Leadership Change at Sailing Yacht Research Foundation

(February 9, 2016) – The Sailing Yacht Research Foundation (SYRF) reveals that its Executive Director, Myles Cornwell, will be stepping down from his position to return to his profession as a naval architect. The SYRF Board of Directors has made an interim appointment of Research Analyst McKenzie Wilson as Cornwell’s successor, who has been with SYRF since September 2015.

Under Cornwell’s direction, SYRF has gained tremendous momentum in its mission to support science in sailing, most notably by assisting in the completion of the landmark Wide-Light Project that explored the accuracy of CFD codes in modeling sailboat performance of modern planing hull designs, building the SYRF online Library of published research, and other important SYRF-supported projects.

Before joining SYRF, Wilson was a cloud software consultant at Oracle, where she worked with corporate clients to improve data access and analysis. Wilson is a graduate of Stanford University, and was an Academic All-American member of the varsity sailing team. Wilson is still actively involved in high performance handicap sailing across the US and internationally, competing in fleet and match racing, most recently having won the 2015 ISAF Nations Cup in Vladivostok, Russia. Wilson will bring both analytical and racing experience to the position.

On moving into the interim Executive Director role until the end of April, Wilson said, “I appreciate the trust that the Board has placed in me and I look forward to working with our Advisory Council, our Board members and our existing and future grantees to further the progress SYRF has made under Myles’s directorship. In particular, I look forward to supporting cutting-edge research and making data more available to the community by leveraging new technology and information channels.”

“Myles has done a fantastic job at helping make SYRF a prominent name in the research community,” said Steve Benjamin, Chairman of the Board of SYRF, “On behalf of the Board I want to recognize his outstanding efforts on advancing the mission of our organization. We wish him the best of luck in returning to his love for naval architecture, and in all his future endeavors.”

For more information on SYRF, visit www.sailyachtresearch.com.

Source: SYRF