650/892-4464
jaffe@roses.stanford.edu

My earliest interest in engineering was sparked by viewing "Watch Mr. Wizard"
on television in the mid '50s. In grade school I wired up a WWII surplus
carbon microphone, battery, and speaker and demonstrated it to my class. I
also built a electrical combination lock, a code practice oscillator, a light
detector, a frequency-sensitive light organ, and a solar powered crystal
radio from a schematic in Boy's Life Magazine. In high school, I became a ham
and contructed a 20-meter beam antenna and an electronic keyer. My winning
science fair projects were a "picture transmitter" in grade school and a
device to measure sound wave interference patterns in high school.

At the University of Michigan, I studied Electrical Engineering and was
exposed for the first time to computers. I wrote programs in MAD (Michigan
Algorithm Decoder) on punch cards for a IBM 360 system. In my senior year, I
wrote a program in assembly language code that created music on a nearby
transistor radio. For my senior project, I built a infusion pump controller.
During the summers, I worked at Zenith Radio in the transformer, speaker,
stereo, and military radio labs. I also spent a summer working for a company
that installed master antenna systems in Chicago highrise apartment
buildings.

As a graduate student at Northwestern University, I studied biomedical
engineering. My master's thesis project involved measuring the electrical
properties of blood as it clotted.

My first job after college was at the VA Hospital just west of Chicago. I
worked in the biomedical engineering department that was responsible for
maintaining all the hospital equipment including physiologic monitors,
surgical equipment, laboratory test equipment, and devices for the patients
in the spinal cord injury ward.

January 1975 was a turning point in my interests. That month's issue of
Electronics Illustrated had a cover shot of the Altair 8800, a computer kit
you could buy and build for $397. The original unit has 256 bytes of memory
and was programmed through front panel switches. I got together with all the
other hobbyists in the Chicago area that had home computers. The ten of us
sat around one table. A teletype was my first real computer interface until I
built a video display card for a modified television. I stored my programs on
audio tape until 8-inch floppy disks became available. I programmed an
interface board for a daisy-wheel printer. I was also an early modem user,
building a 110 / 300 baud acoustic modem. I subsequently wrote a program
that allowed a user to operate a remote computer as if sitting at its
console.

In 1979, I relocated to California to work as a research biomedical engineer
in the Rehabilitation Research and Development Center at the Palo Alto
Veterans Affairs Health Care System. There I was involved with various
projects to help people with disabilities including an ultrasonic wheelchair
control system for quadriplegics, a series of robotic hands that served as
communication devices for people who are deaf and blind, a virtual reality
system that improved the walking of individuals after a stroke, and a driving
simulator project that assessed the driving ability of people after a brain
injury.

Now I am here at Stanford. Last year, I organized a seminar course,
"Perspectives in Assistive Technology" that instructs students about the many
aspects of rehabilitation and technologies that benefit people with
disabilities. Students also participate in a project that addresses a
specific disability need. Over the years, I have also been a contributor to
"Smart Product Design" (ME218) and have been a coach in ME113.

I am an active member of RESNA, a society of rehabilitation professionals
including engineers, therapists, researchers, policy makers, teachers, and
manufacturers of assistive technology products. I am currently on their Board
of Directors and the Chair of the Awards Committee.

I have reviewed journal articles and funding proposals for the VA, RESNA,
NIH, and NSF.

My expertise is in the areas of embedded system programming, product design
and development, and technology transfer.

408/316-1620
dick.zacher@gmail.com

Dick Zacher grew up in Fresno, California. After earning a BS in physics from Caltech, and a PhD in physics from Princeton University, he worked for five years at Washington University in St. Louis, teaching physics and pursuing research on image processing for applications in both high-energy physics and medicine.

A summer job at Artronix, a small company in St. Louis that built computers and other apparatus for radiology applications, led eventually to a full-time job with the company. At Artronix, Dick had responsibility for high-level design of an x-ray CT scanner, at a time when that technology was brand new. This job required a broad view, and Dick's graduate-student experience in experimental high-energy physics, with its exposure to work ranging from software and statistics to high-speed logic and bubble-chamber plumbing, proved to be good preparation. The two CT scanners that he helped develop at Artronix were successful medical instruments with innovative technology; but high-tech businesses aren't just about engineering and building products -- the company overextended itself and got into terminal financial difficulties.

After five years at Artronix, Dick returned to California to work for Tandem Computers, designing high-availability computer hardware. Among other things, his projects included a high-availability computer system for an office environment, that could be repaired on line by relatively untrained personnel.

In later years at Tandem/Compaq/HP, Dick became involved in computer system performance analysis, studying processor performance, traffic in the computer's internal network, and software behavior. Some of his projects involved writing software: a network simulator for studying Tandem's proprietary system network, and instrumentation for sampling dynamic software call-tree data in a running computer system.

Since leaving HP, Dick has been working on various technical interests that he picked up in the course of his career: digital image processing, and image interpolation in particular; color vision theory; and some ideas for sound reproduction.

