Cover Story: A Gallery of Spartan Inventors, Part I
An MSU education seems to foster creativity and innovation, as these capsule profiles of Spartan inventors demonstrate.
Michigan State has always been synonymous with invention. As early as 1872, famed botanist William J. Beal invented hybrid corn. Other MSU scientists developed the blueberry, the Red Haven peach, a variety of corn that is easy to “pop,” and homogenized milk, among many other inventions. In the 1970s, MSU scientist Dr. Barnett Rosenberg and his team invented Cisplatin and Carboplatin, the world’s leading anti-cancer drugs.
In Part One of this series on MSU inventors, we profile some recent alumni inventors. Some of their successes have dramatically altered our way of life. The invention of fiber optics, for example, has enabled the global expansion of the Internet. The invention of Freehand was a major breakthrough that helped launch the desktop publishing industry. Yet another invention enabled making phone calls via the Internet. One prolific inventor, with more than 60 patents filed, invented an entire class of herbicides that are effective yet environmentally safe. Another MSU inventor devised an underwater computer that helps the U.S. check for explosives in Iraq.
Most MSU alumni inventors credit their alma mater for their successes. One notes that his professors encouraged “play” and creativity in the laboratory. Another admits that he was not much of an inventor until he was exposed to research at MSU. The inventor of the “multibrain,” a breakthrough in performing neurohistology, says his career path was inspired by Barnett Rosenberg.
In a future issue of this magazine, we will feature in Part Two of this story members of MSU’s faculty who are inventors and whose work helps generate new jobs in the Michigan economy.
Here are capsule profiles of some current MSU alumni inventors:
DONALD KECK, '62, M.S. '64, PH.D. '67, RETIRED VICE PRESIDENT, CORNING, CORNING, NY
One of the artifacts on display at the Corning company museum is Donald Keck’s data book, opened to a page from 1970. On that page, he signified the discovery of what would turn into the fiber-optic wire by penciling in “whoopee!”
You’ll have to cut him some slack for the unscientific exclamation. After all, he was only just fresh from earning his Ph.D. at Michigan State and he was still a young man—a young man who had just made a discovery that would enable the Information Age. The fiber-optic wire could carry 65,000 times more information than conventional copper wire, allowed for transmission of massive amounts of data across great distances.
“The laser had been invented in the early 60s and a number of people thought that using beams of light to carry telephone messages would be a marvelous idea. The only thing they lacked was a way to get the laser beam from one point to another,” says Keck, who retired from Corning in 2000. “We started working on using Corning glass fibers to transmit the beams. The problem was the best optical glass anybody could create could only transmit the beams a few feet before the glass would absorb or scatter the light. My original goal when I started the research at Corning was just 1 percent transmission over a kilometer, which to many seemed like an impossible task due to the fundamental laws of absorption. But when you’re young you don’t worry about something being impossible.”
HIS CO-INVENTORS: ROBERT MAURER AND PETER SCHULTZ
Was there a letdown after having the pinnacle of his career occur at the beginning of that career? On the contrary, making the discovery was just the beginning of a long string of fascinating work, he says.
“As young scientists, we thought the world would be running to our door. It turns out it takes longer to change the world that you think. It took Corning 12 years to create a commercial business out of our invention. It was frustrating at first, but I soon learned that you can’t just plop a new invention into a billion-dollar industry and expect that industry to change overnight.”
Part of the delay was that after their initial discovery, they had a host of follow-up questions to answer. One of the fist questions was, does the glass break? “We were able to prove that the glass was stronger than the corresponding piece of steel wire,” he recalls. “It was a great time, having the chance to interact with companies all around the world. That decade of getting our invention to market was one of the greatest times of my life.”
He says MSU helped him succeed by providing him an excellent education through a super teaching staff.
“The particular thesis work I did revolved around infrared spectroscopy. I learned I like optics. I learned about materials and their different spectral responses. I was ready to hit the ground running at Corning.”
