Robert (Bob) C. Schober, Ph.D.

From		To	Participation	Milestones
July 2008		Present	NanoPower, LLC	What can I build for you ?
December 2006		June 2008	Innurvation, Inc. (Parent Corp.) NanoPower Technologies, Inc.	Designed the first “prepless” ingestible image scanner pill. Designed lowest power consumption / high data rate in-vitro UltraSound Tranciver.
		December 2006	NanoPower Technologies, Inc. aka: Biomedical LSI, Inc.	Consulting and Design for many Hi-Tech companies.
	February 1986	April 1994	California Institute of Technology Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) Flight Computer Division	Deployed simplified and highly accurate ‘compact circuit MOS transistor’ model for SPICE simulation. Built first CMOS ‘active pixel sensor’ (APS).
			NASA Goddard Space Center	Designed electronics for the highest resolution MEMS microGyro ever demonstrated.
			Matrics, Inc.	Designed and fabricated the most sensitive RFID integrated circuit yet produced.
			Medtronic, Inc.	Developed competing, second generation digital pacemaker, saving company from extinction. This design continues to be at the core of their business, bringing in huge profits each year. Gained the second largest patent infringement settlement to date regarding any kind of patent. Created a Neural Stimulator chip that spawned a whole new industry.
			Intermedics, Inc.	Finished Digital Pacemaker, Designed a single chip – lower cost alternative, Designed Neural Sensor chips and numerous implantable sensor chips.
	December 1982	June 1984	TRW Systems Digital Processing Laboratory	Senior staff engineer – designed ultra high speed Gallium Arsenide A to D converters and supporting circuits.
July 1982			Founded - Biomedical LSI, Inc.	Created C^2L, the most compact and efficient digital IC logic cell libraries ever offered.
July 1975		December 1982	American Hospital Supply Edwards Pacemaker Systems	Originated the first implantable cardiac defibrillator which spawned a whole new industry. Produced first custom mixed-mode cardiac pacemaker integrated circuit. Produced lowest power consumption cardiac pacemaker.
October 1973		July 1975	Hughes Solid State Products Division	Head of MOS test equipment design.
July 1969		October 1973	California Institute of Technology Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) Astrionics Division	Designed the longest functioning (and longest distance traveled) spacecraft electronics.
March 1968		July 1969	Martian Marietta Corporation Aerospace Division	Senior systems design and evaluation engineer.
June 1965		March 1968	General Electric Company Missile and Space Division Spacecraft Department	Designed analog and digital circuitry for various spacecraft. A to D converters and control logic for attitude control, instrument control, and data collection.
September 1963		June 1965	National Science Foundation Widener University	Student engineer – NSF grant project: Character Recognition by Associative Memory.
June 1963		September 1963	Scott Paper Company Research Laboratory	Staff engineer – Designed control circuitry for custom manufacturing machinery.
June 1961		June 1963	Widener University Engineering Digital Computer Lab	Computer Lab Instructor – Organized and managed Digital Computer Lab for a NEW IBM 1620 mainframe. Instructed students in programming and operation.

"There are two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle." Albert Einstein

PERSONNEL DATA:

Address:	9411 Tiki Circle		Age:	68 years
	Huntington Beach, CA 92646		Weight:	235 lb.
Telephone:	Business:	(949) 244 - 8882	Height:	5' 11"
	Home:	(714) 968 - 3503	Married:	48 years
Internet:	Web Site:	www.NanoPower.com	Children:	3 + 3 grand
	eMail :	Bob.Schober@gMail.com

ABSTRACT:

Robert Schober, principal and chief engineer at Nanopower, Inc., has been a leader in ultra-low power integrated circuits starting from the beginning of his professional career in spacecraft electronic design, through extensive work in integrated circuit design for the cardiac pacing industry from 1975 to 1999. Mr. Schober's work experience has been primarily in the field of analog/digital circuit design. Starting in the early 1960's, Mr. Schober worked as an electrical engineer for General Electric Space and Missile Systems; a senior engineer for Martin Marietta Corporation; a member of the technical staff for Hughes Aircraft Corporation; a senior member of the technical staff at TRW Systems; a senior member of the technical staff at California Institute of Technology Jet Propulsion Laboratory; and a principal engineer at American Hospital Supply Corporation’s Edward's Pacemaker Systems including American Hospital’s Corporate Research Center. Mr. Schober received a special award as the highest individual contributor in the history of American Hospital Supply. In 1981 Mr. Schober formed Biomedical LSI, later to become Nanopower, Inc.

