About us

Sailesh Chowdhury

President and CEO

Sailesh R. Chowdhury has developed this high technology company with specialization in the area of Radar, Command and Control, Communication, Weapon Control, Air Traffic Control, Naval Combat Systems, Computer Security, Displays, and Weather Systems. He received an Engineering Innovation award from the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers (IEEE), several Engineering Excellence Awards from the U S Navy and has been recognized in many publications.

Mr. Chowdhury received an MSE in Computer Science and Information Systems from the University of Pennsylvania, MEE from the City University of New York, BEE from Jadavpur University, India. He attended Dartmouth, Harvard and Monmouth University for various business management studies.

Mr. Chowdhury held professional positions as chief scientist, lead engineer and computer scientist. He worked for RCA Missile and Radar Division (currently a division of Lockheed Martin), United Technologies, and Computer Sciences Corporation. He also performs as board members of several private organizations.

Ted Hontz         

Dahlgren Division (TEAMBCI)
Vice President

Capt. Hontz, USN(Ret.) served as a Surface Warfare Officer on cruisers and destroyers at sea and in numerous positions while ashore. As the Aegis program sponsor in OPNAV, he supported development and delivery of planning and budget concepts to Pentagon flag officers and congressional decision makers. During Operations Desert Shield and Desert Storm, Mr. Hontz commanded USS Princeton (CG59) and performed anti-air warfare commander responsibilities for a four carrier task force. He ended his navy career as the Commanding Officer of the Aegis Training Center in Dahlgren.

Mr. Hontz received his B.S. in Naval Science from the U.S. Naval Academy, an M.B.A. with a concentration in Systems Acquisitions from the Naval Postgraduate School and an M.A. in National Security and Strategic Studies from the Naval War College.

Tom McParland

FAA Division
Vice President

Mr. McParland’s leadership in Computer Communication and Networks, Security Protocols, Cryptography, Weather Web services, Command and Control and Weather systems has positioned BCI’s, FAA Division for future technology and expanding business development. In his earlier career, He serviced in the US Army, he was awarded a meritorious service medal. Mr. McParland has numerous technical publications and gives lectures in evolving technology including IEEE.

Mr. McParland received an MA in Education and BA in Mathematics from the West Chester State College, PA. He attended Florida Institute of Technology and Monmouth University, NJ for graduate studies in Mathematics and Computer Science.

In his career, Mr.McParland held professional positions as technical director, of software engineering . He worked for RCA Government Communications, Computer Sciences Corporation and Stanford Telecom. He served as the Chairman of Security sub-group of the Aeronautical Communication Panel (ACP) for the FAA. As a Subject Matter Expert, he supports many advanced programs for the FAA , e.g. SWIM, Common Support Services (CSS) - Weather team, and ACP of International Civil Aviation Organization(ICAO).

Frank Caruso

Vice President

Mr. Caruso has more than forty years of experience in the areas of finance, and contract management, specifically with the Department of Defense (DoD) and the Department of Transportation (DoT) /Federal Aviation Administration (FAA). He oversees corporate finance & accounting for BCI, government compliance reporting, contracts, and communication with the Defense Contract Audit Agency (DCAA) and Defense Contract Management Agency (DCMA).

Mr. Caruso has an MBA from the Monmouth University and a BS in Accounting from the Villanova University.

Mr. Caruso held positions as Director of Finance, Program Manager, Senior Program Operation Specialist and Cost Analyst . He worked for Computer Sciences Corporation, Stone & Webster Engineering Corporation, RMS Technologies , and Ray Communications, Inc.

Mike Harven

Director
Special Programs

While at BCI Mr. Harven has successfully worked and directed many programs supporting industry, numerous DOD (USAF, USMC, US Navy, and US Army) and government customers in the area of Radar design and development, Information Technology (IT)/Information Assurance (IA), Cybersecurity, and Network design. Mr. Harven has also served as Program Manager on several large IT/IA contracts at NSWC, Carderock and Philadelphia, and is currently a key member of the FAA Spectrum Efficient National Surveillance Radar (SENSR) program’s government engineering team.

Mr. Harven holds a B.S. in Computer Engineering Technology has completed post graduate studies in meteorology, network engineering, and cybersecurity and has also earned several industry standard IT Certifications.

While serving in the U.S. Marine Corps, and as an employee at the Naval Air Test Center (NATC) Patuxent River, MD he calibrated test equipment and also conceptualized, designed, and built automated RF & Microwave calibration systems. At the National Weather Service, he managed the computer systems, communications networks, and weather sensing systems such as NEXRAD, AWIPS, ASOS, NOAA Weather Radio, and GOES satellite.

Tim Maese

Sensor Sytems
Technical Director

Mr. Maese serves as the Director of BCI Sensors, managing a design team of highly skilled engineers. In addition to his management responsibilities, Mr. Maese also serves as the lead design engineer on a number of projects, notably the through-the-sensor weather processor and radar hardware product lines. He also directs our SBIR team to sucessful wins for phase I, II III awards.