He says one of his most influential professors was Alfred Leitner, who taught electromagnetic theory.
“He made you aware of the tremendous amount of mystery in science and the universe and made you intensely interested in understanding it all.”
Keck is a Life Member of the MSU Alumni Association and is a member of MSU’s Beaumont Tower Society.
GEORGE LEVITT, PH.D. '57, RETIRED, DUPONT, PALM BEACH GARDENS, FL
For years, herbicides would kill weeds but also cause deleterious effects on human beings.
Then in 1975, George Levitt, a scientist at DuPont who obtained his Ph. D. in chemistry from MSU in 1957, made a discovery that would revolutionize this field.
“I found that there was an area of chemistry that had been completely overlooked,” Levitt says. “I began to synthesize compounds. One led to another. Soon, we had biological activity of the type that we had never seen before.”
Levitt invented a class of environmentally safer, more effective herbicide known as sulfonylureas. It works by attacking enzymes found in plants, but not in humans or other animals. It harms only the weeds. Moreover, the chemical does not build up in the soil or leach into groundwater.
“I like to think that, if there is a purpose to any of us being here, it is to make the world a better place, and I sincerely feel that the world is a better place because of my work through sulfonylureas,” says Levitt. “We’ve significantly reduced the level of chemicals introduced into the environment and helped improve the efficiency of the world’s food chain.”
Speaking of his inventions, Levitt recalls that “there was no single ‘Eureka!’ moment. It was one ‘Eureka!’ after another. I was continually synthesizing new compounds. When I’d find one that had better activity, I would look to apply the principles I learned from that process and then create even better compounds.”
Levitt credits his success to the tremendous influence of MSU’s retired organic chemistry professor Harold Hart.
“I feel he inspired his students to look beyond just one step, to try to expand a program they might be working on,” he recalls. “He was a person of great imagination and intellect.”
In recognition of his achievements, in 1993 Levitt received the National Medal of Technology from President Bill Clinton, the highest honor a scientist can receive from the U.S. government. What’s more, the following year, the American Chemical Society presented him its Award for Creative Invention. And in 1999, he was among the scientists named Heroes of Chemistry by the American Chemical Society for innovative applications in food and agriculture.
“Before sulfonylurea, the farmer would use considerably more chemicals, and this of course had an impact on the environment,” he notes. “The farmer had more to worry about in the way of side effects on the environment when using traditional, higher-use-rate chemicals, whereas with sulfonylureas, which lack adverse activity on animals and don’t affect fish, fowl or other forms of wildlife, the farmer had less to worry about environmentally.”
DuPont patented Levitt’s invention in 1978 and four years later introduced its Gleanâherbicide to wheat farmers. DuPont soon developed sulfonylurea herbicides for every major food crop in the world.
Until his retirement in 1986, Levitt continued synthesizing sulfonylureas. He received 90 patents for them as inventor or co-inventor.
VELDON HIX, PH.D. '66, RESEARCH MANAGER, MILES WILLARD TECHNOLOGIES, IDAHO FALLS, ID
Growing up on the family farm near Idaho Falls, Hix learned early on he would always “find a way” to solve any mechanical problem. His father, frankly, wasn’t much of a farmer, and they didn’t have all the cash in the world. So they had to make do.
“I’m stubborn,” laughs Hix. “And, yes, I’ve repaired things with bailing wire.”
That “stubbornness,” as he terms it, has served him well. He was the first child in his family’s history to attend college. First he attended the University of Idaho and majored in animal science, thinking he would take his education back to the farm to help his father. But a professor who was a graduate of MSU convinced him to attend MSU and major in food science.
“I just don’t like to accept things the way they are,” he notes. “I’m always looking for the better way.”
For the last 25 years, he’s been inventing at Miles Willard Technologies, which creates products and processes for snack food and potato processing clients worldwide.
He says MSU gave him the hands-on experience he needed to succeed. He points to the research projects for his master’s and Ph.D. programs. In the master’s program, he created a machine to test body fat percentage. In the Ph.D. program, he created a machine to determine the specific gravity of hogs to determine which were leanest and would therefore make best breeding animals.