The primary focus of Mr. Schober's work has been the design of low power, high reliability circuits, most of which have been analog. Mr. Schober has also performed digital design and layout of digital systems up to and including custom microprocessors, direct memory access controllers, and floating point processors. In addition, he has designed and laid out ‘multiple-giga-sample flash mode Gallium-Arsenide Analog to Digital Converters’ and numerous Radio Frequency integrated circuits. Mr. Schober holds multiple patents in the areas of cardiac pacemakers, high efficiency/compact digital integrated circuit cell libraries, RF, and high sensitivity RFID integrated circuits as well as multiple patent applications in the area of endoscopic pill cameras. He is listed in Marquis Who's Who in Frontier Science and Technology, Who's Who in the West, Who's Who in America, and Who's Who in the World.

EDUCATION:

· General Electrics’ “ABC” – Advanced Course in Engineering for Ph.D. through Brooklyn Poly Extension classes held at General Electric facilities concurrent with rotational employment assignments.

· B.S. in Engineering with an Electronic Engineering major – Widener University, Chester PA – June 1965.

· Graduate Record Examination Scores during my junior undergraduate year were 95 percentile in engineering and an 87 percentile in quantitative.

CAREER OBJECTIVE:

To apply my cumulative expertise in Ultra Low Power integrated circuit and system design, obtained throughout my career, to a meaningful product design, where the resulting product will produce another unprecedented advance in the technology.

SOME MORE SIGNIFICANT TECHNICAL ACCOMPLISHMENTS:

· First “Prepless” ingestible pill image scanner – Made the initial concept and system design of the pill assembly, transponder, optics, image sensor, and control electronics that would scan the intestinal track as it is squeezed along the middle intestine. This image acquisition transpires without the need of the person cleaning out their intestinal track through fasting and flushing with clear liquid. This is an image sensor that scans 360 degrees around the sidewall of the capsule analogous to a flat bead scanner. The capsule size can be as small as an Advill pill and operates for 24 hours from miniature size button cells at less than 100uA average I drain.

· Lowest power consumption / high data rate in-vivo UltraSound Transceiver. Designed to transmit image data out of an ingestible scanning capsule at data rates around 1 Mbps using ultrasonic coupling through the body. The ultrasound transmit power is around 8.5 microwatts for this data rate. The ultrasound transmission also provides 3D capsule location to an accuracy of 1mm referenced to the belly button.

· EKV SPICE Compact Circuit Simulation Model. Instrumental in shaping the compact circuit simulation model philosophy such as charge-based operation and user functionality. Arranged for its insertion into all of the common computer circuit simulators. The compact circuit MOS transistor model employs only 11 entirely physical parameters to provide the only completely continuous solution which operates correctly in all regions of operation including weak-inversion, short channel length, and RF. There is currently a Wiley textbook published on the model: Charge-Based MOS Transistor Modeling: The EKV Model for Low-Power and RF IC Design by Christian C. Enz, Eric A. Vittoz published in September 2006, ISBN: 978-0-470-85545-4. Due to the radical change form the entrenched Berkeley BSIM simulation model, which is defined with in excess of 450 non-physical parameters, wide acceptance and usage is being slowly adopted, but proceeding on a regular basis.

· First CMOS Active Pixel Image (APS) sensor. – produced at Cal-Tech Jet Propulsion Laboratory under one of Mr. Schober’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) projects. This project started the entire CMOS image sensor technology advance from the original CCD (Charge Coupled Device) image sensor technology which was in use from the early Fairchild semiconductor days and had strong roots at JPL. This established what eventually became the Cal-Tech/JPL fundamental patent portfolio for CMOS image sensors.

