Story of Dan Gelbart, the 'Building Prototypes' guy

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rjlittlefield
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Story of Dan Gelbart, the 'Building Prototypes' guy

Post by rjlittlefield »

Dan Gelbart is known to this forum through his series of YouTube videos about "Building Prototypes", for example "part 10 of 18 Flexures".

I was surprised to learn about his background, about which I'll say nothing more here. :wink:

There's an excellent and amusing article at https://spie.org/membership/spie-profes ... luck?SSO=1

--Rik

mawyatt
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Post by mawyatt »

Rik,

Thanks for posting this about Dan, very interesting story about a very interesting individual indeed.

Best,
Research is like a treasure hunt, you don't know where to look or what you'll find!
~Mike

mawyatt
Posts: 2497
Joined: Thu Aug 22, 2013 6:54 pm
Location: Clearwater, Florida

Post by mawyatt »

Rik,

Some time ago (~2008) I began investigating a new type RF Mixer used for communications. This mixer violated normal physics and mathematics (Fourier), an invoked a new concept for frequency mixers where the input waveform auto-correlates in discrete time increments. Soon after a well known east coast university gave a short paper on the subject at the ISSCC conference, then wrote 2 excellent full papers, one in the IEEE Circuits & Systems (Theory) and another on the Solid State Journal (Implementation) because the new subject was so involved. The PhD student involved was absolutely brilliant, which my defense company wanted me to hire. I didn't even mention this, and thank goodness I didn't.

After getting her PhD she linked up with 4 other colleagues and formed a company working on this very subject, one year later Apple acquired them for $50M!! She became a multi-millionaire right out of school. I saw her again in 2015 at the same ISSCC conference, she had left Apple to form her new startup because Apple was too confining!!

Another student from the same university and professor published the best paper of the year for the Solid State Journal in 2012. His paper was on post image focus selection based upon a new image sensor where the photons are captured with both amplitude and angle of arrival. This allows post image capture focus section. He went to Apple with an up front offer you can't refuse!! You may have recently seen the TV ads for this technology, Sheldon from Big Bang Theory is the commentator.

The article about Dan reminded me of these two extraordinary students and thankful we have folks that are this creative, and can be rewarded for their incredible creativity and not just a number on some MBA's spreadsheet where your value is "can you bill your time to a customer" mentality!!

We need more of these free thinkers like Dan!

Best
Research is like a treasure hunt, you don't know where to look or what you'll find!
~Mike

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