He’s proud of his patents, even if they aren’t perhaps Nobel-worthy, including:.
- Patent # 4,879,126 -- Method for preventing distortion in shape of fried strand-like expanded snacks
- Patent # 4,889.733 -- Method for controlling puffing of a snack product
- Patent # 4,931,303 -- Method of controlling the surface bubbling of fabricated snack products
- Patent # 5,366,749 - Process and product of making a snack from composite dough
He says it doesn’t bother him that he’s spent his career inventing snack treats and processes to create snack treats. “It’s just like anything else. Snacks can be an important part of your diet. You just don’t eat a whole bag of potato chips every day.”
JIM VON HER, '72, CEO, ZYVEX CORP., DALLAS, TX
Left to himself, Jim Von Ehr tends to amaze.
After earning a B.S. in computer science from MSU he built the Altsys Corporation from a small programming project in his dining room. At the time, the desktop publishing industry was just beginning and Altsys became a major player, developing FreeHand and Fontographer, the first commercially available PostScript drawing programs. While running Altsys, he earned five patents for software products. He sold the business to MacroMedia in 1984 for a hefty sum and decided to get out of software.
“After I sold Altsys, I realized I could never hope to capture that level of success again,” he says. “I made more than 10,000 times return on my money. That struck me as a once-in-a-lifetime kind of thing. Secondly, I realized that the Internet had changed everything about software. I knew a lot about shrink-wrap software—but I thought that actually might be a handicap in the Internet Age. Also, I wasn’t having any fun anymore in software.”
He had heard of the promise of nanotechnology, and without much knowledge of what he was getting into founded Zyvex in a suburb just outside Dallas, intending to get in on the ground floor of another revolution.
What's nanotechnology? Sometimes called molecular engineering, it's thebranch of engineering that deals with things smaller than 100 nanometers (especially with the manipulation of individual molecules).
To date, Zyvex has two major products. First off, they’ve developed a nano-manipulator, a device the size of an outstretched hand that fits into an electron microscope. “It allows you to reach into the nano world and manipulate things,” Von Ehr notes.
The second major product has been super-strong materials. “At the nano scale, things can be made atomically perfect—every atom in its perfect place. That perfection gives incredible strength,” he explains.
To date, he only has one patent to his name at Zyvex, for a way for aligning carbon nano-tubes (the things that make up the above-mentioned super-strong materials).
His other patent is still being processed by the U.S. Patent Office. It is for a thermal interface material that will move heat between heat-generating nano-fibers and heat-seeking nano-fibers.
“I’m a tinkerer by nature, so MSU was the perfect school for me,” he says. “They didn’t discourage my tinkering. A lot of educational institutions, it seems the professors try to turn off students’ creativity or inventiveness if it doesn’t fit in the with syllabus or the teaching plan. But at MSU, I had access to the engineering buildings, and I would go over there and tinker whenever I wanted. Also, I could use the computers to do some programming beyond my class assignments. Allowing students to ‘play’ like that is very important in the learning process, and MSU realized that.”
Von Her is a Life Member of the MSU Alumni Association and winner of the 2004 Distinguished Alumni Award.
MICHELLE CAMPBELL JOHNSON, '95, SENIOR PRODUCT MANAGER, MOTOROLA, SCHAUMBURG, IL
Michelle’s single-parent family didn’t have all the money in the world growing up, so it was great that Michelle had an insatiable knack to tinker. That meant gladly fixing anything that broke, but it also meant a few innovations of her own. Like the remote control trash-grabbing robot she created in 8th grade.
As long as she has someone, in the above case her hard-working and grateful mother, who is willing to let her use her gifts, she’s happy.
“I have a passion to create new things and to make life easier,” she says.
