Leadership Team
Jason Dykstra, PhD
CEO and Inventor
Dr. Dykstra has spent a career working in a broad range of industries including: oil and gas, automation, steel mill, automotive, heavy lifting machines, and industrial fluid systems. His experience in the oil and gas industry is extensive and includes cementing, fracturing, drilling, downhole tools and sensors, automated systems, cryogenic equipment, and mud systems. His focus has been on inventing innovative technology along with building the momentum required within an organization to turn an idea into a new product. He has faced the headwinds of change management many times and has the experience to help companies succeed. Dr. Dykstra’s passion is in inventing and building new products he also has over 20 years’ experience in product development including prototyping, testing optimization, manufacturing, sales, and customer relations. He has also built and run a research and development group in a fortune 500 company, and has spent years distilling the technical and highly complex down to a consumable level for organizational and executive communication. His approach begins with understanding the direction of the marketplace, formulating solution sets for that future, and analyzing those solutions using first principles and the associated costs and benefits. Dr. Dykstra knows that to bring a product to market requires a lot more that a great idea, and it takes an organization that is committed to its success.
Dr. Dykstra received his PhD from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 2003 while specializing in control system and robotics. He currently holds over 70 US patents, and many more internationally, along with over 120 patent applications in the review process. Many of the patents have been commercialized and are used in products in over 100 countries every day. These patents cover a range of technologies including: control systems, robotics, fluidics, mechanical components, digital filters, drilling systems, chemical blending, vibration mitigation, and many more. He has won several industrial innovation awards for his inventions. Dr. Dykstra has been a keynote speaker at IEEE and ASME conferences, along with talks at many Universities and conferences worldwide and has published many technical papers.
Xingyong Song, PhD
Inventor
Dr. Xingyong Song currently an Assistant Professor in College of Engineering at Texas A&M University, College Station. His engineering expertise includes automation system design, product prototyping, machine learning, computer vision, intelligent machine control, fluid power system, mechatronics system design and control, and software development. Prior to appointment at Texas A&M University, he had four years of full time industrial working experience, with two years at General Motors Research Center in Warren, Michigan, and two years at Halliburton Energy Service Company Innovation Center, Houston, Texas. His work at General Motors focused on advanced controls with applications on novel energy conversion/engine, power transmission, and hybrid vehicle concepts. His patented invention at GM later turned into a commercial product, which is actively being used in some of the 2014 and 2015 Chevrolet passenger vehicle models. When at Halliburton, he actively conducted novel controls solutions to address advanced automation needs in the oil/gas industry, including drilling automation, well logging, and drilling fluid management and control. He successfully delivered a novel control solution for the new Halliburton sonic logging tool, which was commercialized in 2015 and won him the Halliburton Innovation of the Year Award and MVP Award. He earned his PhD in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities. He is the author of 22 journal papers in prestigious Controls and Mechatronics journals such as “Automatica”, “IEEE Transactions on Control System Technology”, and “IEEE/ASME Transactions on Mechatronics”. He is also the author of 24 peer-reviewed conference publications and 21 US patents.
Yi Dykstra, PhD
Operations
Dr. Shao has worked in genetic engineering, bio-medical engineering, and the chemical sciences. She can be blamed for a genetically modified fly in the world, although to her knowledge it did not escape to procreate. She was a child prodigy, being one of a handful of students selected for a gifted school in china. Dr. Shao holds a BS in Biomedical Engineering, MS in Bio-engineering, MS in Finance, and a PhD in Biochemistry. She has many peer reviewed published papers and works as head of operations for Symtech.
