Paul Vollebregt has over 10 years of combined professional experience in the communications and software industry. His prior engineering research experience includes a 6 years appointment within the Communications Systems Division (CSD) of the NATO C3 research agency (formerly known as the SHAPE Technical Centre) during this period he was responsible for the research & development of innovative rapid deployable communication systems. Particularly the development of HF-radio e-mail network systems, which finally resulted in the development and ratification of the NATO STANAG 5066 standard. He holds an engineering degree (Ing.) from the Rijswijk Institute of Technology and an international MBA degree from the Haagse Hogeschool University.

His interest in technology started at an early age, at the age of 11 he was building wooden carts that he used to go down the dune hills near his house, he also organized a number of cart rallies with his friends in the neighborhood. Made small Crystal radio receivers and FM radio transmitters enabling him to transmit over 500 meters near his house close to the dunes in the by many refered to as the “Greenest city in Europe”, The Hague.

Paul Vollebregt, 1998

 Hofvijver next to the Parlement building, The Hague

Paul was a loyal member of a hobby club during those years, in his spare time you could always find him there working on some project, working on a 1,5 meter high gambling  machine  with three old synchrounous recordplayer electro-motors driving three wooden disks, building a puppet theater including small chairs, tables, puppets, lamps and different decoration. Together with his two years older brother, Jan, he organizing a children’s fun fair, together they made all the things that the children could play with. They were so successful that the sponsor of the hobby club, the city of the Hague, decided that they should give a fun fair in another district of the city. Although the fun fair was the prime project for the two brothers it also was their final project that they did for the hobby club.

His first contact with computers was in 1978 at the elementary school, the headmaster just returned from a vacation in the USA brought a computer into the classroom during the lunchbreak. Paul was fascinated by what he saw on the TV screen, it took until 1982 before he had his first programming experience on a 6802 SDK from Motorola, programming directly in object code since Assembler tools were not available to him. In 1983 he had his first BASIC experience on the Accorn Atom Computer, later followed the ZX81 Spectrum, C64 and the IBM PC. He started studying at the LTS (lower technical school) in 1980 after finishing the elementary school because of his interest in technology and Electronics in particular. This 4 year full-time study was successfully followed by the MTS (Middle technical school) in 1984. The MTS study includes 3 full-time study years and three interim training project of 3 months each at companies or Universities. His first interim company was Koning & Hartman working for the repair division, the second was G.E.B Naaldwijk (local energy distribution company) were he was working at the R&D department that was responsible for the development of a communication network between the T.E. (Total Energy) systems.

Gambling machine, 1978

Van de Graaff, IRI Delft

His last and also most interesting and challenging interim project was in 1987 for the Radiation Chemistry group at the Interuniversitair Reactor Institute part of the Technical University Delft. He successfully developed and constructed a hydrogen controlling system that enabled the operators of the Van de Graaff 3 Million Electron Volt electron accelerator to control the amount of hydrogen brought into the electron accelerator vacuum system from the main control panel 20 meters away from the accelerator. The system he designed had to operate at a pressure of 20 bar, ambient temperature of 60 C (130F) and at  a 3 Million Volt difference compared to the control panel. The unit was powered from 110V 60 Hz internally generated by the accelerator. The second project at IRI was the successful modification and completion of an electronic backing-off device for the spectrofotometer. Paul graduated from the MTS in 1987 after the completion of this last project at IRI and the competion of his final report. In 1987 he also came into contact with the Internet for the first time, at that time it was not called that way, he used applications like; ftp, telnet and e-mail from the IRI computer system.

In 1988 he started studying at the RITE polytechnic university (Rijswijk Institute of Technology) situated outside the borders next to the city of The Hague. The Rijswijk Institute of Technology is among the best polytechnic universities in the Netherlands, the Electronic and  Telecommunications  division has been granded the number one performer for over 5 consecutive years. Rijswijk Institute of Technology (TH-Rijswijk) is a member of the Dutch Quality Schools in the Netherlands, expressing the performance of education. Paul graduated from RITE in 1993 after a successful training and disertation period at the NATO C3 research agency (formerly known as the SHAPE Technical Centre) located in The Hague. The training and disertation period at NC3A was almost one full year, resulting in a job offer after graduation as Scientific Assistant at the CSD division in 1994.

 Lange voorhout centre of the city The Hague, May.

Before joining the NATO C3 Agency a thorough investigation by the BVD (Dutch national security agency) was requested by NATO as part of the standard hiring process. This investigation led to the approval of a 5 year valid CTS/A Top Secret/Atomal security clearence certifigate awarded by the BVD. At the NATO C3 Agency he was working on several projects including the coverage calculations for Navy Shore stations, and measurement at militairy communications equipment. The majority of his time he spend on the research and development of HF communications protocols, his first experience with protocols came from the experimental STC HF data protocol started by Dr. Faik Eken in 1991.  Paul modified and improved the performance of this protocol and converted it into the PfP (Partnership for Peace) PCNet system in 1995. He applied successfully for the position of Senior Scientific Assistant in 1996. As part of the FCIPAS training and demonstration to the officers of the Frequency Managment Cell (radio communication coverage) he went to Sarajevo in Yugoslavia in 1996 for a period of one week.

Graduation speech from his mentor, 1993

KV Andernes near Svalbard Island, July 1997

During the 3 week exercise an emergency  distress signal was received from the luxurious German cruise ship the Hanseatic. The ship was grounded North of the Island of Svalbard in shallow waters (see red dot on map below). It was decided that the KV-Andernes would inspect the situation and assist if possible, one day later the ship arrived at its destination, North of Svalbard some 40Km from the polar ICE. It was decided that Paul would take digital-pictures from the grounded ship from a helicopter flying low-level over the Hanseatic, because the Coast guard base station in Norway wanted to know the seriousness of the situation. The digital-pictures were transmitted with the at that time still experimental PCNet PC to PC file system over an HF radio connection at 1200 Bps.

The pictures were forwarded on the receiving end of the HF Radio link directly over the Internet to the Coast guard base station in Norway. Because of this experimental HF Radio file system it was possible for the Coast guard to assess the seriousness of the situation within minutes after the pictues were taken at the scene. Normally it would take two to three days in these type of conditions before a pictures could be made and sent back by helicopter to the base station. This incident shows how effective an HF-Radio e-mail gateway system is.

Two days after the first photo was received at the base station it was possible to see a similar picture on the evening news channel, a picture that was transported by courier back to Norway.

Hanseatic grounded near Svalbard Island, July 1997

Certificate of Appreciation, May 1999.

If you would like to have my complete Curriculum  Vitae you are free to download this in pdf format. ---->download

Paul Vollebregt. 2002.

from left to right, Rahul Baswan (India), Shanti Sithamparanathan (Netherlands), Ying Ke (China), Elizabeth Hart (Nigeria), Arie Hammink (Netherlands), Paul Vollebregt (Netherlands). This is only a part of the International MBA students. photo: September 1999.