Michelle, who earned a bachelor’s in electrical engineering in 1995, found the MSU College of Engineering just such an encouraging environment also. “Dr. Tamala gave me the opportunity to host an open house for high school students who were considering the MSU College of Engineering,” she recalls. “After that, he took a real interest in me and sort of took me under his wing. You can get lost in a sea of engineers. But I could come to his office at any time and ask, ‘What’s this?’ or ‘How does this exactly work?’ In college, it’s not a sign of weakness to ask questions and I didn’t have any issue with asking a lot of them.”
Indeed, she’s been blessed with a highly analytical mind. “I look at everything from every angle,” she says. “I suppose that could kind of rub some people the wrong way sometimes. But, you know, I have a lot of friends. I’m a very personable person. I’m not your stereotypical engineer in that way. In fact, in my current job, I have to interact with the customer quite a lot.”
Currently, Michelle develops next-generation products for Motorola’s telecommunications wireless carrier customers, such as Nextel. ”My most recent design is a network operability tool. In short, this tool allows the network operators the ability to easily migrate multiple sites across their network.”
Michelle understands the occasional hurdles in Corporate America to actually converting ideas into real products. Her ideas are not always accepted. “Yes, it can sometimes be frustrating but I understand not everyone can easily accept a new vision and direction,” she says. “I also know that if the idea is worth pursing, I will share it with others within the company with the ultimate goal of obtaining senior management and customer acceptance.
”I have some plans in mind that I believe would transform the way things could and would be done in this world. I would rather not disclose them in this interview but I would like everyone to know I have some cool ideas in my head.”
XIAN-HE SUN, M.A. '85, M.S. '87, PH,D, '90, DIRECTOR, SCALABLE COMPUTING SOFTWARE LAB, ILLINOIS INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY, CHICAGO, IL
Ever make a phone call via the Internet? Thinking of buying a new generation computer? Do you watch the Weather Channel?
Many everyday activities you take for granted were made possible by inventions of Dr. Xian-He Sun, professor of computer science at the Illinois Institute of Technology and director of IIT’s Scalable Computing Software Lab.
Among his more than 10 U.S. and international patents, for example, is his development of a software protocol that breaks down the barriers between data networks and voice networks. The Chicago Sun-Times credits Dr. Sun and his colleagues with turning POTS (Plain Old Telephone Service) into PANS (Pretty Amazing New Stuff).
A native of Beijing, China, Dr. Sun was not much of an inventor when he graduated from Beijing Normal University in 1982. But he enjoyed research, and during his seven years at MSU, where he received three degrees—M.S. ’85, mathematics, and M.S. ’87 & Ph. D. ’90, computer science—he began seeing “how research can make an impact not only in lifting the wisdom of mankind but also in improving the quality of human life.”
“I really enjoyed my years at MSU,” says Sun. “I enjoyed studying there and doing research, so much so that my advisor, professor Lionel Ni, had to kick me out. No, just joking. Actually my wife (Hong Zhang) got her Ph.D. in 1989 (mathematics) and that motivated me to wipe up my dissertation.”
Indeed, Sun’s dissertation was a research breakthrough and led to what textbooks now call the Sun-Ni Law of parallel processing. One of three major laws in parallel computing, it dramatically affects current computer design. The power of parallel processing, by the way, has allowed many, many applications, including generating more accurate weather forecasts in a timely fashion.
“I am, first and foremost, a scientist,” explains Sun, who currently has a number of patents pending, dealing with his novel idea of memory data access server. “In the process of research, you get a breakthrough, and then you see a cluster of inventions.”
STEVEN PUEPPKE, '71, DIRECTOR, MICHIGAN AGRICULTURAL EXPERIMENT STATION, EAST LANSING
On Jan. 1, Pueppke took over MSU’s Michigan Agricultural Experiment Station and now oversees all the R&D aimed at enhancing agriculture, natural resources and families and communities in Michigan.
It was a homecoming for Pueppke. The Fargo, N.D., native received his undergraduate degree in horticulture from MSU.
