Education: BSEE Cornell University, MSEE Carnegie-Mellon University
Professional Experience: Bell Labs 1978-1984; Bell Communications Research 1984-1991; Qualcomm 1991-present. A side note: one of my supervisors at Bell Labs, Robert K. Chen, had worked at Bellcomm. It was fun to see his name on their memos.
I was a young teenager during the Apollo missions, and I couldn't get enough of it. My best friend and I were already deeply into astronomy and electronics, and his father worked on the Saturn V in Huntsville. When Apollo 15 was on its way to the moon, we worked out where it should be, and I'm pretty sure we saw it (or more likely its S-IVB.) That led to writing an orbit prediction program with which I sighted Skylab many times during its missions.
All this inspired me to get my ham license in high school, and from there to go into a career in electrical engineering with an emphasis on communications and computers. I still have a special fascination with Apollo's power, communications, navigation and computing systems and I can't read through these documents without thinking that we could do *so* much better if we redesigned it all with modern technology!
March 2008