David A. Rockstraw, Ph. D., P. E.

Rockstraw has worked in the chemical processing industries; academia; government labs; and private practice as a consultant, R&D engineer, expert witness, and forensic analyst. He has diverse experience in a wide cross-section of technical areas of the chemicals & materials industry, including: commodity chemicals; energy; water; petrochemicals; pharmaceuticals; agricultural chemicals; fluorochemicals; monomers, polymers and plastics; plutonium processing; membrane/electromembrane processes; safety; biofuels; processed foods; and academic administration. Rockstraw’s career emphasized process design, analysis, simulation, scale-up, and commercial start-up; though he has also been involved in a wide range of fundamental research studies.

Rockstraw has testified in deposition, trial, arbitration, inter partes review (IPR), and post grant review (PGR). He has appeared in United States Federal Court, the International Trade Commission, before the European Patent Office (Germany), the Vienna International Arbitral Centre (Austria), and had testimony entered before the International Court of Arbitration of the International Chamber of Commerce (France), the Superior Court of Justice (Canada). He has sat in the witness chair for 20 hours in a single trial.

Rockstraw has extensive training with process simulation software (Aspen Plus); literature search library skills; the ability to climb steep learning curves.

He has strong laboratory and pilot plant skills, can design and build chemical process experiments at both scales, and is able to design and carry out experiments to collect statistically-significant data. Rockstraw has rented lab space at a major academic institution on the east coast, relocated temporarily to the region, then spent a month performing chemical reaction engineering research in support of a patent infringement litigation.