See: What is the difference between CCD and CMOS image sensors in a digital camera?

· Highest resolution MEMS uGyro ever demonstrated. The gyroscope was invented by a French physicist named Jean Bernard Léon Foucault in 1852. Foucaults gyroscope was essentially a spinning wheel set in a movable frame. A spinning wheel tries to retain its spatial orientation, and resists external forces applied to it. Gyroscopes are used in navigational instruments for ships, planes, and rockets.

Today’s high precision instruments, while smaller and more rugged than those early attempts, are still somewhat large and vulnerable to high G forces. An attempt to produce a "Gyro On A Chip" was initially funded by DARPA and JPL did the initial mechanical designs. Bob Schober, while employed at JPL designed the test bed electronics.

Later, NASA Goddard decided to fund further development of a production device and contracted with Nanopower who in turn subcontracted JPL for the MEMS production. The result was a Two Chip solution consisting of a Micro Machined Rotation Sensor Chip and a Control Electronics Chip. The resulting combination demonstrated an accuracy of 0.007 degrees per hour drift and proportionally reduced "Jitter" [referred to in the industry as angle random walk]. Total accuracy was increased by at least a factor of 5 compared to the best Gyros available at the time and the life expectancy was improved from about 5 years to between 50 and 100 years along with a reduction in Size, Weight and Power to almost Zero.

Plans were to have Honeywell produce these systems for commercial use but these plans were interrupted by a bid from Boeing to purchase the development work. Changes in the Political climate subsequently caused the principal players to engage in other projects and the MEMs Gyro was left waiting.

Click here to view a POSTER created by Boeing for DARPA, or See this link to a Wikipedia page about Inertial navigation systems.

· Designed and fabricated the most sensitive RFID integrated circuit yet produced. The tag will operate at a distance of up to 120 feet. It requires about 12.5 millivolts across the antenna leads to power and operate the RFID chip. Mr. Schober has a very large and significant “High Sensitivity RFID Tag Integrated Circuits” patent pending Numbers US2006/028415 and WO/2007/014053 on this technology.

· Highest volume & longest production run cardiac pacemaker circuit ever produced. Mr. Schober was the key engineer in enabling Medtronic to turn around from a very long and steep market share decline from their previous dominant market share due to lack of competitive technology. (The other 3 companies used Mr. Schober’s technology to outdistance Medtronic). The technology became next generation mixed mode electronics which included all of the analog functions, the pacing engine, the communication engine, and a complete behavioral model of the pacemaker electronic system. This pacing circuit was designed to be expandable and after more than 10 years it is still the only primary pacemaker integrated circuit in all Medtronic pacemakers. Medtronic built and store housed a lifetime supply of the chip. It is responsible for annual profits (not revenue) of about 4.7 Billion for each year of production. During this time Mr. Schober reverse engineered several competing pacemakers for Medtronic in protection of their rate responsive patents. This resulted in the then second highest patent infringement award of $450 Million to Medtronic from Pacesetter Systems division of Siemens.

· Designed the first integrated circuit for an implantable neural stimulator. The initial neural stimulator chip had 16 stimulation outputs and was controlled by means of an external controller. This successful project resulted in the formation of an entirely new division at Medtronic.

NeuroStimulator Technology that Dramatically Improves Lives

· C²L technology yields the most compact and efficient digital integrated circuit logic cell libraries yet produced. These static CMOS logic cell libraries consume about 1/3 of the normal integrated circuit area as the existing libraries. They can operate about 4x times faster or with a 6x power reduction, and an improved packing density of 3 to 1 allowing for smaller sized chips or increased complexity in the original die size. The technology created is named C²L for Complementary Complex Logic and is protected by 4 patents (US 6198324, US 6252448, US 6297668, and US 6333656) issued to Bob as sole inventor.

