Speaker Biography

2018-19 Year

Antonia Dapena-Tretter - Presentation on - "Art, Creativity, and the Power of Failure."

Antonia Dapena-Tretter is the School and Outreach Manager at The Walt Disney Family Museum. She manages a team of 10 educators who teach animation and digital storytelling to approximately 12,000 students per year through field trips and outreach programs. With a Masters in Art History, Antonia has always believed in the power of art to inspire audiences, but in the past three years, as a Lead Facilitator and Member of the Region 5 STEAM Steering Committee, she began to incorporate her arts background into interdisciplinary STEAM-specific curriculum. Within the Monterey County of Education’s “Power of Discovery” STEAM Initiative, she helps to bring high-quality STEAM learning to Expanded Learning professionals in San Benito, Santa Cruz, Monterey, and Santa Clara counties. With the Region 5 STEAM team, she is presenting on October 28^th at the annual California STEAM Symposium, and on November 1^st she is to be honored with a Champions Award. Given by the Santa Clara County After School Collaborative, this award recognizes outstanding individuals who have contributed to the success of after school and summer programs in the region.

Ana María Tárano - Presentation on - "Level Up: #Disrupt YOUR Future"

Ana María Tárano is an Aeronautics and Astronautics Ph.D. candidate at Stanford University in the Space Environment and Satellite Systems Laboratory. Her research facilitates NASA’s asteroid threat assessment endeavors by automating the asteroid modeling process using machine learning approaches. Her experiences range from leading Stanford's CubeSat QB50 Discovery efforts to studying space radiation effects on astronauts. She is passionate about using academic, e.g. CS229 #metoo movement project, and extracurricular opportunities, e.g. Anderson et La Mode fashion show, to challenge perceptions and the culture in STEM. She aspires to continue applying engineering to express herself, solve critical social issues, and continue learning more about the universe. She holds a B.S. and M.S. in Aeronautics and Astronautics from Stanford and numerous awards for her diversity initiatives in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM), such as the Enhancing Diversity in Graduate Education Doctoral Fellowship and Dean’s Packard Diversity Fellowship.

Sara Mitchell - Presentation on - " Project Debug & A Career Thwarting the Mosquito"

Sara is a senior scientist on the Debug project, which is part of Alphabet Inc.’s Life Sciences branch, Verily. Debug aims to control disease transmitting mosquitoes worldwide by combining innovative mosquito control strategies with the latest software and engineering technology.

Sara’s fascination with mosquitoes and the diseases they spread began over 20 years ago when she participated in a work experience at the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine (LSTM), while at high school in the UK. Established in 1898, LSTM was the world’s oldest Tropical Medicine Institute and is the place where Ronald Ross first discovered that mosquitoes transmit Malaria! A Liverpool native, Sara pursued her Bachelors and Masters in Science at LSTM, followed by a PhD focusing on malaria transmitting mosquitoes in West Africa. After completing her PhD Sara moved to London to work at Imperial College studying mosquito reproduction, a job which led her to move to the USA in 2012 to work at the Harvard School of Public Health. After nearly five years working on mating in mosquitoes it was time to move on! Timing was perfect when the phone rang and Verily were interested in hiring mosquito scientists. Sara was excited by the prospect of applied mosquito control utilizing Google’s engineering innovations. It was a daunting move away from academic research to an industry position, but 2.5 years later she knows she made the right decision!

Mark Rober -Presentation on - "Why I quit my dream job at NASA to make YouTube videos"

Mark Rober has made a career out of engineering, entertainment, and education. After completing degrees in mechanical engineering from Brigham Young University and the University of Southern California, Rober joined NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in 2004. In his nine years as a NASA engineer, seven of which were on the Mars rover Curiosity team, Rober worked on both the Descent Stage (the jet pack that lowered the Rover to the surface) and some hardware on the Rover top deck for collecting samples. In 2011, Rober’s iPad-based Halloween costume helped launch both his creative costume company, Digital Dudz, and his YouTube channel, which now boasts 4 million subscribers and .5B views. His videos focus on creative ideas and science- and engineering-based pranks and activities. Rober is a regular guest on "Jimmy Kimmel Live!". Today, he does research and development work for a large technology company in Northern California, where he lives with his wife and son.

