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.

Honors

For his work with NASA, Michael was made an honorary Air Force Captain. This included work on the space program, connecting NASA-Ames to the Internet (back in the day), and writing code to communicate with and control remote research robots. 

Culinary

Michael is an Certified Executive Chef (CEC), Certified Research Chef (CRC), Certified Executive Pastry Chef (CEPC), Certified Culinary Educator (CCE), Certified Culinary Scientist (CCS), and certified ServSafe (food safety) instructor. He teaches food science, cooking, baking, coffee, and bean-to-bar chocolate at colleges in Seattle and Tacoma. 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 Chef's Village, a non-profit web site 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. 

Volunteer Work

Michael has a long history of doing volunteer work, starting at the age  of eight raising money for Muscular Dystrophy. His volunteer work also includes working with disadvantaged teens, teaching for the American Red Cross, as an EMT / first responder for a fire station, as a Dive Medic at the Catalina Hyperbaric Chamber, volunteering for the SPCA, and doing molecular biology research at Stanford University. 

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. 

Teaching

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. He is a Divemaster who taught scuba diving and specialized in both dive-related medicine and underwater photography. 

Music

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.

Education and Other Work

As an undergraduate, 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 also earned an AAS in baking and pastry, and he has done graduate work in molecular biology, microbiology, and food science (currently earning a Master's degree). 

Business Stuff

Michael owns and runs Audio High, Inc., one of the oldest and most successful home and commercial automation companies in the US. He also founded 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 (from the Flight Control Room); 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 co-owns a café/bakery that was chosen by Yelp as one of the top 15 hot chocolate locations in the United States. He also co-founded another chocolate company that produced over 200,000 pounds of chocolate a year, including all the drinking chocolate for Numi.

He has also 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 is a certified contractor and holds an active C-10 electrical license. 

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. 

Clients

Michael has worked directly with and consulted for many well-known and influential people in a number of industries, including people like Elon Musk, Larry Page, and many other founders and executives at Google, Apple, Facebook, Tesla, HP, Android, and 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 (Francis Coppola), Herbie Hancock, Wylie Co., and Eddy Cue (SVP of Apple responsible for AppleTV and iTunes). He also did work for the Seattle Mariners and for the design of Levi's Stadium in San Jose. 

Shameless Vanity Photos