John Wemekamp spent over thirty-two years in the embedded computing industry. He was a leader in influencing and advocating key VITA standards.

After graduating with an Electrical Engineering degree from Queens University in Kingston, Ontario, Wemekamp started his engineering career with Bell-Northern Research, leading a development team in telecommunication products.

Wemekamp spearheaded the VMEbus board level product hardware design effort at Dy 4 Systems in Ottawa, during the early 1980s where he led the design and development of their first generation of VMEbus products. During this time, he played an influential role at VITA standards meetings and during the IEEE 1014, and later ANSI, standardization process that followed the enthusiastic market adoption of VMEbus.

Wemekamp’s career spanned from hardware engineering and management to marketing, business development, and strategic planning. He retired in 2015 from Curtiss-Wright as their Business Development & Chief Technology Officer for Defense Solutions (DS) & Integrated Sensing (IS).

Throughout his career, Wemekamp was recognized as pre-eminent authority in strategic planning, technical vision and innovation, marketing and business development, and in acquisition leadership.

Key contributions:

• As a member of the VMEbus Manufacturers Group, actively supported development of Revision B of the VMEbus specification in 1982, and then following the beginning of VITA, supporting creation of VITA 1014 and in later years VPX
• VMEbus technical standards promotion through presentations at the BUSCON Bus/Board Users Show and Conferences (during late 80s), numerous articles published in trade magazines endorsing VMEbus, particularly for rugged applications, and representing Dy 4 Systems technology road show presentations at systems integrators worldwide
• Industry voice in influencing worldwide aerospace & defense systems integrators and their military end customers to accept the benefits of commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS) and leverage the growing COTS industrial base of companies, to offer reduced life cycle ownership costs and faster technology deployment of embedded computing systems, for the benefits of all warfighters