Wayne Steidle

Chief Executive Officer and President
Wayne Steidle began his successful entrepreneurial career over 30 years ago. His business ventures include real estate investing and development, health clubs and nutrition centers, franchising, licensing, hedge funds, as well as other business ventures.

In addition to his position at PNS Communications, LLC Mr. Steidle is a partner and director of real estate development at Riverwalk Park, LLC, a real estate development and management company. In this position, Mr. Steidle has successfully negotiated more than $65 million in land sales for Riverwalk Park, LLC. Mr. Steidle is currently managing the development of a $100 million mixed use shopping center, together with several hotels on one of Riverwalks properties.

Mr. Steidle has also long been interested in computer science. In 2012, he started experimenting with various methods of embedding readable code into video feeds and on LCD displays. When he reached the limit of his skill set he recruited Dr. Yixin Chen PhD, one of the foremost experts in the world in the area of “Computer Vision” and “Pattern Recognition.” He then recruited Mark Lass, a business partner and expert in the Broadcasting Industry. In 2014, Mr. Steidle, Mr. Lass, and Dr. Chen, founded PNS Communications, LLC. Mr. Steidle currently holds two Patents in the US, and one Patent in Japan.

Mr. Steidle resides in Lake Mary, Florida. Outside of his professional activities, he enjoys stock trading, computer science, sports, working out, jogging, Formula One racing, boating, and travel.

Mark Lass

Chief Operating Officer and Treasurer
Mark Lass has been with Press Communications, LLC (“PCLLC”) for over twenty-five years as an owner and operator. Some of PCLLC assets were: NJ101.5FM (WKXW-FM) Trenton NJ, 1260AM (WBUD-AM) Trenton NJ, 97.3 FM (WBSS-FM) Millville NJ, TV 18 (WKCF-TV) Orlando FL, and 104.1 (WTKS-FM) Orlando FL. Current operational properties of PCLLC based in Neptune NJ include: G106.3 (Thunder), 107.1 (Breeze), 98.5 (Hit), and 1410 (Great Gold).

As vice president and general manager of WKCF, Mr. Lass turned the television station into the number one WB affiliate in the country. Under his twelve years of leadership, the station went from negative cash flow as a startup to an eventual sale to Emmis Communications in 1999 for $191.5 million dollars.

He also operated and grew the talk format on WTKS 104.1 and turned it into the number one rated radio station in Orlando, Florida, in only three years. The station had a talk format during the week and alternative rock on the weekend. The station was originally purchased from Paxson Communications Corporation for $5 million and three years later sold back to Paxson Communications Corporation for $25 million.

He has served as consultant for several television and radio stations and has an extensive background in the newspaper industry. Mr. Lass helped operate a chain of weekly newspapers and served on the board of directors for the Asbury Park Press, a daily newspaper located in Neptune, NJ.

He is active in a variety of organizations and serves on many committees for local schools. Outside of professional interests, he reads, writes, surfs, plays the guitar, and enjoys living in San Diego with his wife and two children.

Yixin Chen

Chief Information Officer and Secretary
Yixin Chen is currently an Associate Professor of Computer Science at The University of Mississippi. Dr. Chen is a member of numerous editorial boards, and has authored One Monograph, 60+ journal and conference publications, including Journal of Machine Learning Research, IEEE Transactions on Pattern Analysis and Machine Intelligence, IEEE Transactions on Image Processing, IEEE Transactions on Automatic Control, IEEE Transactions on Robotics and Automation, IEEE Transactions on Robotics, IEEE Transactions on Fuzzy Systems, IEEE Transactions on Control Systems Technology, BMC Bio informatics, NIPS, ACM SIGMM, CVPR, ICDM, ICIP, and ICRA

Dr. Chen’s research interests include, data mining and machine learning, biomedical informatics, brain computer interface, artificial intelligence, computer vision, robotics and control, and soft computing.

Dr. Chen’s education includes: Ph.D., Computer Science, Pennsylvania State University; M.S., Electrical Engineering, University of Wyoming; B.S., Electrical Engineering, University of Wyoming; B.S., B.S., Control Theory and Application, Tsinghua University; and a B.S., Automatic Control, Beijing University.

Dr. Chen has received more than 12 grants from many prestigious organizations, including The National Science Foundation and NASA. He is a reviewer for the following funding agencies: FWF, AAAS, NSF, CRDF, and KSEF. He is a member of ACM, IEEE, IEEE Computational Society, IEEE Computational Intelligence Society, and IEEE Robotics and Automation Society.

Dr. Chen lives with his wife and two children in Memphis, Tennessee.

Michael Marcias

Software Engineer
Michael Macias is a software developer who enjoys living on the frontier of new technology. He holds a master’s degree in computer science from the University of Mississippi, where he focused on compiler design and digital signal processing. Currently, he works in the area of computer vision and mobile application development. Many topics pique Michael’s interests; there is always something new to learn. Off the computer, you will find Michael either deep in the depths of music theory, building and crashing race-class quadcopters, or wearing out shoes on long distance runs.