Harry P. Pappas, Founder, President and CEO
International RFID Business Association

Harry has been active in the RFID space since 1999 with active tags in closed end loop applications for the food, pharma, and transportation industries. In 2001 he began working with passive tag technologies again in closed end loop projects for manufacturing, warehousing, legal and healthcare. He saw the use of RFID technologies in many industries outside of the realm of supply chain. He realized that RFID can complement the use of bar coding in many applications from amusement parks to quality control in a pharma research labs. He and his associates have a number of patent pending, RFID applications with the US patent office. Harry has spent the last five years in the RFID space working with Active as well as Passive RFID technologies in a number of industries in a “hands-on” capacity.

As he traveled and spoke with end users, attended trade shows and seminars on RFID he realized the need for a single, global, RFID trade association that can service and represent the RFID industry and at the same time interface with the end users in a common forum providing vendor neutral, educational information, training, and support to the end users who are looking to implement this new technology. Thus was born “The International RFID Business Association, Inc. a “Not for Profit” educational, trade association.

Emily Sopensky
VP for Education - RFIDba

A business consultant specializing in technology, Emily Sopensky provides strategic resources to companies and institutions through The Iris Company. Her involvement with RFID began with Texas Instruments TIRIS, now TI-RFID, where she worked with the Dallas-based team on many of the passive tag projects as well as the toll tag business that was subsequently sold. Her interests and experience with education range from producing highly technical state-of-the-art semiconductor short courses in Texas, California and Taiwan to advising the Dallas Boys and Girls Clubs on K-12 math education for over 9000 at-risk children. Long involved with IEEE and serving in various officer capacities, she was instrumental RFI Institute’s becoming an IEEE educational partner

With an MBA from The Wharton School, she applies the business case to startups and other entrepreneurial activities. After 20 years in Austin, Texas Ms. Sopensky re- located to the Washington, D.C., following a one-year IEEE fellowship to the U.S. Department of State. She recently a team of IEEE members that produced a white paper on RFID, available at http://ieeeusa.org/communications/eBooks/default.asp

Ken Lee.
VP and CTO for Asia Pacific Operations - RFIDba

Mr. Lee has a strong technical background with extensive experiences in developing IT Architecture, systems design, application development and systems integration for many large clients.  His career spans 16 years with clients in Australia, Malaysia, Singapore, Philippines, Japan and Switzerland. He started his career in IBM Australia, then Malaysia, where he has garnered no less than 3 IBM Professional Achievement Awards. He has since also held Senior Management and Executive Management positions for local and multinational companies from Germany and consulted for Softbank Emerging Markets. He is currently the CTO of CBS Technology Berhad, a public listed company on the Kuala Lumpur Stock Exchange. CBS Technology Berhad provides specialized RFID software solutions and is headquartered in Kuala Lumpur,  Malaysia.

Stephane Pique
RFIDba Co-founder and President of Europe, Middle East and Africa.

Stephane started with RFID in 1993 and works as an independent RFID consultant. His business experience brought him to the unique position of knowing RFID from all necessary components such as the chip, the transponder and card, the middleware and data management up to the complete RFID solution. Thanks to his experience and speaking engagements at more than 30 major RFID shows around the world, he is a highly demanded and recognized expert in the RFID field. Stephane is also member of the OSEC pool of experts mandated by the State Secretary of Economical Affairs (seco).

Bikram Dasgupta
VP, General Manager, India Operations – RFIDba

Mr. Bikram Dasgupta can be described as a first generation IT entrepreneur, a rare breed of personalities who have kick-started the IT revolution in India. He has been in forefront of founding and building organizations, human resources and industry associations in the sector which has gone a long way into putting India firmly into the global IT map.

A globally traveled personality, Mr. Bikram Dasgupta has lead many international delegations representing the country. A highly articulate speaker in many international forums, Mr. Dasgupta has been at the forefront of the evolution of I.T. hardware, software, training, and now, high-skilled career education. His current passion and zeal, is to help & direct youngsters to face modern day challenges by absorbing technology & human values as an embedded solution.

