Management Biographies
Melih Abdulhayoglu
President and CEO - Comodo Group
Melih gained a Bachelor of Engineering degree in Electronic Engineering (B.Eng.) from Bradford University in 1991. Since then he has specialised in computer security systems, and has particular knowledge of Internet security and transaction, communication, hardware and software security implementation. Melih has numerous patent applications in the field of computer security to his name and is responsible for new product strategy and development. Melih has been key in providing the product vision for the product development areas and has also spearheaded the architectural design and implementation of Comodo products, services and infrastructure. Melih is also responsible for strategising the deployment of Comodo products. Melih has published a number of security related articles in the associated press and is a key public speaker for the Comodo Group.
Eric Emanuel
Chairman - Comodo Group
Eric started his career on Wall Street in 1964. He became Vice-President
of institutional sales at Paine Webber in 1970. He opened his own firm,
Emanuel and Company, in 1975, which provided full service investment banking. While
specializing in state and municipal finance, Emanuel and Company underwrote
many public issues and provided venture capital to developing companies.
In 1994 Eric sold his company and turned to the area of merchant banking
focusing in technology, real estate and the entertainment industries.
He is a governor and founder of the National Parkinson Foundation and
a board trustee for the John Noble Museum. He is a member of the Economic
Club of New York.
Michael Whittam
Chief Finance Officer
Michael has worked for Comodo since it started in 1998. After graduating from Hull in 1987 with a BA Hons degree in Accountancy and Finance he trained with a firm of chartered accountants. He then moved into the private sector as Accountant and Company Secretary for a number of small to medium-sized companies. Over the last six years, Michael has established a successful business consultancy practice, working closely with blue-chip firms such as KPMG and Ernst Young. He is also a director in a chartered accountancy firm that specialises in providing various business and accountancy services to companies and organisations.
Judy Shapiro
Vice President, Marketing
Judy Shapiro joined Comodo in 2005 as VP of Marketing. Ms. Shapiro’s background and experience in technology marketing will strengthen Comodo’s substantial leadership and growth in Identity Assurance Management solutions for businesses, infrastructure service providers and end-users.
Judy Shapiro joins Comodo from Computer Associates where most recently she was VP, Marketing responsible for customer acquisition, retention and upsell efforts. Prior to joining Computer Associates, Ms. Shapiro held several senior management positions at Lucent Technologies, Bell Labs, Metropolitan Telecommunications and AT&T in the areas of marketing, market development, new technologies and corporate strategy. Ms. Shapiro also had been a Vice President at NWAyer, an advertising agency, where she managed numerous accounts including Procter & Gamble, JCPenney, Gillette and Chemical Bank.
Ms. Shapiro received her Bachelor of Arts degree from the City University of NY within numerous disciplines including Marketing, Advertising and History.
Andrew J. Pynes
Vice President Sales
After working as a sales and marketing consultant to Comodo for over five years, Andrew Pynes formally joined Comodo in November 2004 as Executive Vice President of Worldwide Sales & Marketing. Mr. Pynes brings over twelve years of sales, marketing and management experience in the high technology industry to Comodo, most recently as the sales & marketing executive with one of North Americas leading IT consulting/systems integration firms. Prior to joining Comodo, Mr. Pynes career also includes tenures with one of North Americas largest IT Value Added Reseller (VAR)/Systems Integrators, a leading eCommerce consulting firm, and an ERP implementation and custom application development firm. Mr. Pynes holds a B.A. and graduated with honors from the University of California, Santa Barbara.
Senior Management Team
Dr. Colin Walter
Head of Cryptography - Comodo Research Lab
Colin has a formidable international reputation in the design of hardware and algorithms for the implementation of RSA cryptography. He is on the programme committee of several international conferences (e.g. CHES and ARITH) and has given invited lectures on many occasions. He obtained his doctorate in algebraic number theory from Cambridge University and he is a senior member of the IEEE. Colin joined Comodo from UMIST and is responsible for the on-going research and development work of the cryptography team which designs, tests and verifies all the crypto-systems underlying the many and varied security products developed by Comodo. Colin is most well-known to the international community for his invention of the first ever purely locally connected systolic array for modular multiplication. This enables servers to perform the calculations for very large numbers of SSL key exchanges at once. Recent research has led to the MIST algorithm, patented by Comodo, which is a key ingredient in the secure implementation of electronic purses on smartcards. Colin has been appointed as Program Chair for the CHES conference 2003.
Dr. Richard Furness
Hardware Development - Comodo Research Lab
Richard is Head of Hardware Development with the Comodo Research Lab.
He obtained his doctorate in Electronic Engineering, entitled "Circuit
Architectures for Arithmetic Operations in Finite Fields" from Huddersfield
University. Richard has published several papers in the field of Electronics
and is a member of the Institution of Electrical and Electronic Engineers.
Robin Alden
Technical Manager - Comodo Research Lab
Robin is the Technical Manager of the Comodo Research Lab. Robin has gained a B.Sc. in Computer Science & Electronics from the University of London and an M.Sc. in Computer Science from University of Manchester. He has extensive experience at developing and implementing Global computer systems and solutions. Prior to joining the Comodo Research Lab in 2000, Robin has held senior programming and technical positions with British Airways, CAPS and InfoSys.