See this link for a technical description of C²L

· Launched the first implantable defibrillator project. This was done while Mr. Schober was consulting with Cardiac Pacemakers, Inc/Eli Lilly, where the project was based on an extension of Mr. Schober’s pacemaker integrated circuits being implemented there. Also Mr. Schober was part of a second generation implantable defibrillator project launch at Medtronic where integrated circuits used in them were subsequently designed by Nanopower. The cardiac defibrillator project resulted in a new division of Medtronic. As it turns out the CEO from Edwards Pacemaker Systems received one of the deliberators and as a result is very thankful to Mr. Schober.

· First full custom mixed-mode integrated circuit cardiac pacemaker. Integrated virtually all the components onto a single CMOS chip. Was put in volume production around 1981. Mr. Schober received royalties from its patents US 4388927 and US 4557266 which established the company which is now known as Nanopower. The pacemaker CMOS integrated circuit included a processor bus architecture and hardware digital filters, along with a unique digitizer design that later became known as Delta-Sigma analog/digital converter technology. [ This technology is the fundamental component in the Cosmic Background Radiation Spacecraft (COBS) which is the most accurate instrument yet made by man (resolution 28 bits) which was developed by my associates in our building at JPL with some of Mr. Schober’s participation. ] The cardiac pacemaker’s integrated circuit output stage was the first of a kind in several aspects – first integrated switched CMOS voltage multiplier (programmable to ½x, 1x, 1.5x, 2x, and 3x) together with high output current, switches that operated outside of the power supply voltages, and very low impedance switches. This digital pacemaker circuit was licensed to Guidant (then Cardiac Pacemakers, Inc. - CPI) for a royalty yielding $30 Million. It was the sole circuit that CPI was built on and still uses as the core pacing circuit. This pacemaker alone took Cardiac Pacemakers, Inc. from closing its doors to quickly becoming a major pacemaker company that went on to sell to Boston Scientific for $16 Billion. It is interesting to note that Mr. Schober personally after-hours tutored Jim Tobin, CEO of Boston Scientific, in pacemakers for Jim’s early career job in which he marketed Mr. Schober’s first discrete component pacemakers. Mr. Schober was also instrumental in starting the first Cardiac Defibrillator which grew out of this design task. It is also interesting to note that subsequently one of these Cardiac Defibrillators is safeguarding my boss’s life – he received one subsequently.

· Lowest power consumption cardiac pacemaker yet produced. Implantable life support device produced and successfully marketed in volume during the years of 1977 to 1981. This pacemaker initially had a potential life of 22 years with full output usage and included battery self-discharge. The batteries were cut back to a 7.5 year useful full output life cycle. Since the battery used most of the volume, its removal was the beginning of miniaturizing pacemakers.

· Longest functioning spacecraft electronics which has traveled the most distance. Designed the magnetometer electronics for the Pioneer F and G spacecraft (launched as Pioneer 10 and 11), which is the spacecraft’s primary science instrument. The two identical spacecraft operated flawlessly since 1972 returning highly sensitive magnetometer, velocity, and range data. Pioneer 10 exited horizontally from our solar systems planetary plane and Pioneer 11 exited vertically from our solar systems planetary plane. These spacecraft, as they exited our solar system, validated and extended Einstein’s fabric of space theory. They are the first to record a DECELERATION ANOMALY that indicates that the extent of the universe is finite. Two additional spacecraft exiting our solar system have since recorded the same deceleration anomaly.

· Proposed the algorithm to rapidly predict electronic temperature measurement. Uses exponential measurements to evaluate and predict the final value of electronic thermometer temperature measurements. This was implemented and put into volume production for hospital temperature measurements and later implemented in electronic thermometers. This was prepared for another related division while consulting with Cardiac Pacemakers, Inc/Eli Lilly.

· Several non-electronic technologies including: An experimental diesel engine, which is named Triple-Point Engine. It runs so efficiently that it has to be kept in a thermal blanket to sustain its operation. The experimental engine produced about 2x the power output on a dynamometer while not using a radiator to cool the engine. The engine would best operate as an efficient and powerful generator for use in an electric car or truck. Currently we do not know what to do with it, or have the funds to develop it. Its performance is so outlandish that people categorize it as insane and not creditable.

