Chris joined Güralp Systems as Chairman in late 2014. His seismology and geophysics background includes several years in field exploration and applied research with Schlumberger, and a PhD in Geophysics at the Bullard Laboratories and Churchill College, Cambridge.

Chris has been Chief Executive of successful international technology and consulting companies, for nearly 20 years. This includes experience of managing privately owned firms, private equity backed businesses and divisions of listed public companies, and he has led several large international merger and acquisition transactions. He has an MBA from Cranfield School of Management, and has been a reserve army officer, an elected councillor in Westminster City Council, and a Trustee of the Royal Institution.

Chris initially started working with Güralp Systems in November 2015 as Chief Financial Officer prior to taking on the role of CEO in October 2020. He is a chartered accountant with 25 years’ experience following qualification in 1994.

Having held group accountant and corporate finance roles in Amersham plc, a FTSE 100 plc. Chris went on to become the CFO in several venture and private equity backed businesses in life sciences.

Following the trade sale of the last company in 2009, where Chris was the CEO, he started his own corporate finance consultancy specialising in technology businesses. Here he advised on numerous deals from trade sales, mergers, acquisitions and distribution agreements including negotiating a trade sale that won the British Venture Capital Association deal of the year award.

As well as working in finance within the high tech sector for all of his career, Chris also holds a Master’s in Mechanical Engineering from Imperial College.

Neil joined the Güralp sales team in 2010 with a MSc in Geological Hazard Assessment from the University of Portsmouth, and a BSc in Physical Geography from the University of Leeds.

Neil became Head of Aftermarket Services in 2015 and was instrumental in transforming Güralp's service, repairs and technical support services, introducing a more coherent customer service focus within the business. Since early 2016 Neil has been the Commercial Director for the business, responsible for global sales activities.

Neil has extensive field experience from his time with Güralp, undertaking a number of field installations, most recently supporting a service visit to Iceland. He firmly believes in the importance of building strong relationships and is very active in meeting with our clients and distributors from across the world. Neil can frequently be found representing Güralp at international geophysics conferences and has a particular interest in projects in technically challenging environments.

Neil is a father of two and keen sportsmen and frequently engages in a wide range of activities, having recently completed his first Marathon.

Phil has a long standing background in running engineering development within niche manufacturing businesses. He has held the position of Technical and Engineering Director in several companies in varying markets making products for use in Professional Audio production, Electronic Video and Film production, Covert Surveillance and Flight Simulator systems.

Phil joined Güralp in 2014 with the remit of accelerating the process of bringing new, innovative products to market in a sustained manner. He strongly believes in providing a working environment that encourages individual freedom to innovate whilst maintaining a strong commercial connection with the engineering process.

An engineer by background, Phil has always maintained a 'hands on' approach. His commercial engineering experience is split between Electronic design and Software development. He also has a number of years’ experience in the use of CAM techniques and passionately believes in exploiting the synergy between computer aided design and computer aided manufacturing techniques.

As Manufacturing Director, John has overall responsibility for all delivery functions including Procurement, Planning, Manufacturing and Facilities. He has an innovative and strongly commercial approach with a record of successful business development, cross-functional management and operational effectiveness within the high technology manufacturing environment.

John initially joined the engineering team at Güralp in 2014 bringing extensive operational management experience including proven capabilities in team building, project delivery, process analysis, change implementation and stakeholder relations.

Previous roles include twelve years as Operations Director and several other senior leadership roles in technology firms spanning satellite communications, broadcast technology and support engineering services.

As Technical Director, Chris has responsibility for the quality of our instrumentation, incorporating the instrument test and calibration processes as well as our dedicated service and repair department.

Chris joined Güralp over thirty years ago and played an instrumental role in developing the technology that established the reputation of the company. He has extensive understanding of the full Güralp product range dating back to our original 3T seismometer, still in production today.

During his time with Güralp, Chris has played a lead role on many significant projects, personally performing a number of deployments on behalf of Güralp and our customers in projects around the world. His contribution to the design, manufacture, training and support of these projects gives him a first-hand insight into the imperative of producing high quality instrumentation that performs as expected.

Will joined Güralp in August 2017, shortly after graduating with a BA in Natural Sciences and an MSci in Earth Sciences from the University of Cambridge.

Will has spent time working at the British Antarctic Survey and GFZ Potsdam analysing geophysical, geochemical and landslide data collected on rapid response field campaigns conducted during his MSci research after the 2015 Gorkha earthquakes.

Will began his work at Güralp focussing on China and Central Asia, which then extended to encompass India and the USA. Will is now Global Sales Manager, overseeing the activities of the Güralp sales team.

 

James joined Güralp in July 2019 after completing his Masters degree in Geophysics at the University of Southampton. He has now joined the Americas team within Güralp’s sales team as a sales manager.

James’ masters project focused on the correction of bathymetry datasets through analysis of sound velocity profiles and also has experience of working with OBS data from the NERC funded CHIMNEY project investigating the risks of leaks from storing CO2 under the seabed.

Dan Whealing brings years of experience working in the energy sector where he has held a number of senior and consultancy roles involved in seismic data acquisition for the Oil & Gas and renewables industry.

He has a Bachelor of Science (BS) degree in Physics from the University of Manchester.

Ivan provides quoting and sales support across the global sales team.

Prior to joining us, Ivan worked for several years in a logistical role in the construction industry.