The Lumina Team

Max Henrion has 25 years of experience as a researcher, educator, software designer, consultant, and entrepreneur, specializing in the design and effective use of decision technologies. He is the Founder and CEO of Lumina Decision Systems. He has led teams to create decision-support tools in a wide variety of applications, including energy, environment, R&D management, healthcare, telecommunications, aerospace, security, and consumer choice.  He is the lead designer of Lumina’s flagship product line, Analytica -— the software about which PC Week said “Everything that’s wrong with the common spreadsheet is fixed in Analytica”.  At Ask Jeeves, he was Vice President for Decision Technology, where he led the division that created the Jeeves Advisor, offering online consumer advice, based on technology acquired from Lumina.  He was previously a Professor at Carnegie Mellon University in Engineering and Public Policy. He has published three books, including Uncertainty: A Guide to dealing with Uncertainty in Policy and Risk Analysis  (Cambridge University Press, 1990), and over sixty peer-reviewed articles. He was the founding President of the Association for Uncertainty and Artificial Intelligence. He has an MA in Natural Sciences from Cambridge University, Master of Design from the Royal College of Art, London, and a PhD from Carnegie Mellon.

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Lonnie Chrisman, PhD, is Lumina's Chief Technical Officer, where he heads engineering and development of Analytica®. He has authored dozens refereed publications in the areas of machine learning, Artificial Intelligence planning, robotics, probabilistic inference, Bayesian networks, and computational biology. He was was in eighth grade when he had his first paid programming job. He was awarded the Alton B. Zerby award "Most outstanding Electrical Engineering Student in the USA", 1979. He has a PhD in Artificial Intelligence and Computer Science from Carnegie Mellon University; and a BS in Electrical Engineering from University of California at Berkeley.  Lonnie used Analytica for seismic structural analysis of an extension that he built to his own home where he lives with his wife and four daughters: So, he really trusts Analytica calculations!

Xirong (Elise) Jiang, PhD, is Lumina’s Director of Business for Asia-Pacific leading the marketing and business development in Asia-Pacific. As a Senior Decision Analyst, she specializes in decision consulting and building transparent decision-support tools for clients facing complex decisions from different industries including governmental organizations, energy industry, finance industry and consulting industry etc. For example, she has led the development of ATEAM (Analytica Transportation Energy Assessment Model) to project the effects of new technologies, including biofuels, plug-in hybrids, and hydrogen fuel cell vehicles on the US vehicle fleet to assess fuel economy, demand by fuel type, and lifecycle GHG emissions.  Prior to joining Lumina, she was a Senior Associate at Green World Capital, LLC, assisting companies in Clean Tech industry in corporate financing and project financing, and a Research Analyst at Glass, Lewis & Co., LLC, advising institutional investors on the corporate governance practice of their portfolio companies. She received a Ph.D. in Physics at Stanford University with a dissertation focused on developing cutting-edge technologies of fuels cells and solar cells. In connection with her work, she has received three international patents and published fourteen journal articles. Xirong also holds an M.S. in Management Science and Engineering from Stanford University, and a B.S. in Material Science and Engineering from Beijing Normal University.

Surya Swamy, MS, has extensive experience in building Analytica models focused on energy and environmental issues.  He has worked on the design and development of the SEDS (Stochastic Energy Deployment System) modules and on ATEAM (Analytica Transportation Energy Assessment Model) on the modeling of biofuels and hydrogen, production and use. He has experience in working with multidisciplinary stakeholder groups and developing decision tools to assist them in more transparent decision making. As an example, he worked with a multi-disciplinary research team to lead the development of PLATFORM, a multi-attribute decision analysis framework to enable decision makers and stakeholders to choose among viable decommissioning alternatives off the coast of Southern California, which was credited with influencing state policy on instituting a 'Rigs to Reefs' program. Surya has consulted for State and Federal agencies globally on matters of climate and energy policies. He is currently involved in a World Bank funded Low Carbon Development study to assess the technical potential for low carbon pathways in the Nigerian Power Sector. Surya has a Masters Degree in Mechanical Engineering from Carnegie Mellon University, where his research focused on developing optimization tools and methods to understand the effects of policy and consumer preferences on design decisions in the automotive and manufacturing industries. Surya also holds a BS in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Texas at Austin.

Abhay Manandhar, BS, is an Associate Software Engineer at Lumina Decision Systems. He majored in engineering and graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Swarthmore College, Pennsylvania in 2009. At Lumina, he is primarily focused on enhancing the Analytica installer and Analytica licensing features, and developing tools for backend integration. He is also responsible for maintaining the Lumina servers and is greatly enjoying getting to know the Analytica code base better.