Welcome to Picocyl

Bob is the CEO and CO-founder of Picocyl.  Mr. Barron is a proven business leader with a strong Operating background, along with experience in transactions and investments.  He has led businesses from start-ups to Fortune 1000 firms, and was a Venture Partner at a leading venture capital firm.  He has served on various Boards, numerous Advisory Boards, and guided entrepreneurs to the successful launching of their companies.

As CEO of Chromatis Networks, Bob was responsible for a $4.5B M&A transaction that led to him being featured on CNBC for leading the largest Small Cap transaction in U.S. history. Bob also lead a highly successful commercial spin-out of a government contract manufacturing business, MQA, facilitating a 500% market capitalization increase. 

Throughout his career, Bob’s focus and success was based on building and motivating teams to develop strategies for growth, and to execute successfully through proven business processes.  Mr. Barron began P&L responsibility in 1986 as Group Vice President of Stanford Telecom, a public technology company.  Today, Bob enjoys flying his Bonanza, backcountry skiing, getting off-the-grid in Alaska, and being married to his wife.

Jack is a Co-Founder of Picocyl and well-established in the medical device industry. Jack’s passion is leading smart people to creatively solve real-world problems with innovative solutions that yield effective, high-demand products and processes. Prior to founding Picocyl, Jack worked extensively with retina surgeons to deeply understand their objectives, identify their needs and translate those needs into current market-leading, state-of-the art, handheld surgical instruments. His fifteen successful years in motorsports and specialty vehicle design/development with the Toyota off road racing team and MillenWorks taught Jack to flourish at solving challenging problems in fast-paced, team-centric environments. He currently holds 51 US and 100 International patents.

Jack graduated from Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo with a BS in Mechanical Engineering. He is happily married with two great twenty-something children, active in the outdoors with a passion for hiking, lightweight backpacking and riding motorcycles.

Chris has over 20 years of manufacturing operations experience in consumer products, automotive, and medical device and disposables manufacturing industries.  Chris brings to Picocyl a wealth of knowledge in areas of manufacturing engineering, project management, process automation, quality systems, and organizational leadership.      

Chris is a Colorado State University graduate and a certified Project Management Professional.  In his free time, Chris designs, builds, and races sports cars with the Sports Car Club of America, where he has won eight National Championships.

Mr. Welikala has a lifelong love of plastics that has only grown with his decades of experience focusing on injection molding for medical devices. Starting with the founding of Apec in 1997, he built the company from the ground up to focus exclusively on injection molding of medical parts and successfully grew the business until it was acquired by Helix Medical in 2007, where he continued to serve for another 6 years as the Executive Vice President Global Business Development. In 2014 he cofounded Medacys, an injection molding company based in Shenzhen, China that flourished and eventually merged with EG Gilero.

Foundational to his life is his family. In his free time he enjoys cultivating new types of plants in his garden and his relentless curiosity has inspired him to pursue education in bee biology and Beekeeping to better understand the fascinatingly complex insects that help his garden thrive.

With over 17-years in medical manufacturing, Kirsten has successfully executed site objectives while growing partnerships with customers and suppliers. Her unique combination of production planning, supply chain optimization, operational management, and finance skills allows her to support Picocyl’s strategic business plans, grow internal and external relationships while providing insight to day to day manufacturing operations.

Although dedicated to her professional development, she enjoy camping, river rafting, fly fishing and snowboarding with family and friends.

James has been developing leading edge medical device technology with a focus in the ophthalmic industry since 2003. Working closely with gas synthesis manufacturers and analytical laboratories, James has cultivated robust partnerships to source the highest quality gas available. He also led the design and development efforts for the initial valve-release Pico-cylinders, putting in place the processes for ensuring implantable medical grade gas purity and product reliability.

James graduated from the University of Southern California with a BS and MS in Biomedical Engineering.

Mr. Bliss has over 35 years of experience in medical device and industrial gas equipment design and manufacturing. He holds numerous patents and is an author of studies published in peer reviewed medical journals as well as abstracts and conference presentations. He is currently a principal in the consulting firm Techniflow Inc. Peter received a bachelor’s degree in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Minnesota. He has been with the industrial gas equipment firm Minnesota Valley Engineering (now Chart Industries), Chief Engineer of the custom valve manufacturer Wair Products Inc, and partner in the consulting firm Valley Inspired Products. Peter was co-founder and Chief Technology Officer of the start-up device firm, Oxytec Medical which introduced an innovative and industry leading portable oxygen concentrator for respiratory patients. After acquisition of Oxytec he stayed on as Principal Engineer with Philips Healthcare for 7 years.

Peter lives with his wife Joan and three children near Minneapolis, MN.

Peter has 10 years of medical manufacturing experience. He has worked in a wide variety of environments and acquired valuable trade skills. Peter has implemented these skills at Picocyl and contributed to current production processes and on-going engineering builds.

In his free time, he enjoys running, being outdoors, cooking, watching sports and spending time with his family and friends.

Dr. Eric began his engineering career in start-up companies developing computer peripherals, optics, optical coatings and vehicle systems.  Now with over 25 years’ experience, his forte is developing multi-domain systems such as medical fluidic systems or computer controlled vehicle suspensions.  Eric brings real world understanding in addition to advanced analysis skills of dynamic system modeling using Bond Graphs, computer simulations, and finite element analysis to a wide range of difficult problems.

Eric graduated from Cal Poly, S.L.O. magna cum laude with a B.S. in Mechanical Engineering and from U.C. Davis with a M.S. and Ph.D. in M.E. Dynamic Systems and Controls.  Eric currently has 15 US patents.  Happily married with a twenty something son and twin girls working towards their college degrees.  Eric also enjoys developing and testing new technologies applied to interesting systems, such as bicycles, motorcycles and cars.

Cesar Leyva has been working in the medical device industry for over 12 years and specializes in process development, new product introduction and technology transfers for class 3 implantable devices. Cesar has led cross-geographical teams in the technology transfer projects and has supported successful regulatory approvals across the globe. Cesar supports Picocyl in the manufacturing front and ensures that the processes are developed and implemented following all necessary quality and regulatory requirements. Cesar graduated with a Bachelor’s degree in Electronics Engineering and holds an MBA, he is also certified as a lean/six sigma black belt.

He dedicates his free time to his family of 3 boys and a beautiful wife!

Nick’s has been contributing to Picocyl’s success since its inception. He helped create the process development, implementation and validation of the automated and manual processes. In addition to this, he implemented ancillary processes required for maintaining the quality of the gas cylinders. Nick assisted with establishing Picocyl by participating in the transfer, implementation and training of equipment and processes. Nick currently supports Picocyl with the design of components and fixtures that enable the use of Pico-cylinders in new devices.

Kassandra has over 6 years of manufacturing operational experience in various industries ranging from precision optics, commercial and home building products, to propulsion solutions and automotive safety. She brings to Picocyl diverse manufacturing knowledge in areas of process engineering, product design, continuous improvement with lean ideology, automation systems, and quality systems.

Kassandra is an Indiana State University Mechanical Engineering graduate. In her free time, she enjoys creating, renovating, building, and spending time outdoors.

Kellan is starting his career with Picocyl after graduating from Colorado State University with his bachelor’s and master’s degrees in mechanical engineering in 2022. During his master’s degree, Kellan developed design and R&D skills in the biomedical field while working on his thesis in the cardiovascular biomechanics lab.

In his free time, Kellan enjoys traveling, hiking, and is an avid Denver sports fan.