My association with MIT

My association in and around MIT began in August 1966 and remained a central part of my career until I moved to China in May 1998. During those three decades, MIT influenced me in virtually every technical challenge I encountered.

Prior to MIT, right upon graduation in 1966 with a BS in math, I worked for a NASA contractor where I redesigned our Lunar Module computer’s operating system used in the simulator to train our Astronauts. Based on that accomplishment and my Graduate Math Exam scores and recommendations, MIT hired me to do the same for the Navy’s deep sea submarine’s rescue vehicles, the DSRV and the DSSV, as a full-time Research Engineer in MIT’s Aero and Astro Department. I seized this opportunity and applied and after vetting was accepted for graduate math studies.

Next, the US Military solicited me with an exciting offer to head the programming on a Top Secret massive parallel computer to work on Electronic Intelligence signal deciphering and Nuclear Weapon’s simulation. Then, one fateful day, my boss asked me to assess a startup team who were doing world–class Speech Recognition development.

That Boston speech recognition research startup, Listening Inc., asked me to be their leader, so I left the military project to pursue my first love, entrepreneuring. As leader, I got Exxon to finance us. However, Exxon and I didn’t see eye–to–eye, on the direction of the company, so we parted.

Adjacent to the nice home that parting with Exxon enabled me to buy was an ideal employer, a leading maker of engineering design tools, Computervision. There I designed and implemented an ultra–rapid rendering program that dramatically increased the productivity of engineering designers. My software played a major role in propelling Computervision in 1978 to be the highest appreciating stock (out of 1,700) on the NYSE. I resigned when I was not rewarded monetarily in kind.

I got investors to finance me and my partner’s vision for small business tools using microprocessors. In four years from founding, we launched our IPO on the NASDAQ. Unluckily, Microsoft may have perceived us as a threat. After tripling in our first year, we crashed and our venture was acquired. Within a day of The Wall Street Journal announcing my departure, Computervision offered me a position that a year later segueded into Corporate VP of Technology.

Without forewarning, I was thrown into a visit by a ministerial level Chinese leaders visiting Computervision on a world tour to find the best engineering software for China. This encounter would be life-changing for me. They bought our software, $19 million dollars worth at "list price"! For the next decade, 1985-1995, our software leapfrogged China’s engineering designing and manufacturing of products, machines, aerospace, railroads, by a century!

MIT keeps on giving. I left Computervision for the more fulfilling occupation of consulting on engineering. One client, Denning Mobile Robotics, offered me the position of VP of Engineering to run their development of the first commercially available autonomous robot. Reliability (MTBF), the major challenge improved two orders of magnitude during my two year stint. The next step brought me right into the MIT orbit. Ed Roberts, Sloan’s renowned professor of the Management of Technology attracted me to become Deputy Director of his consulting firm, Pugh-Roberts Associates. There I consulted to the top technology VPs of Bell Labs, Dunn and Bradstreet, Motorola, Rolls Royce Aero, and others. My 5 year stint consulting to DuPont fibers was heralded and documented in a Harvard Business Case, "Step-Change at DuPont’s Camden Plant" by Harvard Business School’s Dean, Nitin Nohria (an MIT PhD I knew from his graduate school days).

When I got a chance to go to China, I jumped at the chance and engaged in software engineering management and teaching the Management of Technology, Advanced Manufacturing, Economics of Manufacturing, and Corporate and International Finance to MBA Candidates. By this time, MIT had faded into the background.

Since then I have been retired other than helping high tech ventures for stock option futures. My Michigan client, Progress Inc, is an Artificial Intelligence (AI) venture which touts me as their Chief Financial Officer. On behalf of Progress Inc, I wrote to Professor Bengio whom Stanford touts as the #3 top in their ranked list of the top two million scientist (all disciplines) world–wide. To get his ear, I described Progress’s technology and appended my AI background. We were taken seriously; I replicate the AI background verbatim that I sent him, next

Rather than rewriting my Artificial Intelligence background, I will repeat the introduction of myself that I emailed in Dec 2022 to one of three top Artificial Intelligence researchers in the world, Professor Yashua Bengio. "By way of introduction: I’m an accomplished technologist and venture mentor. In October 2019, I was presented by the Chinese Minister of Science and Technology to his entire policy team as his exemplary Technologist (opposite David Gross, 2004 Nobel Laureate, his exemplary Scientist). While VP/Technology of Computervision (when it was the world’s largest engineering software company), at Nicholas Negroponte’s behest, I collaborated with 2003 Turing Award winner, Alan Kay (he gave Apple’s CEO my paradigms), and I was one of four luminaries seated at the head table at MIT’s Media Lab’s dedication. Previously, I took my company, Unidata Systems, public on NASDAQ. My friend, Roger Schank, Yale’s AI leader at the time, was an investor and collaborator. Siri began in the Boston research venture I headed for which I got Exxon’s financing (Verbex) prior to Janet Baker taking my role. I began my venturing in AI after taking Marvin Minsky’s course on Artificial Intelligence while an aspiring math grad student at MIT. I’m a proud Canadian citizen thrilled at the prospect of returning to my birthplace, Montreal."

      Personally, I had over a half dozen 1 on 1 meetings and became friends with:

•  Rudolph Langer, former MIT Physics professor, who was Erwin Schrodinger’s assistant and coauthored with Einstein’s assistant, Nathan Rosen.

•  Baron Kumar Bhattacharyya, CBE, with whom I collaborated at the University of Warwick (UK) on (Rolls Royce Aero) Jet Engine development.

•  Madam HU QiHeng, Vice Secretary of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, recognized as China's IT technology policy leader.

•  LIANG YouNeng, former Executive Vice President of China’s TsingHua University whom I befriended when he was an MIT graduate student.

•  CHEN YuLu, President of Nankai University and former Vice Governor of the People’s Bank of China whom I befriended in 2000 after he became President of People’s University of China in 2015.

•  Senator Carl Levin who surprised me by singling me out at a Detroit Economic Club event honoring him. He spent an hour with me at DTW after arriving on AF1 with Obama.

      Jiang ZeMin, who later became President of China, wanted a photo op identifying him with American HiTech. He wanted it so much that he pounced on me as I was exiting a private elevator at The Great Hall of the People. That evening, to my surprise, the video of that encounter was a lead story on China Central TV’s Evening News.