during a time in which existing company leadership had to focus on signifcant external issues. My goal was to continue to incrementally build a sustainable company around an extremely strong unmanned systems/sensor technology base. This was accomplished during my short time at SkEyes as I was able to help the company land 2 of the 5 STTR programs we applied for as well as help secure additional funding for our main stabilized camera product.

My role was to help lead the strategic growth of Applied Perception and Foster-Miller's software and system related UxV activities with emphasis on developing open, supportable, high capability software components and tools.

I founded and grew the company from one part time employees to 16 full-time engineers, including the largest concentration of CMU Robotics Ph.D. in any organization outside of CMU itself. I led the technical, sales, and business growth which culminated in an profitable sale to Foster-Miller, Inc., in May 2007.

Along with my Ph.D. thesis advisor, I co-founded AssistWare Technology in 1995 and helped grow the company from a part time endeavor into the technology provider of a commercially available, state-of-the-art vision-based drowsy driver warning system called SafeTRAC. AssistWare’s growth culminated in May of 2006 with its profitable sale to Cognex Corporation.As with any small company, my duties were diverse. I spent a significant amount of time directing and supporting AssistWare’s core business needs, which primarily included business development and sales lead generation. I made first contact and was instrumental in developing AssistWare’s relationship with Visteon Corporation, a $15B/year Tier 1 automotive supplier. This relationship led to a formal Collaboration Agreement for product development and manufacturing, through which the SafeTRAC technology was to be made available worldwide to car and truck manufacturers.I was also responsible for initiating and developing relationships with key truck fleet and OEM customers, initially managing AssistWare’s procurement and manufacturing pipeline, and the day-to-day monetary and business operations of the company. My work with OEM’s as particularly fruitful, having 5 of the 6 largest U.S. truck OEM’s conduct field trials, both internally and with key customers.In addition to my business development work, I was responsible for several technical tasks that were centered around the development of the low-level hardware and software components for each product generation. In particular, this work encompassed developing the functional hardware specification and identifying vendors to design and manufacture the system components. Once delivered, I also developed the low-level software interfaces to the various board components, including the video digitizer, serial communications interface, flash memory and user interface.

I was the Project Leader for CMU's vehicle and technology development efforts for the 1997 National Automated Highway System Consortium Proof of Technical Feasibility Demonstration. I was responsible for the development of five computer controlled vehicles that eventually gave over 1500 passengers rides, logging over 10,000 miles of autonomous operation. These vehicles used only onboard sensors and were capable of automatically staying in their lane, changing lanes and passing, maintaining appropriate headway to other vehicles, detecting and avoiding obstacles by changing lanes, swerving or stopping, and communicating between themselves to pass along road hazard information.My technical responsibilities included all algorithm development for obstacle sensing and vehicle actions associated with detected objects. The system I developed integrated information from forward, side, and rear facing sensors (radar and laser) with road geometry information from visual and integral sensors to accurately describe the environment around the vehicle. With this model as a cornerstone, I developed algorithms for a variety of applications. They included an adaptive cruise control system that could operate the vehicle from 0 to 65+ m.p.h. with minimum headway of less than 1 second, a forward collision warning and avoidance system that could detect moving and stationary objects and select appropriate avoidance maneuvers, a side and rear blindspot detection system that could suppress lane changes until the occupying vehicle was clear, and a vehicle-to-vehicle communication protocol in which leading vehicles could pass obstacle information to following ones for quicker and safer avoidance. In addition, I was responsible for the inter-process and inter-vehicle communication hardware and software infrastructure that supported real-time vehicle operation, the low level throttle and brake actuator control algorithms, and driver interface development and display selection.

I was temporarily in this position until I transitioned to the Systems Scientist position listed above. My actual responsibilities didn't change.

I worked in Professor Takeo Kanade's Vision and Autonomous System Center for advisors Chuck Thorpe and Dean Pomerleau. My research focussed on using active vision and image resampling techniques to provide additional capabilities such as intersection detection and navigation, lane changing, and obstacle avoidance to high speed unmanned passenger vehicles.

Ph.D., Robotics

Activities and Societies: Allen Newall Award for Research Excellence Award WinnerDeveloped unmanned vehicle technologies.

B.S., Electronics And Computer Technology

Activities and Societies: Four Year Varsity Football Letterwinner Pi Kappa Alpha Fraternity