Michael Silver (Bio and Photos)
Michael has a widely varied background which includes math, music, art, computer science, technology, telecommunications, molecular biology and organic chemistry, motorsports, teaching, language, scuba diving, emergency medicine, and the culinary arts.
For his work with NASA on several projects, Michael was made an honorary Air Force Captain.
Michael, a Certified Executive Pastry Chef, teaches food science, chocolate making (bean-to-bar), food safety, and baking at Seattle Central College. He is a certified ServSafe (food safety) instructor, and he received his culinary training from the Culinary Institute of America (ACAP) and his professional baking and pastry training from the Seattle Culinary Academy (AAS). Michael spends much of his time in the development of FoodScience.org and Chef's Village, non-profit web sites for teaching everything related to food, cooking, baking, sustainability, and related areas. He also serves on the Board of Directors of the Washington State Chef's Association.
Michael has a long history of doing volunteer work, starting at a young age raising money for Muscular Dystrophy. His volunteer work also includes working with disadvantaged teens, teaching for the American Red Cross, doing emergency medical work at the Catalina Hyperbaric Chamber, volunteering for the SPCA, and doing molecular biology research at Stanford University. He has also done volunteer work as a certified EMT. He is a Divemaster who specializes in both dive-related medicine and underwater photography. Using his background in molecular biology, he served for two years as the chair of the Research Advisory Committee of CFRI (Cystic Fibrosis Research, Inc.) and participated as a member of this committee of doctors and scientists for some time before that. Most recently, Michael served for two years on the Board of Directors of the Motorsport Safety Foundation, and as part of that role, he taught high-performance driving instructors across the US and Canada how to teach others the art of driving on a race track. He has also coached and instructed hundreds of individuals in high-performance driving.
He has a passion for teaching and has taught and studied pedagogy throughout his life, starting when he taught mathematics at his local college while he was still in High School. He has since taught in many other fields. He created one of the very first distance-learning platforms and consulted for Stanford University on distance learning in its early days.
Michael began playing the piano at the age of four and has been deeply involved with music ever since. He has sung and played a number of instruments professionally, wrote and directed music for three years for Shakespeare Santa Cruz, performed in the West Coast premiere of Nixon in China under the direction of composer John Adams, and won several piano competitions.
Michael studied music at UC Santa Cruz (with a minor in art) and later graduated as valedictorian from St. Mary’s College of Moraga with a degree in business. He has worked as a composer, arranger, musician, musical director, and teacher. He has also been a DJ for a large classical music station (KBOQ) and worked for PG&E as a state-licensed home inspector, auditor, and energy conservation specialist. Michael holds an active C-10 electrical license.
Michael owns and runs Audio High, Inc., one of the oldest and most successful home and commercial automation companies in the US. He also owns and runs MomoSims, a high-end racing and flight simulator manufacturer. Before founding Audio High, he was involved with a number of technology companies in the Bay Area. For seven years, Michael was an engineering and software development manager at Apple Computer. During his tenure at Apple, he wrote a programming book that was published by Apple; wrote the telecommunications code that sent the first e-mail from space and supported the astronauts during that mission; and re-architected America Online (AOL) to support other languages, cultures, and writing systems. In addition, he co-designed the telecommunications language used by AOL, Apple, General Electric, CompuServe, and others; and he designed the Unicode compression algorithm used by Apple and AOL. Michael also designed the user interfaces for several Apple products, wrote a suite of online content-publishing tools, and was the technical editor for numerous publications.
Michael also co-owns and co-operates two businesses in the food industry (a chocolate manufacturing company and a café/bakery that was chosen by Yelp as one of the top 15 hot chocolate locations in the United States). He also built (and sold) another chocolate company that produced over 200,000 pounds of chocolate a year, including all the drinking chocolate for Numi.
Michael served on the Board of Directors for Persp3ctive, Inc., a Los Angeles-based company that builds technology platforms for augmented and virtual reality applications. In its first year, Persp3ctive was a finalist for the SXSW Music Innovation awards. Michael has co-founded three other technology corporations and founded twelve other successful businesses. He has authored or co-authored a number of patents.
Michael has worked with and consulted for many well-known and influential people in a number of industries, including founders and executives at Google, Apple, Facebook, Tesla, HP, Android, and many other technology companies, Hollywood elite (including directors Francis Ford Coppola and Frank Darabont, plus a number of well-known actors), Musicians (including Keith Richards, Peter Gabriel, Herbie Hancock, Carlos Santana, Benny Golson, Ron Carter, Buster Williams, and Kenny Barron), and many others. His company has built or helped build studios and theaters for LucasFilm, YouTube, Zoetrope, Herbie Hancock, Wylie Co., and Eddy Cue (SVP of Apple responsible for AppleTV and iTunes). He also consulted for the Seattle Mariners and for Levi's Stadium in San Jose.
Shameless Vanity Photos
