Dr. Mehdi Namazian, the vice president of Altex, has 25 years of experience in fuels processing, combustion and power systems. He received his BS in Mechanical Engineering from Tehran University, and his MS and PhD in Mechanical Engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. After graduating from MIT, he joined the UC Berkeley M.E. Department and worked as a researcher at Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory. As vice president of Altex, he is responsible for the success of internal operations. An important focus of Dr. Namazian is liquid fuels processing for fuel cell applications. Specific developments have covered systems from 20 watts, for portable applications, up to 500 kilowatt systems for shipboard applications. In addition to fuels processing expertise, he has developed several burners, including low emissions burners. Some of these burner designs evolved from fundamental turbulent combustion studies Dr. Namazian carried out at Sandia National Laboratory, Combustion Research Facility. He is also the recipient of the Arch T. Colwell Merit Award from the Society of Automotive Engineers. He holds five patents and has published over 50 technical articles.