Mr. Winks has a degree in physics with additional coursework in electrical and mechanical engineering. He is an entrepreneur, having started multiple successful companies.
His power generation experience includes working as part of a design team for liquid sodium cooled nuclear reactors. At Babcock and Wilcox, he conducting finite element modeling on advanced reactors. He also worked on the design of nuclear power plants in Virginia. He expanded his power generation experience to include EMP shielded fuel cells, Stirling engines, solar thermal systems, wind, geothermal, hydropower, very small mobile nuclear reactors (VSMRs), and supercritical carbon dioxide turbine generation. He has led a team of companies in the development of EMP-shielded data centers with multi-megawatt CHP systems incorporating gas turbines, and LNG storage. He is a co-inventor of a patented rugged ground-conformal solar thermal system utilizing Organic Rankin Cycle generation.
Mr. Winks applied his high-power microwave background to radar, electronic warfare, and satellite communications. He has also provided solutions for radio frequency shielding, and EMP transient protection for critical systems. He has been a subject matter expert in the DoD’s Electromagnetic Defense Task Force and an advisor to San Antonio’s Electromagnetic Defense Initiative. David serves on InfraGard’s National Disaster Resilience Council and the DHS Resilient Power Working Group. He is one of the authors and editors of the book “Powering Through – Building Critical Infrastructure Resilience”. He is also an author of the report “Protecting the U.S. Electric Grid Communications from EMP” and a contributor for the DHS CISA report “Resilient Power Best Practices for Critical Facilities and Sites”.
He led the deployment of multi-carrier satellite transceivers and the commercialization of demand assigned multiple access control (DAMA) systems for thin-route satellite telephony in emerging markets. He has managed projects for wireless local loop, digital cellular, and satellite networks in Eastern Europe, Asia, Africa, and Latin America that utilized small modular digital switching systems, microwave links, inter-carrier text messaging, location services, and prepaid billing. He assisted clients in deploying MPLS data networks, virtualizing their telephone switching infrastructure, and relocating their computing infrastructure into geo-diverse data centers. He connected clients using 28 GHz wireless links, fiber optic cables, and ethernet-over-twisted pair. He helped telecom carriers optimize inter-carrier messaging using SS7 networks and international gateways. He assisted clients in constructing command centers using secure multi-site video teleconferencing and video walls. He developed cyber defense architectures utilizing binary hardening, software defined perimeters, zero-trust access, artificial intelligence, automated orchestration and restoral for IT and OT networks. He led in the development of containerized EMP-shielded optical computing systems from secure supply chains.