Although he grew up on a farm in Fargo, he was destined for bigger things. An avid student, he was a National Merit Scholar finalist in high school. That got the interest of MSU. His father flew him to East Lansing in the farm’s four-seater. Wearing his only suit, the young Pueppke strained to look out the window as the amazing cityscape of East Lansing appeared below him.
“The campus was immense to me,” he says. “The graduating class of my high school had five kids in it!”
His father was supportive with his desire to leave the farm. His son had made it clear that he had a deep interest in agriculture and would make an impact on farming in a different way. Besides, the inventive young Pueppke would have dried up and withered away back in Fargo. His destiny lay elsewhere.
He got a low-interest student loan and worked his was through school, graduating in three years.
“I actually went into MSU wanting to be an oceanographer,” he recalls. “I was in Honors College, and in those days you could put your own curriculum together with our honors advisors. My notion was to study food production in the seas with an eye toward solving world hunger.”
Pueppke says he was attracted to MSU partly because of the clarity of the university’s global vision.
“MSU is a pioneer in trying to understand world trends—for example the varied acceptance of bioengineered crops around the world—and making information available to the agricultural system in the state,” he explains.
During his 25-year career as a lab researcher, Pueppke has invented many agricultural processes and techniques. For example, while at the University of Illinois, he developed a new way toselect improved strains of a soil-dwelling bacterium to help crop plants capture nitrogen from the air.
Pueppke is a Life Member of the MSU Alumni Association.
GREG SPENCER, B.A. '70, B.S. '74, RETIRED SCHOOL TEACHER, EAST LANSING
As a MSU undergraduate with undiagnosed autism, Spencer found the perfect place to spend his days: Abbott Residence Hall. At that time, Abbott had a 24-hour-a-day “Quiet Floor” rule. Spencer didn’t do so well with excess sensory input, so on Abbott’s quiet floor his mind was freer to make of the world what it would—such as seeing people from the inside out, diagramming arguments for the existence of a higher power, and constructing the campus as an algorithm. If he bumped into one of the people in his admittedly “peculiar” friendships, he would talk their arm off.
“I’m not good at ‘ping-pong’ conversation,” he explains. “I’m a monologist. If you’ve got flowcharts for brains, it’s harder to help somebody who comes up to you and only wants to bum a dime for a cup of coffee.”
During the Magic Johnson era MSU, Spencer became a basketball fan. Sitting there in the gymnasium, his mind would block out the roar of the crowd and he’d begin working the geometry of the game.
He got an idea.
But since he was working two jobs while raising the family, the plans for his idea took shape ever so slowly in his brain and on paper.
Last year, however, he finally got his idea patented. His patent is for a “sharpshooter basketball apparatus.” It’s a target that one hangs behind a glass backboard. If a player aims for the target, she or he will make a “bank swish” as Spencer says, “guaranteed!”
“I broke the code of basketball,” he says in the middle of a monologue. “One of my friends told me, ‘They’re going to have to change the name of the game from basketball to Spencerball.’
“This is a product that’s applicable to every basketball player. There are over 55 million basketball players in the US.”
ROBERT SWITZER, '65, M.S. '72, PH.D. '74, CEO, NEUROSCIENCE ASSOCIATES, KNOXVILLE, TN
Switzer earned degrees in physics and astronomy from MSU in 1965, and then his life changed when he met professor Barnett Rosenberg, who was studying how to use platinum as an anticancer compound. He switched over to biophysics, earning a master’s in 1972 and a Ph.D. in 1974.
In 1989, Switzerfounded NeuroScience Associates to provide neurohistology services. Neurohistology is the study of slices of brain matter for diagnostic purposes.
He is the inventor of NSA’s MultiBrain technology. Using MultiBrain, NSA is able to perform neurohistology up to 25 times faster than conventional techniques. The researcher is able to put 16 rat or 25 mouse brains in the MultiBrain at one time.
MultiBrain is allowing Alzheimer’s researchers (and others) to shorten their drug development cycle times and to deliver a safe and effective cure.
