We Are VIAS

Burak Ozturk is a mechanical engineer with over 10 years of experience in the Oil and Gas Industry. He has a strong theoretical background in thermal-fluid sciences, structural design, and analysis, mechanical components and design, and FEA. He founded VIAS in September of 2015 to place the company at the cutting edge of the industry technology and innovation through identifying directions, collaboration and facilitating, and managing internal/external R&D projects. He is an Adjunct Associate Professor at The University of Houston, and lectures on a Course in ‘Pipeline Design’ in the Mechanical Engineering Department. He also teaches in the College of Technology, where he is a member of the Industry Advisory Board (IAB). He holds some 25 conference and journal publications and is an expert in his field.
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Vikram Dhruva, MS, MBA is a Managing Member and Director of Scientific Simulation Sales at VIAS. Vikram Dhruva is a Structural Engineer with more than 20 years of experience in Applied Mechanics, Design, non-linear FEA (Implicit & Explicit), Fatigue, Durability, Reliability, and Fluid Structural Interaction simulations in Automotive, Aerospace, Industrial Equipment, Life Science, High-Tech, and Energy industry. Vikram Dhruva has worked on more than 250+ advanced engineering analysis projects and helped many companies across all industries to set up a design and simulation group. He also helped many companies to customize the simulation tools for the designer and analysis as a vertical solution using Python.

Prior joining to VIAS, Vikram Dhruva worked with Dassault Systemes Simulia Corp for over 20 years and managed North American and Latin American simulation sales business initiatives in supporting customers from multi-geo multi-industries and developing the sales channel partner. He has recruited more than 50 partners in the Americas and enabled them to sell the simulation and to provide local support. He has also taught many advanced simulation classes and part of the advanced class development team within Dassault Systemes during his initial time at Simulia.

Miguel Villalpando was a Sales Director who helped Dassult Systemes built the business transformation channel, managing the relationships with key international customers in Mexico. Before starting with DASSAULT SYSTEMES, Miguel spent seven years with Siemens PLM on different roles, and previously 2 years with FEMSA. Miguel is a mechanical engineer, with a master degree on IT administration, graduated from the ITESM. Miguel enjoys practicing football, and spent quality time with his family.

Kip has over 20 years of experience in the PLM/PDM fields. He has worked in a variety of positions from EPDM Developer to Director of Technical Applications as well as serving many companies as a PLM consultant.  Among his areas of expertise he has become a Certified EPDM Professional, a Certified PDM Works Support Technician, and a Certified EPDM Administrator.

Susan has 20+ years of proven sales management, business development and marketing experience in CAD, CAM, CAE, and PLM. She has worked with many industries such as Aerospace and Defense, Automotive, Industrial Equipment and some Life Sciences. Her recent experiences with modern technologies include Social, Mobility, Analytics and Collaboration, Enterprise Digital Transformation and IoT.

Glenn Larson is the Senior CATIA Applications Engineer and a Design SME at VIAS working with the 3DEXPERIENCE in CATIA products such as Functional Generative Design & Generative Shape Morphing, as well as expertise with Digital Shape. Glenn has a long history in manufacturing and is our expert in DELMIA, Designing Factory Flow simulation and Process Planning as well as NC machining , and 3Dprinting. Prior to joining VIAS, Glenn spent the last 12 years in the Aerospace and Automotive Industry specializing in Engineering and Design of parts for the military, NASA and Automotive suppliers. He started out in the Aerospace field working in Product Engineering and eventually became Head of Engineering of a large defense supplier in the Florida Panhandle. During his time as Head of Engineering, he worked on a variety of projects including the Lockheed F35, F16 and C130 designs. Upon leaving the defense supplier, Glenn opened his own Engineering and Machine shop and began designing and manufacturing prototypes for several defense suppliers to the Air Force.

Before Glenn was in Aerospace, he was in Automotive as a Research and Design Engineer for a Clutch plate manufacturer developing new products
and testing wet and dry friction with new materials. Glenn holds an ASE Master Tech Certification in the Automotive Industry where he spent his
early years rebuilding transmissions. While at Corporate AAMCO Glenn was a Corporate Trainer and Regional Manager responsible for training automotive techs, and presenting around the globe on Transmissions.

Glenn’s skills include CATIA Design, manufacturing assembly and machine programming, CMM programming, VBA and Data Base development.
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Mechanical Engineer with over 10 years of experience in customer-support and consultancy in using Abaqus as a former Dassault Systemes employee for a range of diverse industries including the following: automotive, aerospace, heavy-machinery, biomedical, consumer goods & packaging etc. Expertise in various structural and thermal procedures of Abaqus and its features with specific focus on: connectors, Abaqus-Dymola co-simulation, co-simulation between different Abaqus products, Discrete Element Methods, contact & constraints. Experience in using Dymola, Catia, Solidworks and 3DExperience. Graduated from Brown University with a Doctorate in Solid Mechanics and Masters in Applied Mathematics. Hobbies include hiking, philosophy, music, learning new languages, and community service.