Brian Jones - Presentation on - Fighting Climate Change: Hardware, Software, GIS, and Business at Kairos Aerospace

Brian is a PhD physicist who co-founded Kairos Aerospace in 2014. After leading the development of the prototype hardware, analysis, and software, he assembled a team of engineers to mature the product for a production environment. As COO, Brian is responsible for the market delivery of Kairos survey services. Prior to founding Kairos, Brian worked at Lockheed Martin as Chief Scientist on a number of classified and unclassified space projects as well as Lead Scientist for the Space Environmental Effects Lab.

Laura Shumaker - Presentation on - "Mechanical Engineer of Textiles, Fabrics, Other Materials and Started a Rock Climbing Shoe Company"

Laura works on textiles at Google, with an emphasis on identifying / developing processes that make the best use of textile properties. She began her career as a mechanical engineer, but shortly started a company to manufacture custom-fit rock climbing shoes where she wore all the hats. When the time to wrap that up came, she wanted to keep working on soft goods, especially in high volume products. Google offered an interesting intersection between novel use of textiles and mass production.

Outside of work, Laura likes to: boulder (she started climbing while studying at MIT, so it's been about 9 years of abraded fingertips, cycle , and eat tomatoes straight out of the garden

Heberly Rosario

2017-18 Year

Danielle Feinberg

Danielle Feinberg began her career at Pixar Animation Studios in February 1997. She crewed many of Pixar’s feature films including Toy Story2, Monsters, Inc., Finding Nemo and The Incredibles, WALL•E, Brave, and is now working on Pixar's upcoming fall 2017 film Coco. Her love of combining computers and art began she was eight years old, and she now works with teenage girls, encouraging them to pursue code, math and science by demonstrating to them this same magic found by combining art and technology. She was able to bring that message to a broader audience with her TED talk that was part of the PBS "Science and Wonder" presentation for TED Talks Live, named one of the best TED talks of 2016.

Frank Cascarano

Frank Cascarano is a Physics Instructor at Foothill College. After receiving an MS degree in physics from UC San Diego, he worked in the semiconductor industry for ten years as a process engineer. A career change into teaching brought him to Foothill College about fifteen years ago. In addition to teaching college physics, he and his colleagues put on a physics demonstration show for kids in the community called, The Physics Show. Over 100 thousand people have seen The Physics Show, now in its 12th year, with annual attendance over 20,000.

Dr Jill Helms

Dr Jill Helms, DDS, Ph.D. is a professor at Stanford University. Jill has appeared on Animal Planet (“Weird, True & Freaky”) and the BBC show, “Mutants”. She says the best part of her job is getting to work with smart young people. She loves what she does, believes that the most we can all hope for is to make a difference in the world and feels lucky to have a job that makes it all possible!

Michael John

Michael John (MJ) is the Director of the Games & Playable Media Masters degree program at UC Santa Cruz. Prior to UCSC, he worked in the commercial industry for 20+ years as a game designer, with companies such as Insomniac Games, Sony Computer Entertainment, and Electronic Arts. At UCSC, he teaches courses in game design and development, as well as developing new and experimental game experiences.

Phil Marshall

Phil Marshall is currently a research scientist at SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, and a member of the Kavli Institute for Particle Astrophysics and Cosmology (KIPAC). He develops cosmology analysis for LSST, designing algorithms for making cosmological measurements, and measuring distances with strong gravitational lenses. He was a founding postdoc at KIPAC in 2003-2006, and Kavli Fellow in 2009-2010, with research fellowships at the University of California Santa Barbara and the University of Oxford. He received a PhD in astrophysics at the University of Cambridge, where he first developed an interest in statistical inference and observational cosmology.

Dr. Christopher Gardner

Dr. Christopher Gardner majored in Philosophy in college, and spent 6 years afterward searching for purpose and meaning in life. He never would have guessed he would end up getting a PhD in Nutrition Science at UC Berkeley, or his current job at Stanford. He is currently a Professor of Medicine where he studies diet, health, human behavior, and searches for solutions to the broken food system in the US (which includes the complex of web of connections from food production, to processing and distribution, to consumption).

