Dave leads a consortium of Air Force, National Guard, State of Hawaii, and private sector stakeholders in developing, validating, and integrating the latest renewable energy technologies for use by the Air Force.  HCATT has evolved over 25+ years through a number of groundbreaking DARPA and AFRL demonstrations in alternative and renewable energy in Hawaii at Joint Base Pearl Harbor Hickam.

The current initiative is the Pacific Energy Assurance Renewables Laboratory (PEARL) microgrid, a project focused on developing an integrated microgrid utilizing a variety of renewable energy storage and management technologies with cyber secure control systems for sustained “off the grid” operations to provide “mission assurance through energy assurance” to the 154th Wing, Hawaii Air National Guard. The second initiative is continuing the development and demonstration of various FCEVs, support equipment, and hydrogen infrastructure in an operational military environment.

Dave joined the HCATT team in April 2016 and began his tenure as Director in August 2019.  He is a 30-year Air Force/Air National Guard professional with extensive CEO level experience in joint operations, strategic planning, logistics, aircraft maintenance, human resource development, and congressional advocacy. Prior to HCATT, Dave worked with the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), Office of Infrastructure Protection, where he conducted comprehensive classified and unclassified analysis of the nation’s critical infrastructure and provided strategic-level recommendations to DHS leadership.  He brings extensive project management experience as he was directly responsible for the $400M logistics conversion of the Hawaii Air National Guard’s F-15 Eagle to F-22 Raptor. 

 He is married to Lillian Cumic, a renowned Vegan Chef, author, and columnist. They reside in Honolulu.