Steve Bitar worked at ExxonMobil Engineering, Refining and Research & Development for 39 years across a wide range of disciplines including process control, advanced control, real-time optimization, field instrumentation, project development, process analytics, electrical power, offline optimization and scheduling, process engineering, laboratory services, refinery planning & coordination, and process control system support. While at ExxonMobil, Steve co-led the development of an open control systems program that spawned The Open Group’s Open Process Automation Forum (OPAF) seeking to develop process control interoperability standards as well as a PICMG hardware specification to support interchangeability of industrial edge devices. Steve holds a BS in chemical engineering from the Univ. of Delaware, an MS in computer science from Drexel Univ., and an MBA in finance from George Mason Univ.