Ana Maria Tarano

Ana Maria Tarano is an Aeronautics and Astronautics Ph.D. candidate at Stanford University in the Space Environment and Satellite Systems Laboratory. Her experiences range from leading Stanford's CubeSat QB50 Discovery efforts to studying space radiation effects on astronauts. She is a passionate educator and aspires to apply engineering to solve critical problems of human spaceflight and social issues. She holds a B.S. and M.S. in Aeronautics and Astronautics from Stanford and numerous awards for her diversity initiatives in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM), such as the Enhancing Diversity in Graduate Education Doctoral Fellowship and Dean’s Packard Diversity Fellowship.

2016-17 Year

Kurt LongKurt Long is an aerospace engineer who started out his career as a helicopter flight test engineer for the US Navy. For 20 years, he tested helicopters landing aboard US Navy ships, to determine their performance and ensure safety. Since 1998, he has worked at NASA Ames Research Center (Moffett Field) in Mountain View; he now conducts wind tunnel experiments for not just spacecraft and aircraft, but also ships, buildings, trucks, sports balls, rodent enclosures, and even algae, for a variety of NASA and non-NASA sponsors. He also serves as Lab Manager and Student Intern Coordinator at the Fluid Mechanics Lab (FML) at NASA Ames. He does wind tunnel design and aerodynamic consulting work for various educational outreach organizations, including local schools, colleges, Teachers in Space, and the Mythbusters TV show. Interests include sailing catamarans in the Caribbean and windsurfing.

Christina NgoChristina Ngo received her BS in Mechanical Engineering with a concentration in Aerodynamics from the University of California, San Diego. She first came to Ames as an intern in 2009 and later gained experience in design, structural analysis, and aeronautics at Pratt and Whitney, Hamilton Sundstrand, and SpaceX. Prior to being hired as a Research Engineer at NASA Ames in 2013, she was a research assistant working with UCSD/Stanford in developing an alternative valve used in the Fontan surgery for children with hypoplastic left heart syndrome. Currently, she works on a variety of projects that consists of software development, dynamic analysis, numerical methods, motion control, and advanced instrumentation for wind tunnel experiments at NASA Ames Research Center. She enjoys scuba diving, heights (bungee jumping/sky diving), and traveling on her spare time. In addition, she is an advocate in STEM education at local schools and with Teacher in Space. Her most notable speech was as an invited TEDx speaker raising awareness for the LGBT community in STEM.

Dusty SchroederDusty Schroeder is an assistant professor of geophysics in the School of Earth, Energy, and Environmental Sciences at Stanford University. He works on the fundamental problem of observing, understanding, and predicting the configuration and evolution of ice sheet boundary conditions using ice penetrating radar sounding data. Before coming to Stanford he worked as a radar systems engineer with the Jet Propulsion Laboratory at the California Institute of Technology. He is also a science team member and co-investigator on the REASON (Radar for Europa Assessment and Sounding: Ocean to Near-Surface) radar sounder on NASA’s Europa Clipper mission and is an active collaborator on the RIME (Radar for Icy Moon Exploration) radar sounder for EASA’s JUICE mission to Ganymede. He received his PhD in geophysics from the University of Texas at Austin where he served as the lead radar engineer and operator during three Antarctic field seasons with the ICECAP and Operation Ice-Bridge projects.

Website: http://www.radioglaciology.org/

Dr. Mayasari LimDr. Mayasari Lim is the founder and CEO of SE3D, a technology enterprise providing desktop bioprinters for next generation scientists and engineers. Prior to starting her own venture, she was an assistant professor in the School of Chemical and Biomedical Engineering at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore and was known for her work in stem cell bioprocess engineering. Dr. Lim obtained her Ph.D. in chemical engineering at Imperial College London and her B.Sc. in chemical engineering at UC Berkeley.

Dr. Catherine MohrDr. Catherine Mohr is Vice President of Medical Research at Intuitive Surgical, a high technology Silicon Valley based company that makes the da Vinci surgical robot. She is responsible for strategic planning of new developments, identifying new technologies for incorporation into the robotic platform, and conducting surgical labs to evaluate prototype devices and technologies. She is also a Consulting Assistant Professor in the department of Surgery at Stanford School of Medicine and on the medicine and robotics faculty of Singularity University. Dr. Mohr currently has served as a scientific advisor to several startup companies in the areas of alternative energy transportation, computer aided design software, and medical devices. She is a frequent speaker on the topics of surgical robotics, innovation, and the importance of science. She is also the author of numerous scientific publications, and the recipient of multiple awards including “World Class New Zealander” for raising the profile of her home country internationally.

