My career at Martin Marietta concluded with me being promoted from Engineer running the composite lab to Tech Transfer representative for NASA in the State of Tennessee. While in this role and a member of the Tech Transfer Society I met Dr. Schroer, UAH Research Institute. He offered me a SR. Research Scientist job representing NASA Tech Transfer in Alabama. It was during this time that I became aware of many different manufacturing operations in the state and their pursuit of technology to help them.In return, I gained a vast knowledge of manufacturing processes and materials used in those various processes. This later fueled my interest in doing my own materials development to provide solutions to the companies I was helping. I wrote many grants and secured funds to develop these ideas and team with these companies. The following is a sample of several of these projects. Not all are listed.
Bird Inc and new material processes 1995-2002
Washington DC article in Education Week, 1995:
“President Clinton last week signed the School-to-Work Opportunities Act in a ceremony on the White House lawn, calling the measure a ‘whole new approach to work and learning.’ The President has requested $300 million for fiscal 1995 grants to states an communities to help ease the transition from education to employment for thousands of young people, particularly those not bound for college. Congress appropriated $100 million to launch the initiative this year.”
Dr. Schroer picked me to create and run a program to meet the grant requirements. Based on my personal story and hands on learning style this was a good fit. “Bird Inc the 50 minute Factory was my idea. I spoke to nearly 28,000 middle school students. I also developed a teacher training program to go alongside called “The Tube Factory” In this program we trained over 700 teachers and they received credit towards their career development. In 2000 I received the Alabama Technology Network “Innovator of the Year Award” for these programs.
I also worked on company and grant funded projects to include; HVOF Spray coatings for concrete and urethane foam I developed at UAH. We used the foam for molds for rocket engines, prosthetics, robot end effectors, and developed a version of the foam for HVOF Spray forming for net sprayed rocket exit nozzles.
5 years into my UAH career I teamed with another UAH grad/NASA engineer to form a 3rd business.
