Management Team

Comet’s management team understands the challenges their customers face and the forces shaping new product development. The team has years of pioneering experience in the field of CAE software engineering, a track record for leading teams to success and direct customer experience.

As President and Chief Executive Officer of Comet Solutions, Dan Meyer heads P&L, business operations, investor activities, international sales, and company strategy. Mr. Meyer has been on the forefront of advances in new product development for 15 years. His expertise, experience and background is ideally suited to transform the company from startup to a market leader which successfully helps its customers succeed thru early simulation. He has over 10 years executive experience in this industry with a concentration on ECAD, MCAD, and PLM. Most recently, he was Vice President of Worldwide Marketing for think3, where he repositioned the company to break open the midmarket PLM sector, leading to the highest revenue growth for any company in the industry. He had previously served as CEO of Copernus, an enterprise collaboration software company. Prior to Copernus, he was Director of Worldwide Marketing Programs for SDRC and held marketing and engineering management positions at Synopsys. He holds a BA in economics from Princeton University and an MBA from Stanford University.

In his role as company Chief Technology Officer, Mr. Panthaki drives product vision and technical strategy and is closely involved in product management,product development,corporate development and sales activities. Mr. Panthaki has been at the cutting edge of CAE software development since 1987. He started his career as a CAE software engineer at an engineering consulting firm, after which he moved to ABAQUS Inc., where he led the effort to complete an interactive environment for ABAQUS/CAE. Mr. Panthaki left ABAQUS in 1994 when he clearly saw that customers using the variety of tools from different vendors were unable to conduct simulation easily or early enough due to the complexities of a typical CAE environment. He set off to build a technology framework that could handle the complexity of CAE data, processes and results in one common data model. Mr. Panthaki provided software consulting services for several high-profile CAE projects at Sandia National Labs, NASA and other organizations where he helped them achieve greater use to simulation, early and often in the product development process. He formed and funded Comet Solutions in 2001 to productize and market this technology and deliver software solutions enabling early simulation to transform the product development process. He holds a BS in Civil Engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology in India, and an MS in Structural Engineering and Computer Graphics from Cornell University.

As Vice President of Global Sales, Steve Brown offers more than 25 years of experience in sales to customers of Comet. He joined Comet for the opportunity to bring to market a unique and disruptive technology. Abstract EngineeringModel(R) Technology and a model-based engineering approach enables companies to transform their simulation processes in the critical early concept phase. Most recently Mr. Brown was Vice President of North American Automotive at Dassault Systemes. His prior experience included Vice President roles with MSC.Software, where he grew new software sales by over 300% during his tenure as head of Automotive and later the Americas. He was also Vice President Sales for theAmericas at CoCreate, a leader in direct modeling that was acquired by PTC, and headed Automotive sales at Proficiency, an early-stage company that was a pioneer in feature-based CAD interoperability. Mr. Brown began his career at SDRC and spent 12 years there, starting in technical sales then leading theFord C3P Global Supplier deployment before moving into sales leadership. He is a graduate of Michigan State University with a degree in Mechanical Engineering.

Tim Keer holds primary responsibility for the success of Comet Solutions’ customers and oversees the team responsible for customer implementation activities and customer support. His team also works with the company’s global sales and support partners to ensure they are capable to deliver high quality technical services and support to complement our software products. Before joining Comet, Mr. Keer spent his entire career at Arup, the global engineering design firm. In 1992 he moved from London to the US to open Arup’s Detroit office, where he performed and managed technical project work for clients in the automotive, aerospace, nuclear and built environment industries. His most enjoyable assignment was leading the Arup team providing full-vehicle CAE support for the development of the 2004 Ford GT. More recently, Mr. Keer was the Management Systems Director for Arup’s Americas Region, with responsibility for developing, implementing and refining the region’s management system. He also created and led the Arup Americas Project Management Academy, designed to improve the project management skills of the region’s Project Directors and Project Managers. His strong interest in the engineering design process and its improvement was an important factor in his decision to join Comet Solutions. Mr. Keer is a graduate of the University of Cambridge with a BA and MA in Engineering.

As Vice President -Strategy & Solutions, Don is responsible for corporate business strategy, product strategy and working closely with Comet’s strategic business partners to accelerate the company’s development and global delivery of engineering process improvement solutions.  Mr. Tolle also leads Comet product development, product management and product delivery as well as sales/business development   activities for the U.S. aerospace and defense market segment. His industry experience now includes 4 years at Comet Solutions and over 27 years at SDRC/EDS/UGS/Siemens including roles in CAE software product management, CAE software product development, product marketing, engineering consulting services, strategic partnerships and mergers & acquisitions. Mr. Tolle holds a BS in Mechanical Engineering and a Masters in Business Administration from the University of Cincinnati.

As Chief Financial Officer, Geoffrey Flagg is responsible for financial planning, financial reporting, bookkeeping, human resources and compliance activities for the company. Mr. Flagg is a CPA (inactive status) with over 15 years of experience in public accounting and finance and accounting for both publicly-traded and privately-held businesses. He spent four years with the national accounting firm BDO Seidman, LLP and subsequently joined Rentech, Inc., a publicly-traded alternative energy company, as the Corporate Controller. He was promoted to Chief Financial Officer of the firm, during which time he led several private equity financing rounds, managed the implementation of new corporate insurance programs and new employee benefits programs including medical, dental and 401(k) plans, as well as guided the company to successful compliance with section 404 of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act. In addition, he was a key member of the business team that negotiated and closed a $73 million strategic acquisition, including a $30 million operating line of credit and a distribution agreement between the new subsidiary and a multi-national customer. He was also responsible for all internal and external reporting functions including SEC reporting, all cash management and treasury functions and integration of accounting and financial systems of all subsidiaries. He holds his undergraduate degree in accounting from the University of Colorado at Denver and is a member of the AICPA.

As Development Director, Patrick Champati leads product development and implementation of the technology roadmap for all Comet products. His activities include planning the direction, overseeing the operation and managing the product delivery of the development organization. Mr. Champati has over 17 years of experience in the CAE software industry. Early in his career he worked at Sofy Technologies, where he developed Sofy, a premier CAE pre-processor which later got acquired by MSC Software. Sofy was among the first products which introduced template based automation to the CAE industry. He served as CTO when he left the company in 2003. He next joined Altair Engineering, as Director of Development, where his team developed the next generation product framework which now is the basis of many of Altair’s newer products. Most recently Mr. Champati was working at MSC Software where he managed a globally distributed team responsible for graphics, geometry and meshing subsystems. He holds a BS in Mechanical Engineering from Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur and a MS in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Missouri-Rolla.