Mr. Maese has over 15 years of engineering experience, including experience at Lockheed Martin as a radar systems engineer and Sarnoff Corporation, where he lead the design of a software defined radio. Mr. Maese holds a MS in Electrical and Computer Engineering from Georgia Tech and a BS in electrical engineering from Penn State.

Jim Olivo

Weather Systems
Director

The leadership of Mr. Olivo, a senior Meteorologist with over 25 years of experience, BCI has supported the expansion of our business base in the area of Aviation Weather programs. He continues to be responsible for the FAA Aviation Weather Research and System Engineering Group programs at the WJH Technical Center.

In support of the FAA Weather Technology in the Cockpit (WTIC) program, Mr. Olivo led the development of a client server system to display the Graphical Turbulence Guidance (GTG) products to commercial airline pilots during flight.

Mr. Olivo is the lead Meteorologist and System Integrator to Lufthansa Airlines for the Global Weather Hazard Program and to Delta Airlines for the Flight Weather Viewer program.

Mr. Olivo interfaces with the FAA, National Weather Service (NWS), National Severe Storm Laboratories (NSSL), National Center of Atmospheric Research (NCAR), and other Federally Funded Research and Development Centers (FFRDC) to access and transfer weather data in support of many research programs.

Mr. Olivo has a BS, Atmospheric Science from the Pennsylvania State University.

Robert Owens

CPDLC Program Manager

With over 30 years of experience, Mr. Owens serves as the Program Manager for the FAA’s Controller Pilot Data Link Communications (CPDLC) program. In addition to his program manager role Mr. Owens acts as the lead design engineer for the Tower Data Link System (TDLS) as well as principle software developer.

In his early career, Robert has been involved in several DoD projects including the Navy’s AEGIS program, and several signal intelligence programs. Robert has over 27 years of experience in Air to Ground communications on a wide variety of aeronautical communication systems. Robert is one of the lead developers of BCI’s Aeronautical Telecommunications Network (ATN) Router which is currently in use by 8 Pacific Rim countries as well as the United States.

Mr. Owens graduated from Stockton State University with a BS in Computer Science.

Vicki Schmidt

Director
HR

Ms. Schmidt has experience in company administration, contracts and proposals, and human resources.

Prior to BCI, she served in the U.S. Air Force as an Avionics Technician where she worked primarily on aircraft targeting systems for the A-10 Thunderbolt II.

Ms. Schmidt earned her M.B.A. from Liberty University in 2015; she received her B.L.S. with Distinction in Business Administration from the University of Mary Washington.

John Winters

Human Systems Integration
Program Director

In the over eighteen years that Mr. Winters has been at BCI, he has provided human factors engineering expertise for acquisition programs, policy development, and research and development efforts. At the policy level, his experience includes the establishment of NAVSEA certification criteria for HSI and coordinating the HSI design certification of Aegis BMD 4.0.1. He oversees BCI’s team of human factors engineers and other human systems specialists that support policy and programs for Navy and Marine Corps customers.

Kim Lewis

Interoperability and Systems Safety Engineering
Program Director

Ms. Lewis joined Basic Commerce and Industries, Inc (BCI) in Dahlgren, VA in 2004. She began as a contract specialist while simultaneously gaining experience in various aspects of company management, administration, contracting, business development and program support. She is currently BCI’s Program Director for Safety and Interoperability and Assistant Program Director for Ballistic Missile Defense and Navy Combat Systems programs.

Ms. Lewis received her B.S. in Finance from Virginia Commonwealth University and is also a 2014 graduate of the Leadership Fredericksburg Program.

Darrell Myers

Aegis/BMD Baseline Systems Engineering
Program Director

Mr. Myers, Chief Warrant Officer (CWO2)(Ret.), came to BCI in 2000 following his Navy career with staff, carrier, amphibious, Aegis and training commands. His experience is with weapon systems design requirements development and trace, system engineering and integration, performance verification, Weapons System Performance Analysis (WSPA), baseline certification, Battle Force Interoperability (BFI), Ballistic Missile Defense (BMD), Development Test (DT), and Operational Test (OT). While a Senior Systems Engineer at BCI currently providing engineering and technical support for for Aegis baseline development at NSWCDD and the Missile Defense Agency’s (MDA) development of Aegis Ashore (AA), Mr. Myers also oversees a BCI team of nine engineers that support the Littoral Combat Ship (LCS), BMD and Aegis Combat System Ship Qualification Trials (CSSQTs).

Mr. Myers received his A.S. in General Education from the University of the State of New York.

Dan Phillips

Program Director

Mr. Phillips is a retired Surface Warfare Officer serving in destroyers, frigates and amphibious ships at sea and in several shore-based commands. As the Director of Training at the Aegis Training and Readiness Center, he guided all Aegis technical and operations training and represented Aegis training community at Aegis Program Reviews, Program Design Reviews, and Critical Design Reviews, as well as at Navy-wide Surface Warfare Training Requirements Reviews/Boards.

Mr. Phillips received his B.S. in Mechanical Engineering from the U.S. Naval Academy and an M.S. in Physics in the Weapons Systems Science curriculum at the U.S. Naval Postgraduate School.