Silicon Valley's hometown heroes
The Tech Museum Awards shine a well-deserved spotlight today on Silicon Valley innovators who have applied technology to humanitarian causes.
K. Oanh Ha's story in today's San Jose Mercury News trumpets the achievements of the "winners in the fourth annual Tech Museum Awards" including:
Local researchers Paul Burgess and Ken Owens Jr. applied their software and mathematical talents to make a robot that will save tens of thousands of lives and limbs from land mines, the treacherous remnants of war.For the past two years, the pair have spent countless hours in their windowless office at Humboldt State University maneuvering a radio-controlled toy car with a joystick. They came up with a new breed of mine-clearing robots that will operate with unprecedented accuracy down to a centimeter. Using a global positioning system, it removes mines the size of a tuna can.
....Burgess, whose hometown is Fremont, left a six-figure software job in San Francisco, while mathematician Owens left the security of a NASA job to develop their project.
"I wanted to do something that was an end to itself rather than the end being a paycheck," said Burgess, 28. "When you do work that you feel is benefiting other people and this is consistent with your own set of values, it's rewarding and addictive."
Links:
by , San Jose Mercury News, 11 November 2004
Affiliate Link:
OnlineJournalist.org, edited by Doug Millison "on a need-to-know basis"