Dr. David Pablo Cohn Dr. David Pablo Cohn (http://davidpablocohn.com) has failed at just about everything he's tried. He failed to get into the college of his choice. He failed at his first major. After graduate school he failed, year after year, to land the faculty job he'd spent seven years training for. He took refuge in a series of startups, all but one of which ended in smoking craters. But learning, step by step, how to make each of those failures productive helped establish him as Google's "Instigator at Large" and the Technical Lead for Google Labs. These days, for fun, he works aboard an icebreaker with the US Antarctic Program, supporting scientific research in an environment where the wrong kind of failure can be catastrophic.

2015-16 Year

Dave Northway

Mr. Northway grew up in the Bay area and attended Stanford, where he earned a BA in Art, a BS in Product Design, and an MS in Mechanical Engineering. He has worked at Bell Labs, Apple, Palm, various startups, consulting, and GoPro in the USA and in Asia. His roles at these companies included Designer, Engineer, Project Leader, and Business Manager. He is an instructor with the Stanford Design Department teaching Visual thinking. During his free time, he is an avid racer, mechanic, and cartoonist. He and his wife have raised two boys while living in the Bay Area.

Seth ShostakDr. Shostak has written more than four hundred magazine and web articles on astronomy and technology, and he appeared in two movies and numerous television shows. He hosts a weekly radio show called Big Picture Science. He gives approximately 60 talks annually at both educational and corporate institutions. Dr. Shostak has written nearly a dozen books, including “Sharing the Universe: Perspectives on Extraterrestrial Life”, “Cosmic Company”, “Life in the Universe”, and “Confessions of an Alien Hunter”. Dr. Shostak earned a BS in Physics from Princeton University and a Ph.D. in Astrophysics from the California Institute of Technology.

Tahllee BaynardDr. Baynard lives in Los Altos and works at Lockheed Martin developing next generation sensors for commercial and government applications. He earned his Ph.D in Physical Chemistry from the University of Chicago and BA from Cornell College in Mount Vernon, Iowa. His research topics have included agriculture, alternative energy, climate change, lasers and optical sensors.

Mark Carbone

Mr. Carbone has been an engineer and engineering manager for over 33 years. He has done computer cooling and process heat transfer at a number of companies including Apple, IBM, and Intel. Mr. Carbone has a BS Mechanical Engineering, an MS Mechanical Engineering with specialization in Heat Transfer and Boundary Layer Fluid Mechanics, and an MBA in Management. He holds over ten patents.

John Fitch

Mr. Fitch grew up a naive country kid without much career guidance. He applied to one university in the city, and thought he might like mechanical engineering. It was a lucky choice. Years later he had a great time working at companies like Xerox PARC and Google. He has engineered jet engines, computers, garbage-burning power plants, DNA printers, solar systems, MEMS devices, and Google Glass.

Window SnyderMs. Snyder is the Chief Security Officer at Fastly, focusing on real-time internet content delivery while mitigating security threats. An internet security industry veteran, Ms. Snyder previously led security teams for Apple (OS X and iOS), Microsoft (XP SP2 and Windows Server 2003), Mozilla, Axent Technologies, @stake , and was a founding member of Matasano. Ms. Snyder is co-author of Threat Modeling, a manual for security architecture analysis in software..

2014-15 Year

Stanley Yang

As Chief Executive Officer of NeuroSky, Stanley Yang leads the strategic vision and management of the company. NeuroSky is at the forefront of body and mind monitoring and analysis. Its body and mind biosensor technologies and interpretive algorithms are at the core of innovative, wearable health, fitness and wellness products. With NeuroSky consumers are able to capture and quantify personal health and wellness data, giving them vital quantitative insights to their mind and body.

Fidel HernandezFidel Hernandez is a PhD Candidate in the Mechanical Engineering Department at Stanford University. Fidel is investigating novel ways of diagnosing and preventing traumatic brain injury. He enjoys sharing his work at scientific conferences and frequently connects with undergraduate and K-12 students through science outreach. Aside from university research, Fidel has industry engineering experience from work with Boeing Commercial Airplanes in 2009 and 2011, and Walt Disney Imagineering Research & Development in 2010.