Frank Dorrian
President, RFIDba Australia Division – RFIDba

Frank Dorrian has over twenty years experience in the IT and
Telecoms industries. He was a Vice President in Unisys, Tandem Computers, and Avid Technology where he had Asia Pacific Regional responsibility. He was also involved in setting up Joint Ventures in Singapore, India and China. He ran two of these Joint Ventures; he was VP of the Tata Unisys JV; and Executive Vice Chairman of a JV with Tandem and Singapore Gov IT Organization. More recently he held the positions of Client Director for the Optus outsourcing contract, and Managing Director for Wireless Business Solutions. He is experienced in the implementation of RFID projects, RFID business process re-engineering, and ROI studies.

Daniel Engels PH.D,
Director of Research, MIT Auto-ID Labs

Dr. Daniel W. Engels is a Research Scientist in the MIT Department of Mechanical Engineering and is the founder and Director of the MIT Healthcare Research Initiative (HRI). Dr. Engels is one of the principle architects of
the EPC System, a system designed to connect physical objects to the Internet and licensed to EPCglobal Inc., a non-profit organization, in 2003. The EPC System is currently being adopted by the retail industry and the U.S. Department of Defense.

Dr. Engels was the first Chairman of the Hardware Action Group under EPCglobal, Inc. and was a member of EPCglobal’s Technical Steering Committee (TSC) from its inception until May 2005. The Hardware Action Group is the technical action group charged with developing the hardware standards, including radio frequency identification protocols, used within the EPC System Dr. Engels has authored more than 30 articles published in peer reviewed conferences and journals.

Peter Kuzma
Sr. V.P. & Treasurer -RFIDba 

Peter has 8 years experience in passive RFID related label process design and RFID label design along with business development concerning applications and rfid labels. Currently President of X-ident USA, a company 100% focused on rfid labels. 25 years manufacturing experience with Fortune 500 paper and converting companies. Education includes a BS in Electrical Engineering from Drexel University in Philadelphia, a MBA from Scranton University, and A MS from Penn in Organizational Dynamics.

Dr. Paul B. Rasband
RFIDba Executive Committee Member, MeadWestVaco/Intelligent Systems

Paul started research in low-cost RF tagging and smart packaging at Westvaco in 1997. He wrote the first strategy papers describing options for Westvaco in providing RF systems in the packaged goods distribution chain in 1999. That same year he also authored a number of papers describing RFID applications in retail, describing much of the functionality that MeadWestvaco Intelligent Systems (MWVIS) has since developed in commercial products. Paul served as Senior Technologist for Westvaco's Radical Innovation group and was closely involved in the early marketing, product definition, and business development activities of MWVIS.

Paul currently represents MeadWestvaco Intelligent Systems in technology matters in EPCglobal and in other industry standards groups. Other duties include long-term strategic development and market research. Paul has B.S. and M.S. degrees in chemical engineering from Brigham Young University (1992), and a Ph.D. in chemical engineering and materials science from Cornell University (1996) where he studied electronic materials and devices. Diversions (though not very diverting) include robotics and “smart home” systems.

Rachael McBrearty
Chief Creative Officer 

Offering a rare blend of creative and operational skills, Rachael focuses on finding innovative ways in which companies can use technology to enhance their customer experience and business processes at digital agency IconNicholson (www.iconnicholson.com).

Rachael began working with RFID in 2000 when she was creative lead for the development of the in-store technology for Prada's New York flagship store. Seeing the tremendous potential for item-level tagging in retail she helped IconNicholson to build their RFID offering, winning groundbreaking projects and establishing IconNicholson as one of the premier RFID agencies. IconNicholson has recently gotten considerable attention from the retail industry and the press with the unveiling of her RFID "Magic Mirror" and Social Retailing concepts at the NRF "X07 Store of the Future."

Rachael has been interviewed for television, appearing on the BBC, CNBC and NY1. Her work has appeared in many publications including The Washington Times, The Boston Globe, CNN Money, Forbes.com, MarketWatch, USA Today and Wired. She has written numerous articles and white papers on RFID and has spoken on the topic of how RFID can impact the customer experience.