· Made the first car cover and first electronic car alarm back in 1966 for his Corvette (recently on eBay for $100K by the current owner). It was out of necessity since the car was kept in a corn crib. The car cover was discovered at JPL in 1969 by another JPL engineer who started a company named Car Craft which later used the name Cover Craft for it. At the same time my wife made the first frozen yogurt in an ice cream churn on a whim. We have just not been very good at marketing our ideas to our advantage.

Mr. Schober typically postulates and implements radically different,

far superior, out-of-the-box solutions when necessary.

EMPLOYMENT EXPERIENCE: · NANOPOWER, LLC – July 2008 to Present · Founder – · Consulting to various medical electronic projects, · Extending / licensing C^2L digital integrated circuit library technologies, and · Designing high-resolution disposable HD imaging devices, · While currently contemplating various advanced concepts.

· INNURVATION, INC.

- NANOPOWER TECHNOLOGIES, INC. – December 2006 to June 2008

· Technical Fellow of merged companies. –

· Developed ingestible capsule diagnostic devices using ultrasound data transmission and location techniques.

See ‘First “Prepless” ingestible pill image scanner’ summary in technical accomplishments above.

· NANOPOWER TECHNOLOGIES, INC.

– aka: BIOMEDICAL LSI, INC. – July 1982 to December 2006

· Founder & Chief Technology Officer –

· Mr. Schober started a company to design large scale integrated circuits.

· Designed complete and partial cardiac pacemaker circuits from the product definition, through integrated circuit development, to finished product.

· Developed, fabricated and tested minimal manufacturing cost VVI pacemaker with my own funds and a fully automatic DDD pacemaker for Intermedics Inc. which incorporated the majority of the features and settings of their top of the line microprocessor based pacemaker. Both of these pacemakers ran on approximately 1.5 microamperes circuit current drain, had minimal external parts count (8 to 15 parts), and had small easily manufacturable integrated circuit die sizes of 65 and 120 mils on a side respectively.

· The DDD product for Intermedics was designed on a royalty based agreement.

· Developed several linear pacemaker subcircuits for Medtronic Inc., some of which have been incorporated into a new concept VVI pacemaker (L57), plus a new low cost DDD, and the Medtronic microprocessor pacemaker development.

· During the various pacemaker designs Mr. Schober developed several unique digital concepts and numerous ultra low current drain analog CMOS circuits many of which were patented. Examples are minimal hardware digital filters, a pacemaker majority vote fail safe technique, a digital method of calibrating both the frequency and the slope of a voltage controlled oscillator not dependent on threshold voltage stability, a 100 nanoamperes ultra stable voltage controlled oscillator, a 50 nanoamperes crystal oscillator and a new crystal oscillator bias structure that enables operation down to as low as 10 nanoamperes as seen on a test chip, a 20 nanoamperes backup oscillator, a voltage comparator with true common mode operation outside of the power supply rails, an amplifier input DC level bias circuit that tracks threshold voltages, a cascade MOS device structure which has ultra high output resistance with the minimum output capacitance from which an op amp with a current drain of 10 nanoamperes and a voltage gain of greater than 110 dB was designed, fabricated and tested, voltage multipliers capable of fractional power supply multiplication with no spike through current at charge bucketing time. All of the analog circuits are capable of running below a volt.

· With Nanopower associates, Mr. Schober developed several PLA pacemaker sub-circuit functions such as a pacing engine and the transceiver controller, and wrote the Verilog behavioral model that is still used by Medtronic in simulation pacemaker circuit sub-block functions and test pattern generation.

· CALIFORNIA INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY

– Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL)

– Flight Computer Division – February 1986 to April 1994

· Senior Member of the Technical Staff –

· Designed and fabricated an advanced concept Direct Memory Access controller integrated circuit for operation in high reliability radiation hardened (SEU and total dose) microprocessor control system environments.