Mary Lou ZobackMary Lou Zoback is a seismologist and Consulting Professor in the Geophysics Department at Stanford University. From 2006-20011 she was Vice President for Earthquake Risk Applications with Risk Management Solutions, a private catastrophe modeling firm serving the insurance industry. Zoback previously was a senior research scientist at the USGS in Menlo Park, CA and served as Chief Scientist of the Western Earthquake Hazards team. Dr. Zoback is a member of the U. S. National Academy of Sciences, past President of the Geological Society of America, and past chair of the Advisory Committee for San Francisco’s Community Action Plan for Seismic Safety (CAPSS) program. She is currently a member of the National Academy of Sciences’ Resilient America Roundtable.

Ge WangGe Wang is an Assistant Professor at Stanford University in the Center for Computer Research in Music and Acoustics (CCRMA), and researches programming languages and interactive software systems for computer music, mobile and social music, laptop orchestras, and education at the intersection of computer science and music. Ge is the author of the ChucK audio programming language, the founding director of the Stanford Laptop Orchestra (SLOrk) and of the Stanford Mobile Phone Orchestra (MoPhO). Ge is the Co-founder of Smule (reaching over 125 million users), and the designer of the iPhone's Ocarina and Magic Piano.

Dr. Dan BonehDr. Boneh is a Professor of Computer Science at Stanford University where he heads the applied cryptography group. Dr. Boneh's research focuses on computer security and cryptography. His work includes cryptosystems with novel properties, security for mobile devices, Web security, and cryptanalysis. He is the author of over a hundred publications in the field and is a recipient of the Gödel prize, the Packard Award, the Alfred P. Sloan Award, the RSA award in mathematics and five best paper awards. In 2011 Dr. Boneh received the Ishii award for industry education innovation.

Dr. Jyoti Mishra

Dr. Jyoti Mishra, Ph.D. is an assistant professor at the University of California San Francisco. She is a neuroscientist studying how brain function changes and improves with learning. Using this knowledge, she develops novel gaming tools that may enhance cognition. She loves working with children and is currently developing neuro-games for children with Attention Deficit Disorder, neglected children living in foster-care and children in juvenile justice programs. She believes that with the right opportunities and the right set of challenges and motivation, every brain is capable of achieving it’s best.

2013-14 Year

Kurt Long

Kurt is an aerospace engineer who started out his career as a helicopter flight test engineer for the US Navy. For 20 years, he tested helicopters landing aboard US Navy ships, to determine their performance and ensure safety. Since 2007, Kurt has worked for AerospaceComputing at NASA Ames; he now conducts wind tunnel experiments for not just spacecraft and aircraft, but also ships, buildings, trucks, sports balls, rodent enclosures, and even algae, for a variety of NASA and non-NASA sponsors. Kurt also serves as Lab Manager and Student Intern Coordinator at the Fluid Mechanics Lab (FML) at NASA Ames. Kurt does wind tunnel design and aerodynamic consulting work for various educational outreach organizations, including local schools, Teachers in Space, and the Mythbusters TV show. Kurt’s interests include sailing catamarans in the Caribbean and windsurfing.

Frank Cascarano

Frank Cascarano is a Physics Instructor at Foothill College. After receiving an MS degree in physics from UC San Diego, he worked in the semiconductor industry for ten years as a process engineer. A career change into teaching brought him to Foothill College about ten years ago. In addition to teaching college physics, he and his colleagues put on a physics demonstration show for kids in the community called, The Physics Show. Over 25 thousand people have seen The Physics Show, now in its eighth year, and we are expecting about 8000 more this year.

Dr. Christopher Gardner

Christopher Gardner majored in Philosophy in college, and spent 6 years afterward searching for purpose and meaning in life. He never would have guessed he would end up getting a PhD in Nutrition Science at UC Berkeley, or his current job at Stanford. He is currently an Associate Professor of Medicine where he studies diet, health, human behavior, and searches for solutions to the broken food system in the US (which includes the complex of web of connections from food production, to processing and distribution, to consumption).

