Daniel Vlad is responsible for the development of the company's technology and R&D strategy. He has over fifteen years of experience in research and eight years experience in information technology. He is the developer and founder of CasualAnalyst.com, a financial research Web site ranked by TheStreet.com's Stockpikr as a top 100 finance and investing blog, and Sphera Technologies, LLC, an IT consulting and investment research company. Prior to joining Pacific Epoch Mr. Vlad was a senior IT architect at Highmark and a senior consultant for Allin Consulting. An accomplished researcher, he has published articles in leading programming, physics and computational biology journals. He holds an MBA in finance and a PhD in physics from the University of Pittsburgh.