IMSA Alumnus and Local Business Owner Join Foundation Board
For Immediate Release, August 2006
For comment, contact Brenda Buschbacher at
(630) 907-5033
AURORA — The IMSA Fund for Advancement of Education has elected St. Charles executive Ronald (Ron) Bullock of South Barrington and IMSA graduate and entrepreneur Benjamin (Ben) Chelf of San Francisco, CA. to its Board of Directors.
Mr. Bullock is the Chairman and CEO of Bison Gear and Engineering, a manufacturer of gearmotors and reducers in St. Charles, IL. Under Bullock's leadership, Bison Gear entered the European market, expanded its product line, added new distribution channels and established a Research and Development facility. Bullock's career in the power transmission industry includes positions in engineering, marketing, operations and general management.
Bullock also has played a leadership role in a variety of national and statewide industry associations including the National Association of Manufacturers, the American Gear Manufacturers Association, the Small Motor Manufacturers Association and the Illinois Manufacturers Association.
An advocate for reform of the legal system, Mr. Bullock has published papers on tort reform, product liability law, and other issues of public and national business concern and also has testified on health care reform before the House of Representatives Small Business Committee.
Bullock received his B.S. degree in Engineering Systems Analysis from Wright State University in Dayton, Ohio and serves on the Advisory Council of the College of Engineering and Computer Science. In 2004, Bullock was elected Eminent-Engineer by Tau Beta Pi National Honorary Society.
IMSA Class of 1996 graduate Ben Chelf is Chief Technology Officer and Co-Founder for Coverity, Inc., and helps provide state-of-the-art automated source code analysis for customers as varied as NASA, IBM, Sun Microsystems, the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and Naperville-based Tellabs. Coverity's customers also include some of the largest development organizations in the world such as Oracle, Cisco, Symantec, Samsung, PalmOne, and IBM.
"At the core of our software," says Chelf, "is technology that looks for defects in other people's software - known in the industry as Static Source Code Analysis," he said.
Chelf received his B.S. and M.S. degrees from Stanford University and was one of the founding members of the Stanford Computer Science Laboratory team that architected and developed the technology for Coverity.
Chelf has co-authored numerous research publications and also wrote a column for Linux Magazine discussing various advanced programming features of the Linux operating system.
"IMSA gave me a very 'I can do it' attitude," says Chelf. "I never planned to be an entrepreneur, but when the opportunity arose to start Coverity, I was ready and excited to tackle the challenge."
The IMSA Fund for Advancement of Education is a 501(c)(3) not-for-profit corporation organized for the benefit of, to perform the functions of, or to carry out certain charitable, educational, literary and scientific purposes of the Illinois Mathematics and Science Academy. The IMSA Fund solicits, receives, invests and administers gifts, grants and other contributions from the private sector (corporations, foundations, individuals and other organizations) to support IMSA's mission and work.
The internationally recognized Illinois Mathematics and Science Academy® (IMSA) develops creative, ethical leaders in science, technology, engineering and mathematics. As a teaching and learning laboratory created by the State of Illinois, IMSA enrolls academically talented Illinois students (grades 10-12) in its advanced, residential college preparatory program. It also serves thousands of educators and students in Illinois and beyond through innovative instructional programs that foster imagination and inquiry. (www.imsa.edu)