Bryan da Frota: Chief Executive Officer, Co-Founder

Mr. da Frota graduated from the University of Florida in 2000 with a bachelor’s degree in business administration. In 2003, da Frota co-founded Prioria Robotics, Inc. and currently serves as CEO and president of that company. Under da Frota’s leadership, the Company became profitable in three years through negotiating strategic relationships with Fortune 500 companies, establishing international partnerships and becoming the preferred embedded system design resource.

Jason Grzywna: Vice President of Unmanned Aerial Systems, Co-Founder

Jason Grzywna co-founded Prioria Robotics after graduating from the University of Florida. He has more than 10 years’ experience in the area of electrical engineering, specifically in unmanned systems and robotics. Jason currently leads Prioria's Unmanned Aerial Systems (UAS) division responsible for the development, sales and support of the world’s first "Smart UAS" Maveric. He is also responsible for the management of the corresponding UAS Services sub-division, and serves on the company's Board of Directors.

Over the past 3 years, Jason has managed a diverse, incredibly bright, multi-disciplinary team to bring the Maveric UAS and its corresponding components to market. During this time, Jason oversaw the creation of engineering, production, inventory, and QA processes, served as a Principle Investigator (PI) on related grants, and worked on multiple patents. Jason’s research interests include applied computer vision, system design, sensor interfacing, and hardware and software design, as they apply to embedded, or resource constrained, systems.

Moving forward, Jason and his team continue to advocate and evangelize "Smart" unmanned systems domestically and abroad. Through participation in research, user-driven operational events, and conferences, he and his team strive to continue to pioneer the field of Smart UAS, to discover and partner with others having similar pursuits, to facilitate safe, viable commercial UAS operation, and to always create great products.

In his spare time, Jason enjoys reading books on design, typography, programming, human management, photography, entrepreneurship and golf, riding his Cannondale mountain bike, gaming on his PS3, idolizing Apple culture, traveling, cooking and conversing frequently about pop-tech.

His favorite blogs include: Rands, Gruber, Kottke, Graham, Wolfram, 538, BLDGBLOG, DO

Prior to his time at Prioria, Jason worked as a researcher at the University of Florida developing small-scale flight avionics and vision-based algorithms for autonomous flight and intelligent micro-air vehicle (MAV) missions, including flight in complex urban environments and ground object tracking.

Jim Lilkendey: Vice President of Operations

Mr. Lilkendey has 15 years of industry experience in engineering and software development and services. His clients and employers have varied in size and industry segment from small firms to Fortune 50 companies, including RaceTrac Petroleum, American Greetings, Lockheed Martin Aeronautical Systems, McKesson Pharma, and now Prioria, Inc. His areas of interest and specialization include organizational and operational management, project leadership/management, team building and performance, client service management, development methodologies and practices, process engineering, consultative sales, and talent acquisition. Mr. Lilkendey holds a B.S. in computer engineering and a M.S. in computer science from the University of South Florida, and currently directs the Engineering Services and Products division.

Bob Touchton, PhD: Vice President of Business Innovation and Robotics

Dr. Touchton is a business leader and emerging technology expert with over 30 years of experience in technology innovation, engineering and software development, and leads our Mobile Robotics division. He received his Ph.D. in 2006 from the University of Florida where his doctoral research was real-time adaptive planning, situation assessment and decision-making on board autonomous ground vehicles. He is a licensed Professional Engineer with advanced degrees in both Engineering and Computer Science and has authored or co-authored more than 40 publications. Dr. Touchton participated as a finalist in all three DARPA Challenges for autonomous vehicles, is an active participant in SAE/AS4 (formerly JAUS – the Joint Architecture for Unmanned Systems) and was previously Managing Director of Autonomous Systems for Honeywell’s Business Innovation Center where he managed several programs in the area of advanced perception and precision navigation. From 1984 to 2003, he served as the Chairman, Chief Technology Officer, and Executive Consultant at PathTech Software Solutions, Inc., an advanced software engineering boutique that he co-founded in Jacksonville, Florida.