Since the company’s inception as a five-person startup in 2007, founders Mr. William Dick and Dr. Mark Brandyberry have been intimately involved with the day-to-day operations of the company. The remaining founders function as investors who are closely engaged with the technologies used at Illinois Rocstar.
William A. Dick
Mr. William A. Dick is Illinois Rocstar President, Chief Executive Officer, and co-founder. A mechanical engineer by education, his technical experience is largely in the arenas of composite materials, materials science and mechanical testing, as well as the organization, establishment, and execution of large, multidisciplinary, scientific and engineering applied research programs.
He served as Assistant Dean for Research in the College of Engineering, Executive Director of the Center for Simulation of Advanced Rockets (CSAR) and Principal Investigator and Executive Director of the Air Force Research Laboratory Midwest Structural Sciences Center, all at the University of Illinois (1987-2018). After leaving the University of Illinois, he was the Deputy Director of the Composites Manufacturing and Simulation Center at Purdue University (2018-2020). Mr. Dick earned his B.S. in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Delaware (UD) and an MBA with Excellence from the University of Illinois. From 1979 to 1987, he was a Composites Engineer and Deputy Director of the UD NSF Center for Composite Materials Manufacturing and Science. Mr. Dick moved to UI in 1987 as Assistant Dean of Engineering for External Affairs/Research and was a key organizer of CSAR, becoming its founding Managing Director in 1997. Mr. Dick was the founder and principal in Pi-D 2020, a business partnership focusing on university-government research associations. He is a member of the American Society for Engineering Education (ASEE), the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (AAAS), and a Senior Member of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA). He has authored or co-authored more than 35 technical papers in the areas of simulation science, composite materials and university-government-industry research partnerships.
Mark D. Brandyberry
As cofounder and Chief Technical Officer of Illinois Rocstar, Dr. Mark D. Brandyberry leads the technical program of the company. Dr. Brandyberry’s technical strengths include software engineering, statistical analyses, risk assessment and engineering analyses of complex systems modeling; he also has a proven track record of successful business planning and accounting for large-scale, complex engineering projects. Dr. Brandyberry served as a Senior Research Scientist at the University of Illinois’s Center for Simulation of Advanced Rockets (CSAR) and the Midwest Structural Sciences Center, and was a part-time faculty member in the Computer Science and Information Technology Department at Parkland College in Champaign, Illinois.
Dr. Brandyberry received his Ph.D. in Engineering from UCLA and an M.S. in Computer Science from the University of Illinois. Following his doctoral work, Dr. Brandyberry conducted risk, safety and environmental analyses for high-risk nuclear facilities at the Department of Energy Savannah River Laboratory and later joined Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC) as a senior project lead and task manager for various risk assessment, engineering analysis and software development projects. From 2001-2013, Dr. Brandyberry led software verification, validation, engineering, and uncertainty quantifications, as well as simulation grid generation and large-scale simulation production at the University of Illinois. He has been lead author on, and co-authored several large multi-volume risk assessments, and over 40 journal and conference papers and reports. He is currently a member of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA).
Thomas L. Jackson
Dr. Thomas L. Jackson serves as Chief Scientist and company co-founder of Illinois Rocstar. Dr. Jackson draws from a reserve of expertise in applied mathematics, fluid mechanics, combustion, stability, and large-scale simulations. He currently serves as Technical Manager for the Center for Compressible Multiphase Turbulence (CCMT) at the University of Florida. His previous positions include Senior Research Scientist at the Center for Simulation of Advanced Rockets (CSAR), a Computational Science and Engineering Affiliate (CSE), and an Adjunct Professor in the Department of Aerospace Engineering (AE) at the University of Illinois.
Dr. Jackson received his Mathematics Ph.D. from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and joined the staff of the Institute for Computer Applications in Science and Engineering (ICASE). Dr. Jackson was formerly an Associate Professor at Old Dominion University in the Department of Mathematics and Statistics. He has co-edited two books, co-authored a textbook on hydrodynamic stability and authored or co-authored more than 200 papers. He is a Fellow of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME), a Fellow of the American Physical Society (APS-DFD) an Associate Fellow of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA), and a Fellow of the Combustion Institute. Dr. Jackson is the Associate Editor for AIAA Journal.