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Murthy Lakshmiraju, Ph.D. has over 15 years of advanced use and experience in CFD to solve real life engineering problems for numerous industries, including appliances, energy, marine, chemical processing and life sciences.  Dr. Lakshmiraju has experience in multi-physics, including advanced turbulence modeling, multiphase flow, heat transfer, rheology, Dynamic Fluid Body Interaction (DFBI), Fluid Structure Interaction (FSI), Chimera mesh and Conjugate Heat Transfer (CHT). He can be reached at .
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Pankaj has more than 9 years of academic and industrial experience in modeling and simulation of different types of electromagnetic problems. He has worked in the areas of Antenna, Antenna Array, Filter Design, Microwave, and RF circuits from GHz to THz, Bio-electromagnetics, EMI/EMC, EDA/Electronics, and Low-Frequency Electromagnetic problems. He provides technical support and engineering services to customers and helps drive the growth of VIAS electromagnetic solutions. He worked with Dassault Systems as a Solution Consultant and was responsible for Aerospace & Defense and High-Tech industry technical portfolios for the CST Studio Suite. He is a graduate of the Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi (IIT-D), where he studied Radio Frequency Design and Technology.
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Kiran has a Master of Engineering in Mechanical Design Engineering from the University of Pune. He has 5+ years of industrial experience in Forging domain in die design, development and Manufacturing field and 11+ years of experience in Engineering Consulting, Technical Support and Presales activities in the areas of Design and Digital Manufacturing, engineering and validation. As a CAD and Manufacturing professional he has worked on various onsite projects in Automotive, Process Industries and Nuclear Energy Segments for virtual manufacturing process validation. His expertise is in Forging Design, Plant Design and validation using Digital Manufacturing solutions and CAD using multiple CAD solutions. He is an expert in manufacturing processes.

Celso Noronha, Dr. is a Lead FEA Consultant at VIAS. Dr. Noronha is an engineer with master’s and doctor’s degrees in Structural Engineering with an emphasis in FEM. He has multidisciplinary capabilities allied to his knowledge of main FEA tools, with strong usage of Abaqus for advanced engineering analyses. He has strong experience in product manufacturing, design, and development, as well as R&D projects with more than ten publications in international conferences.
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Christopher J. Habura, M.S.M.E. is a mechanical engineer with more than 15 years of experience using the Python programming language for creating pre- and post-processing scripts and customized GUI applications to interface with Abaqus/CAE as well as stand-alone Python scripts and GUI applications (PyQt) to automate workflow outside of Abaqus. In addition to Mr. Habura’s extensive experience with Python, he has been using Abaqus for complex thermal/structural nonlinear analyses for almost 20 years. This allows him to readily grasp the key technical aspects of an analysis as they relate to the desired automation process. He received his master’s and bachelor’s of science in mechanical engineering from the University of Pittsburgh and Penn State University, respectively.

Mark Blanford, Ph.D. is a mechanical engineer with more than 40 years of research, industrial, and consulting experience in solid mechanics analysis and code development, non-linear FEA, and oil & gas geomechanics from field to borehole scale analysis. He received his master’s and doctorate in mechanical engineering from Rice University. He also has a strong background in project management, business management, team leadership, and technology development. Dr. Blanford has taught short courses in geomechanics and possesses deep technical knowledge and working skills in Abaqus and other FEA codes. He has authored or coauthored several technical reports and journal publications.
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Balji is the Naval Engineering Technical Lead at VIAS with over 45 years of experience in the design evaluation, performance analysis, scale model testing and full-scale trials of ships and floating platforms. He has degrees in Ocean engineering and Mechanical engineering with a strong background in marine hydrodynamics and arctic technology. His expertise in the area of vessel seakeeping, maneuverability and operability evaluations comes from over thirty years of project and consulting experience. He has ten years of experience in the performance evaluation of icebreaking ships completing projects on the Arctic & Antarctic traffic-ability of polar class ships for the U.S. and Canadian coast guards. He is well versed with marine regulatory/classification requirements for ships, having worked at ABS in the area of high-speed craft rule development. Mr. Menon has technical publications in all areas of his expertise and is an active member of SNAME.
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A trusted, award winning sales professional with extensive experience presenting, selling, implementing, and supporting engineering software solutions. Derek focuses in working alongside customers to help position them to effectively utilize best-in-class engineering software provided by Dassault Systèmes.

Vast experience selling the SIMULIA portfolio, which handles virtual simulation for every domain of physics imaginable. Also experienced selling CAD, PLM, and the 3DEXPERIENCE Platform.

Milos joined VIAS Corp in 2021 as a Regional Sales Manager after working for close to 5 years with electric vehicle startup companies on the West Coast and the Midwest.  Milos enabled his clients to start utilizing the right solutions for their product development needs by leveraging his industry experience and business acumen, focusing on seamless product development for engineers, and minimized risk/accelerated go-to market plans for the C-suite.  His dedication to his client needs and his creative problem-solving made him the go-to person for CAE, CAD, and product development solutions.

Milos earned his master’s in business administration from Florida Tech, where he heavily focused on innovation in tech and creating value for clients through a metrics-based approach.  Before completing his MBA, Milos earned a bachelor’s in business economics with honors, for which his areas of focus were macro- and microeconomics.  In his free time, Milos enjoys riding and tinkering around his adventure-style motorcycle . He also enjoys photography, outdoor activities, and travel.