To date, NSA Labs has performed histology services on over 2 million brain and spinal cord sections from more than 20 different species of animals, ranging from neonate brains to fully intact human brain hemispheres.
“Although, I’m a scientist, it’s working with my bands that excites me,” he says. “In eighth grade, I ground and polished my own telescope mirrors. I’ve always been a tinkerer, trying to find a better way.”
For the record, Switzer’s MSU mentor Rosenberg was the scientist who made the crucial discovery that led to the anti-cancer drug Cisplatin, approved by the FDA in 1978, and a related drug, Carboplatin, approved in 1989. To date, these are the world’s two leading anti-cancer drugs, and they have proven to be effective against testicular and cervical cancer, and to lower the rates of lung cancer, head, neck and bone cancer, and ovarian cancer.
CRAIG NABAT, '93, CEO, AMBITIOUS IDEAS, SANTA MONICA, CA
Forget the coke-bottom glasses and coiffure ala Poindexter—Craig Nabat is MSU’s official “hunk” alumni inventor. Specifically, Nabat, founder of Ambitious Ideas, Inc., was named one of Entrepreneur Start-Ups Magazine's “11 Sexiest Entrepreneurs.”
He’s used his good looks to help sell his biggest invention, FINDIT, a patented, domino-sized device that is attached to keys and eyeglass cases. When these items are lost, the FINDIT is set to respond to a three-clap pattern, sounding a series of beeps to let the person know where to locate the items.
As part of FINDIT's marketing, Ambitious Ideas developed a tie-in promotional campaign to imprint the FINDIT logo on the fly of Men's boxer shorts. And Craig himself was the model in the provocative ad.
While he graduated from MSU with a degree in sociology, he earned his business degree from the school of hard knocks. It took seven years and $800,000 to get the FINDIT to market.
“Obviously, had I known it would take that long, I never would have started,” says the 35-year-old. ”But once I start something, it’s not in my nature to quit, even though my friends and family wouldn’t stop telling me to give it up.”
JIM SIAS, '67, M.A. '68, PRESIDENT, SIAS PATTERNSON, INC., YORKTOWN, VA
Sias had been doing industrial design work for various companies since he earned his master’s in industrial design from MSU in 1993. For example, he developed Kodak’s slide projector carousel.
But he itched to do something with more pizzazz. So he teamed up with a fellow oceanography buff Mark Patterson to invent the Fetch and Fetch2 Autonomous Underwater Vehicles.These so-called “swimming computers” are designed tomap and determine the health of underwater environments, measure currents, count fish and even assist the Navy with homeland security. (They are currently being used to check for underwater explosives in Iraq.)
His devices significantly reduce costs in man-hours and can deliver around-the-clock readings. The 77-inch-long, 160-pound computer-operated submarine can reach a maximum depth of 500 feet and can remain submerged for more than 22 hours. (Let’s see a scuba diver do that!)These mini-subs are fully equipped with onboard sensors, side-scan sonar, video cameras, temperature and current sensors and more.
Just as unmanned airplanes are expected to see explosive growth over the next 10 to 15 years, so, too, are underwater robots. Navy estimates call for 100,000 of them to be deployed worldwide within the decade.
Sias hopes his company will double in size every year over the next five years. "We know that this is a very robust product, and we know it works," he says.
Getting it to work was no easy feat, though.
“The toughest part of this invention was the integration of all the electronics,” he explains. “If your printer’s not working, you know how frustrating that is. Multiply that a hundredfold and you’ll see the trouble we had in getting all the electronic devices to synchronize with one another.”
He says MSU helped him get to where he is not only through teaching him industrial design but also in giving him the practical experience at making pitches.
“At MSU, I developed the ability to put ideas together and present them to other people,” he says. “As you can imagine, that’s a skill I use a lot.”
John Draper is a freelance writer based in Seattle, WA.
Editor’s Note: This is only a small group of MSU alumni inventors that we have identified. Know any alumni inventors we might have missed? Let us know: editor@msualum.com.
