IMIoTCoE Panel

Speaker biographies

Guy Merritt is an experienced C-suite executive, Guy has 35 years engineering leadership advising and developing IoT solutions, native cloud-based systems, products and engineering & manufacturing test solutions for a wide variety of industries. He is an author of the award-winning book “Proactive Risk Management: Controlling Uncertainty in Product Development.”

Ira Sharp is the Director of Product Marketing – Automation at Phoenix Contact USA. Ira has over 18 years of experience in Industrial Automation,  with a focus on Open Control, IIoT, Industry 4.0, Networking, and Cybersecurity. Over the past 15 years, he has led marketing, engineering, and sales teams to run a multi-million dollar product portfolio. In addition, Ira has an active digital presence as a LinkedIn Content creator focused on Automation and as a co-founder of the Industry 4.0 club and on the board of advisors for IIoT-World. Ira was named a who’s who for IIoT on the annual Onalytica report in 2021 & 2022, and was named in the Top 100 IoT Influencers by CBT.

Rob has worked at Phoenix Contact since 2010 in various technician, engineering, and now management roles. His educational background consists of Materials Science and Engineering, then later went back for an Electrical Engineering. He is currently the Manufacturing Operations Manager for the Overmolded Cordset Production area at the Middletown, PA campus where we the company is producing cables based solutions mainly for the North American market in several different industrial sectors.