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Management Team
Warren Katz
Founder and Chief Executive Officer
Warren Katz co-founded MÄK Technologies with John Morrison in 1990 and acted as chief operating officer for 16 years. In December 2006, MÄK was acquired by VT Systems of Alexandria, Virginia at which time Katz became chief executive officer.
Katz is a noted industry advocate of open interoperability standards and commercial business models in Department of Defense procurement. Katz also has expertise in the collaboration between the defense and video game industries. He is a prolific author of articles, reports and papers, and frequent speaker on these subjects. He holds two patents on a low-cost eye-tracking device and one patent on a networking protocol for simulated distributed force-feedback.
Katz was six-term chairman of the Simulation Interoperability Standards Organization, the international not-for-profit consortium that manages the process for developing open interoperability standards for synthetic environments.
From 1987 to 1990, Katz worked for Bolt, Beranek, and Newman on the SIMNET project. Katz was the resident drive train simulation expert, responsible for mathematical modeling of physical systems.
Katz holds dual bachelor’s degrees in mechanical and electrical engineering from Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
David A. Epstein
Chief Operating Officer
David A. Epstein recently joined MÄK as the company’s Chief Operating Officer. Epstein is a senior technology executive with experience taking ideas from conception to deployment. During his twenty year tenure with IBM’s Software Group and TJ Watson Research Center, Epstein held several leadership roles, driving strategies and solutions in a number of different industries.
An early proponent of national scale health IT integration, Epstein drove a landmark pilot that linked the Centers for Disease Control, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services and the Food & Drug Administration with major healthcare organizations, automating the monitoring and reporting of bio-surveillance, adverse drug and quality of care events. Working with the Finnish Defense Force and other Ministries of Defense, Epstein and his IBM team led the efforts to develop an extensible Network Centric Operations software framework. This framework enabled mission critical information gathered from a variety of battlefield sources to be delivered globally on-demand.
Epstein began his career at Bolt, Beranek & Newman where he was the principal system architect for SIMNET, a $250M Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency-sponsored tactical training simulator network. The SIMNET project is considered the birthplace of modern distributed simulation.
Epstein holds a Master of Business Administration in Entrepreneurship from Columbia Business School. He has a Bachelor of Arts degree and a Master of Science degree in Computer Science from Harvard University.
Len Granowetter
Vice President, Product Division
Len Granowetter has been with MÄK since 1993. He currently serves as MÄK’s Vice President of Products with overall responsibility for MÄK’s Modeling and Simulation Products business, including support and training.
From 1999-2009, Granowetter was MÄK’s Director of Product Development, responsible for setting strategic direction and overseeing the design, development, documentation, and technical support for MÄK’s suite of commercial products. Under his direction, MÄK’s product line expanded from a few interoperability toolkits to a full portfolio of applications, plug-ins, and developer’s tools, spanning the focus areas of Link, Simulate, and Visualize.
Prior to assuming that role, Granowetter was MÄK’s Lead Products Engineer. He was the primary architect and developer of MÄK’s flagship product, the VR-Link Simulation Networking toolkit, for several years. He was responsible for transitioning MÄK’s products from DIS to HLA, and for designing VR-Link’s FOM-Mapping architecture to support FOM Agility in MAK products. He was also the original architect of the MAK High-Performance RTI.
Granowetter has been heavily involved in interoperability standards efforts. He has served as Chairman of SISO’s Live Virtual Constructive (LVC) Study Group, as Chairman and Lead Editor of SISO’s Dynamic-Link-Compatible HLA API Product Development Group, as Lead Editor of the C++ API and member of the Drafting Group for HLA Evolved, and as a core contributor to SISO’s RPR FOM Product Development Group. He was also an active member of the US DoD’s LVC Architecture Roadmap (LVCAR) Study’s Working Group.
Mr. Granowetter holds a Bachelor of Science in Computer Science and Engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Ben Lubetsky
Vice President, Sales
Ben Lubetsky is MÄK’s Vice President of Sales. He is a seasoned sales and business development leader with a technology rich background.
Before joining MÄK, Lubetsky was the senior director of marketing and business development at Attunity, where he was responsible for creating and expanding strategic partnerships as well as managing marketing. At Vertical Communications he was vice president of partner development and sales operations, helping the company grow revenue 400%. He has also held the role of European director for Omtool and director marketing & industry alliances for Navic Networks.
Lubetsky was MÄK’s first employee, working as the director of business development, sales, and marketing for nine years. He started his career at Bolt Bernak and Newman.
Lubetsky holds a Bachelor of Science in Computer Science from Boston University.
Julian R. Mallett
Vice President, Services Division
Julian R Mallett serves as MÄK’s Vice President of Project Services. He joined the company in 2000 as the International Sales Manager, increasing international sales revenue by 35% annually for 8 years (1500% percent). In 2008 he was appointed Vice President of Sales. Mallett has a strong technology background with extensive experience in engineering, project management, and sales in a variety of vertical markets.
Before joining MÄK, Mallett founded The Promus Corporation which he managed as vice president of sales for eight years. Promus specialized in software and software customization of 3D CAD modeling and visualization systems for the Process and Chemical industries serving customers such as Merck Pharmaceuticals, Hess Petroleum, Kodak, Nabisco, Con Edison, Fluor, Air Products, Foster Wheeler, and other engineering companies.
At Raytheon, Mallett served as the manager of engineering for their subsidiary Badger Engineers, Inc. In this role he managed a department of 500 people with over two billion dollars in projects.
At Global Engineering, he pioneered the design of deepwater pipeline design, analysis and deepwater construction techniques. During his tenure at the company he also held the roles of engineer, proposal manager, project manager, engineering manager, and regional operations director with assignments in the UK, Holland and Malaysia.
In Mallett’s early career he worked for the United Kingdom Ministry of Defense and for Hawker Siddley Aviation developing finite element analysis software for aircraft fatigue analysis of the A300 Airbus wings.
Julian graduated as a Mechanical Engineer with a specialization in Aeronautics from Middlesex University in North London.
Thomas Stanzione
Vice President, Advanced Technologies Division
Thomas Stanzione is the Vice President of Research and Development at MÄK. He has over twenty-years of experience in modeling and simulation, including work in distributed simulations and computer generated force (CGF) applications, simulation software development, and system integration. He has worked as lead developer, project manager, and line manager for research and development efforts, which have included object-oriented software design and development.
At MÄK, Stanzione is currently the principal investigator on the Geospatially Enabled Modeling and Simulation (GEMS) project for the US Army Geospatial Center. He was also the principal investigator on the Smart Terrain Phase II SBIR project for the US Army Natick Soldier Systems center, using GIS to generate military relevant features for simulation. He has been involved with other SBIR projects at MÄK, including material-encoded textures for CGF applications and interfacing the TacAir-Soar Intelligent Synthetic Force (ISF) model with the VR-Forces simulation engine.
Prior to joining MÄK, Stanzione was the manager of the Simulation Technology section at Litton TASC, where he specialized in developing and integrating emerging technologies into CGF systems. He was the principal investigator on the Air Force DMO synthetic environment standardization effort, as well as the principal investigator for the DARPA Command Forces CGF program. Prior to joining TASC, Stanzione served as the deputy director of the CGF group at Bolt, Beranek, and Newman, and was one of the principal developers of the ModSAF CGF system. Stanzione holds a Bachelor of Science and Master of Science in Photographic Science from the Rochester Institute of Technology.