Dr. Jill Helms

Ryan McCarthy

Ryan is the Science and Technology Advisor to the Chair at the California Air Resources Board, where he primarily focuses on transportation and climate policy issues. Prior to his appointment at ARB by Governor Jerry Brown, McCarthy was chief writer of a strategic plan for plug-in electric vehicles in California, written by researchers at the Institute of Transportation Studies at UC Davis in conjunction with the California Plug-In Electric Vehicle Collaborative. He was a Science and Technology Policy Fellow of the California Council on Science and Technology, where he worked in the office of California Assembly Member Wilmer Amina Carter and advised her on energy, environmental, and transportation issues, among others. McCarthy holds master’s and doctorate degrees in civil and environmental engineering from UC Davis, and a bachelor’s degree in structural engineering from UC San Diego.

Alej Garcia

Professor Garcia teaches physics to animation students at San Jose State and to professionals at DreamWorks Animation. He received his doctorate in physics from The University of Texas at Austin and his scientific research is in the field of computational fluid mechanics. Dr. Garcia is SJSU’s Outstanding Professor for 2013/2014; he is currently the physics consultant on Dreamwork’s up-coming film, Peabody and Sherman.

2012-13 Year

David Northway

David Northway is the Director of Engineering Programs at GoPro. He has led and developed mobile product projects for Apple, Nike, Amazon, HP, Astro

Gaming. Before traveling across Asia for product development, he grew up locally and attended Palo Alto High School. He received MS and BS degrees in

product design and a BA in design, all from Stanford University. He has been the instructor for the "Visual Thinking" course in the Stanford School of

Engineering for over 20 years. He hikes, surfs, and races for fun.

Seth Shostak

Seth is the Senior Astronomer at the SETI Institute. He has an undergraduate degree in physics from Princeton University, and a doctorate in astronomy from the California Institute of Technology. For much of his career, Seth conducted radio astronomy research on galaxies, and has published approximately sixty papers in professional journals. He has written more than four hundred popular magazine, newspaper, and Web articles on various topics in astronomy, technology, film, and television. He lectures on astronomy and other subjects at Stanford and other venues in the Bay Area, and for six years was a Distinguished Speaker for the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics. He is also Chair of the International Academy of Astronautics' SETI Permanent Committee. Every week he hosts the SETI Institute's science radio show, "Big Picture Science"

Margot Gerritsen

Margot Gerritsen is an Associate Professor in the Department of Energy Resources Engineering and the Director of the Institute for Computational & Mathematical Engineering at Stanford. She is a computational mathematician. She likes to build computer simulators for fluid flow processes. She's particularly interested in the simulation of coastal ocean flows, of oil and gas flows in subsurface reservoirs, and of air flow past sails. The last decade or so she specialized in the production of nonconventional fossil fuel resources (i.e. heavy oil). This sounds a bit environmentally unfriendly, but her goal is to help mitigate harmful environmental impacts

of the production of these resources. She is exploring new areas of computational mathematics, including search

engine design and cancer radiation modeling.

Dr. Catherine Mohr

Dr. Catherine Mohr is the Director of Medical Research at Intuitive Surgical, a high technology surgical robotics company that makes the da

Vinci surgical robot. In this role she develops new robotic surgical procedures and evaluates technologies to improve outcomes with surgical

robots. In addition, she is a Consulting Assistant Professor in the department of Surgery at Stanford School of Medicine where she works with

the Goodman Simulation Center in the development of a simulation-based curriculum for teaching clinical skills. Dr. Mohr received her BS and MS in

mechanical engineering from MIT and went on to medical school at Stanford University School of Medicine during which time she founded a company to

commercialize a medical device, the LapCap.

John Fitch

John Fitch grew up a naive country kid without much career guidance. He applied to one university in the city, and thought he might like

mechanical engineering. It was a lucky choice. Years later he's had a great time working at companies like Xerox PARC and Google. He's engineered jet

engines, computers, garbage-burning power plants, DNA printers, solar systems, MEMS devices, and Google Glass.

David "Pablo" Cohn

David "Pablo" Cohn is a Senior Research Scientist with Google.org (the philanthropic arm of the company) and the former Technical Lead for Google

Labs. He bounced around between studying Chemistry, Physics and Computer Science throughout high school and college, finally earning a Ph.D. in

Computer Science and going on to do research at MIT and CMU's Robotics Institute. Sixteen years ago, he left the cocoon of academia to ride four

different high-tech startups down into smoking craters before joining Google in 2002. A year ago, he took a leave of absence from his "day job" to do

technical support for the US Antarctic Program at the Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station.