Zazi Forum

Bob Welty is the Director for Homeland Security Projects for the San Diego State University Foundation, and Associate Director, SDSU Visualization Center. His background is specialization in Military Command and Control systems, in industrial development of those systems, and in dual-use application and integration. He has been instrumental in bringing the skills and developments of SDSU to the forefront of San Diego’s regional and community involvement efforts in Homeland Security. He was one of the three principals that made possible the "ShadowBowl," a community involvement event in support of the 2003 SuperBowl.

From the mid 1960’s until the late 1980’s Mr. Welty served as an officer in the U.S. Navy. During that time he had shipboard and ashore tours, ranging from minesweepers to nuclear cruisers to aircraft carriers on the at-sea side, to intelligence and command and control development tours ashore. While at SPAWARSYSCOM, Mr. Welty was a pioneer in the development of evolutionary acquisition for the Navy, assuring the latest technologies could be procured and fielded in the least amount of time for ashore command centers, and easily upgraded as new technologies emerged. He has unique project manager experience in the all phases of the acquisition process, participating in bringing a system from concept development to funding approval, to development, and finally to the installation and support of the operational system over the life of one program.

Subsequent to retirement from the Navy, Mr. Welty worked for short while with Systems Exploration, Inc., providing Navy technical support. From there he joined Science Applications International Corporation from 1990 until 2000, where he was a Vice President and Operations Manager. During this period he built on his Navy experience to expand programs related to command and control for the Navy and with multi-service programs as well. He was also heavily involved with developments in two significant Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency projects, a Joint Task force Advanced Technology Demonstration (JTF ATD) and an Advanced Joint Planning Advanced Concepts Technology Demonstration (AJP ACTD), which led to significant future relevant homeland security technologies.

In 2000 Mr. Welty joined a smaller company, TeraGlobal Communications, focused on PC-based collaboration technologies. Post 9/11 Mr. Welty concentrated his expertise on the use of collaboration for Homeland Security application. In that period he attained significant additional experience in collaboration and immersive visualization technologies, and in late 2001 established his own company, R.W.Welty Technologies to do visualization and command and control consulting. In mid 2002 he was awarded a contract with a SPAWAR Systems Center San Diego in visualization technologies. In October 2002 he joined the staff of the SDSU Foundation to work specifically on Homeland Security issues, and is currently a key member of the management of San Diego’s Regional Network for Homeland Security, co-chaired by SDSU and UCSD.

Mr. Welty received his BS degree in Marketing, Insurance and Transportation from the University of Oregon, and an MSA in Systems Management from George Washington University. He is a graduate of the Program Management course of Defense Systems Management College (DSMC) (now Defense Acquisition University (DAU)).