· Some of this work resulted in a California Institute of Technology US Patent 5212795 for David Hendry as the architect. This project started from initial concept and went through specification development for multiple users, architecture development, circuit design (top down), extensive simulation, fault simulation, test vector development, standard cell development, standard cell / full custom layout, device fabrication, and device testing. This project was executed with several other engineers who were also participating in the microprocessor development.

· Also participated in the development of a potent error detection and correction circuit at JPL.

· Also at JPL Mr. Schober developed advanced microprocessors with a few other engineers. Its fast version ran in the then state-of-the-art 40 to 60 "useful MIPS" range for special purpose and general applications. The low power version ran down to an oscillator frequency of 8 KHz.

· This low power version was optimized to be a powerful single chip complete pacemaker circuit with a low external parts count which operates in the range of 1 microampere current drain. It incorporates such features as a sophisticated R-Wave, P-Wave, and several analog sensors made up of digitizing circuits and an efficient microprocessor adaptive digital filtering techniques capable of extracting positive and negative areas under waveforms, slope information, inflection points and zero crossing information for width measurement of waveform segments in waveform qualification.

· The processor also handles many other analog measurements desired in a pacemaker circuit, has the memory structure for histogram data, and processes the transceiver information internally among other features.

· Developed numerous fiber-optic communication circuits and systems.

· Developed high speed asynchronous serial communication circuits for the Cal Tech Hypercube Super Computer project. These circuits operated in the 200 to 600 megabit-per-second range over fiber optic links.

· Designed several neural network analog associative memory circuits which model some aspects of human memory.

· Designed pattern recognition and separation circuits using neural-networks.

· Designed some of the first vision debluring image stabilization circuits which hold moving images steady while vibration and motion are present. This technology was for the Cal Tech biology department project which was attempting to reverse engineer the eyes and vision systems.

· Designed the first CMOS image capture integrated circuits, a work that was merged with Bedabrata Pain’s PhD thesis and his advisor Eric Fossum’s work at the time when they came to JPL. They became the unquestionably current world authorities in CMOS image sensors as they took this work further.

· Designed numerous Radio Frequency circuits and systems for various communications applications.

Mr. Schober was considered to be JPL's top authority on analog and digital integrated circuit design.

· TRW SYSTEMS

– Digital Processing Laboratory – December 1982 to June 1984

· Senior Staff Engineer –

· Mr. Schober designed ultra high speed Gallium Arsenide analog to digital converters with supporting circuits such as sample and holds, peak detectors, and buffer amplifiers. These quantizers are auto calibrating and contain full differential logic from the flash comparator bank to the output encoders. They run at a conversion word rate of 2 Gigahertz and are capable of being set up for 5 or 6 bit words.

· Mr. Schober also did the CAD layout of all my Gallium Arsenide circuits and became so skilled at it that he was often used to layout high speed and critical areas for other people.

· AMERICAN HOSPITAL SUPPLY CORPORATION

– Edwards Pacemaker Systems – July 1975 to December 1982

· Principal Engineer –

· Mr. Schober performed advanced electronic development from initial concept, through involvement into a product, up to production release.

· He initially designed a series of discrete component programmable cardiac pacemakers that were so successful that the corporation organized a separate division (Edwards Pacemaker Systems) with approximately 350 people.

· To date they have not been surpassed in their sensing mode's low battery current drain of 0.75 microamp (with 22 transistor circuit) and highest EMI rejection.

· Mr. Schober designed and developed a pair of large scale CMOS integrated circuits along with the entire pacemaker system – from wafer probe testing, through manufacturing test equipment to an array of field programmer support equipment. The first or processor chip plus eight passive components (of which none need to be selects) make a normal VVI pacemaker.

· The circuit is all logic in that there is basically no significant analog biased circuitry either on or off the chip.

· The chip quantizers the lead potential and processes it in a hardware digital filter to extract the important elements of normal and abnormal cardiac waveforms.

· The system can be self or manually adaptable to the individual patient's requirements. This waveform processing can be set to produce an unwanted (EMG) rejection ratio of 400 to 1 plus total notch rejection of 50 or 60 Hz power line frequencies while extracting such things as capture verification, premature contractions, and tachycardia.

