Dr. Mark Stapleton has 24 years of combined practical experience and intense environmental engineering research.  He is a licensed PE in 14 states, Certified Environmental Auditor; an Associate to the American Academy of Environmental Engineers (AEE), and in 2002 was elected to the prestigious Sigma Xi, Scientific Research Society.  His most recent publication can be obtained in:  Stapleton JM, and Ningelgen, K. “Development of a Risk Assessment Decision Support System for the Risk Assessment of Suspected Contaminated Sites at U.S. Air Force Installations in Europe”, EUCOM Conference in Sonthofen Germany, June 2009.

Over the past 5 years, Dr. Stapleton has supported risk assessments on more than $76M worth of TOs involving environmental remediation and compliance. Dr. Stapleton provided engineering and technical consulting as Senior Environmental Engineer to the Air Force Center for Environmental Excellence at Brooks Air Force Base, San Antonio, TX for 15 years. Dr. Stapleton provided litigation support to the United States Air Force and the Department of Justice as an expert witness which resulted in a cost savings of $13 million. His area of specialty is environmental microbiology, especially relating to bioremediation.  He has supervised and consulted on the implementation remedial technologies such as pump and treat, remedial systems optimization, soil vapor extraction, air sparging, permeable reactive barrier (PRB), PHOSters, in-situ chemical oxidation, in-situ enhanced bioremediation/bioaugmentation, phytoremediation and developed 3-D fate and transport groundwater computer models for organic and heavy metal contamination at more than 200 sites.

Dr. Stapleton uses both finite element and finite difference models, such as Groundwater Vistas, Visual Modflow, Groundwater Modeling System and FEFLOW to analyzed and develop 3-D groundwater flow & transport models. These platforms couple powerful model design system to provide a comprehensive understanding of groundwater plume migration, fate and transport and risk assessment .  Dr. Stapleton applies advanced stochastic modeling to provide groundwater risk assessment analysis and allows for the quantification of uncertainty. In addition, under Dr. Stapleton supervision, Bhate project engineers and geologists use an array of bioremediation, groundwater chemistry and water geochemistry software for aqueous geochemical data analysis.  Dr. Stapleton refined the development of holistic, human health-operational risk based, USAFE-specific Risk Assessment Decision Support System (RADSS) model for the United States Air Force in Europe (USAFE).  The implementation of RADSS software is mandatory at all USAFE sites and is required by USAFE Cleanup Program (USAFEI 32-7067).

Dr. Tschand holds a Medical Doctorate from the University of Kabul and served as a faculty member of Kabul Medical University from 1982 through 1990. He moved to the US in 1997 to pursue a career in the field of Information. Prior to joining Bhate, Dr. Tschand worked for 11 years at ACS, a Xerox Company as part of Direct Student Loan Servicing System serving 15 million Borrowers with 40 Million Loans. As a member of the MIS team, he designed and developed many report generation software that has positively impacted project improvement and generated response to high visibility queries, including requests made by Members of the United States Congress. Combining skills of Business Development Strategies and Software Programming and Database skills, Dr. Tschand started Mahandes Company, an IT servicing firm in 2008. Mahandes Company focused on a business collaboration portal for which Microsoft SharePoint was selected as the ideal choice. Dr. Tschand served as Mahandes’ Engagement Manager for SharePoint consulting contracts and provided direction and strategic planning to multiple work streams. He served clients with SharePoint needs that include Installation, Architecture, Development, Central Administration and user training. Clients included the United States Army Corps of Engineers, Office of Inspector General, EADS North America, Quality Software Solutions Inc. and Howrey LLP.