Inter4m@comcast.net
http://www.inter4m.com

Since 1985, Mr. Muller has been President and owner of Interform, an internationally acclaimed product development and design firm. His professional expertise is based on highly diversified international product development and design for major industries in Europe, USA, most of Asia, and Australia. Clients range from large multinational corporations to start-up companies including General Motors, General Electric Corp., Ingersoll Rand, Kodak, LM Ericsson, Steelcase, Philips/CSA, Samsonite, with activities ranging from concept development and problem solving to engineering and software interface. In addition, Mr. Muller is currently on the Board of Directors of the Alden Lee Company, on the board of advisors with Hyperbidder, and is a founding member of ADDnCLICK and Touch360. He was formerly Vice President of Frog Design (USA) and a Director of PA Technology and Management Consultants (Europe/International). Mr. Muller has a background in mechanical engineering with a Master's Degree in product design from Darmstadt, Germany and has received management training from Sundridge Park, London, UK. He has published articles and given lectures in Europe, USA and Asia and has received numerous patents and awards throughout his career.

Interform's activities range from intellectual property development through design for manufacturing and production implementation in Asia, India and Europe.

Industry Sectors
Medical/ dental/ vision; consumer products; communications; computing; building hardware and security; capital equipment; instrumentation; toys; appliances; automotive; furniture and lighting; point-of-sale; leisure, sports and luggage; user interface; digital design.

RToepfer@aol.com

Dick Toepfer is a native of the Chicago West Side. He attended Fournier Institute of Technology in Lemont Illinois and the University of Illinois In Urbana Champaign, graduating with a BSEE (1956), MSEE (1957) and a Ph.D. in EE and Control Systems (1962). He began his career in the Aerospace industry in Los Angeles in 1962. In 1965 he moved to the Bay Area and began to work in the Computer and Instrumentation Industry.

He has twenty years of Engineering Management, Product Development, and Program Management experience at the Aerospace Corporation, Autonetics, IBM, Measurex, Hewlett Packard, Kubota Graphics, and Apple Computer. This has included development of Computer Systems and Software, Measurement and Control Instrumentation, and Aerospace vehicle control.

In addition he has seventeen years of management experience in High-technology Manufacturing and Test at Hewlett Packard, Spectra Physics, Magnuson Computer, Convergent Technologies, LASA Industries and Adaptec. This has included the manufacture of low volume, highly complex systems in the Computer, Analytical Instrument, and Semiconductor Equipment Industries. It has also encompassed high volume, rapid growth manufacturing. His last assignment was the management of Adaptec's Product Test Lab and Manufacturing Engineering Team in Milpitas and Singapore.

Dick also accumulated five years of teaching and research experience in Electronics and Control Systems at the University of Illinois and UCLA, and approximately two years teaching internal courses at IBM and Hewlett Packard.

terryawalters@comcast.net

Terry Walters was born in Peoria, IL and attended Bradley University graduating with a BSEET in 1971 and a Masters Degree in Industrial Operations in 1972. After graduation he moved to Berkeley, CA working in San Francisco, CA as a project engineer developing touch-tone addressable systems for commercial use. Terry attended the Home Brew Computer Club meetings at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center (SLAC) auditorium which were held monthly during the mid 70s. During that time, he went into a "start up" venture with friends producing Intel 8080, S-100 based computers for hobbyists and small businesses. This business went bankrupt. Terry sold off much of the company's scrap inventory while working at Zehntel, a test equipment manufacturer. As many in the Valley do, he bounced from one start-up to another as the companies were acquired by larger firms; Processor Technologies, Dictran Int'l Corp, Two Pi Corp, Four Phase, Motorola, Convergent Technologies, Unisys, Super Mac, Radius Corp, Power Computing and most recently Plantronics, Inc. Terry has managed design engineering, industrial design, test engineering and served in executive management, manufacturing electronic products for retail and commercial markets world-wide. Terry has had to produce both complex systems in low volumes as well as retail products shipping at million per month volumes. He has been responsible for factory construction and production in the UK, Mexico and China. Most recently he was responsible for construction of a 200,000 square foot manufacturing and R&D facility in Suzhou, China; the first "Green" manufacturing facility in China certified green by the USGBC to LEED specifications. He oversaw the operations of Plantronics Mexico, winning the National Quality Award of Mexico - the best manufacturing facility in Mexico. His approach to the high tech industry can be summed up simply; have fun, go fast.

Dr. Dariush Rafinejad is a visiting scholar and lecturer at Stanford. He has had over 25 years of experience as a senior executive in high-tech industries in Silicon Valley. He was Corporate Vice President at both Applied Materials and LAM Research, both billion dollar semiconductor process equipment manufacturers. He is currently president and founder of Blue Dome Consulting whose clients include Novellus, SanDisk, Brewer Science, Aviza Tech, MKS, AMEC (China), SoloPower, Intevac.

Dr. Rafinejad was an adjunct professor at the Haas Business School at UC Berkeley, and Dean of Management at Menlo College in Atherton, California.

He is the author of the book, "Innovation, Product Development and Commercialization", J. Ross Publishing, 2007, and has co-authored case studies & research papers at Stanford University include: Development of Prius Hybrid Vehicle (A & B); Modeling Sustainability in Product Development & Commercialization; Transition to Sustainable Product Development & Manufacturing; Wacker Sustainable Manufacturing Practice (in progress), Klaus-Mauser Dry Machining (in progress).

Rafinejad has a Ph.D. & M.Sc. from University of California, Berkeley and has done post-doctoral research and at Imperial College in London, England. He also has an Executive Engineering Management Certificate, Stanford University.