· With the addition of the second programmer/atrium chip, the pacemaker can close the loop on extracted information for evasive action within limits prescribed by a clinical physician, if so desired, and internally record what has occurred since the last visit.

· The P-wave timing can be extracted from a floating ring on the same lead with some special circuitry or normally from a separate atrial lead for P-Synchronous mode of operation.

· Full DDD mode was not included in the design, but provision for it was provided.

· All equipment is microcomputer based including the pacemaker architecture.

· Also developed a unique leadless chip carrier to flex circuit mounting technique, plus a pacemaker can, connector, and a special Pacemaker lead to make it a complete compatible system.

· This product was successfully licensed to a larger market share company (CPI-Lilly) from which Mr. Schober received a substantial royalty and formed Biomedical LSI (subsequently renamed to Nanopower) in support of integrated circuit design for implantable medical devices.

Mr. Schober received a special award as the highest individual contributor in the history of American Hospital Supply.

· HUGHES

– Solid State Products Division – October 1973 to July 1975

· Mr. Schober began his CMOS experience as Head MOS Test Equipment Design.

· Responsible for design, modification, and maintenance of LSI MOS test and production equipment.

· The test equipment design required extensive use of all logic families as well as the full range of linear circuits.

Just for interest see: Compressing the World of Electronics, 1959 - 1975

· CALIFORNIA INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY

– Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL)

– Astrionics Division – July 1969 to October 1973

· Senior Engineer –

· Mr. Schober was responsible for analog circuit design in Flight Data Systems and several science instruments.

· He performed all of the more complex circuit design and analysis for the numerous projects on which he worked as well as several others.

· He monitored parts purchasing, board layout, fabrication, and calibration of analog circuitry in FDS and instrument interfaces at Motorola, Litton, and part suppliers.

· Spacecraft circuits personally designed by Mr. Schober include most forms of A/D and D/A conversion systems, their associated logic, sample and holds, and reference supplies, plus integrators, filters, buffer amplifiers, analog multiplexers, signal conditioning circuits, crystal oscillators, temperature compensated crystal oscillators, phase locked loops, oscillator detectors, power supplies, power supply fault detectors and sequencing circuits, and digital interface circuits as well as imaging and star-tracker systems.

· These circuits were flown on MM-71 (Mariner Mars 1971), MVM-73 (Mariner Venus-Mercury 1973), and Viking Orbiter 75, and used as design concepts for MJS-77 (Mariner Jupiter-Saturn 1977) systems.

· Mr. Schober designed magnetometer electronics, which has been flying in Pioneer 10 and 11 (Galileo – launched March 2, 1972, Ulysses – launched April 5, 1973) for almost 40 years. See: The Pioneers Are Way Out There After 30 Years

· Non-spacecraft electronics experience consists of logic design in test, simulation, support, and calibration equipment and ranges from simple digital sequences to computer controlled equipment.

· He also designed electronics for the deep space network which has worldwide installations such as Goldstone in California.

· Mr. Schober directed the activities of up to six technicians and four engineers involved in hardware development.

· He traveled extensively to parts manufacturing sites to discuss and ensure cognizance of responsible design personnel regarding inherent qualities of specific parts from various suppliers.

· MARTIAN MARIETTA CORPORATION

– Aerospace Division – March 1968 to July 1969

· Systems Design and Evaluation Engineer –

· Mr. Schober executed electromagnetic compatibility analysis, system tests, and exercised design control on a major electronic redesign of the Titan IIIB and IIIC launch vehicle programs.

See: Titan III Facts, Discussion Forum, and Encyclopedia Article

· GENERAL ELECTRIC COMPANY

– Missile and Space Division

– Spacecraft Department – June 1965 to March 1968

· Engineer –

· Mr. Schober performed analog and digital circuit design for various spacecraft.

· He designed different types of analog to digital converters and control logic for attitude control, instrument control, and data collection electronics.

· Mr. Schober assisted his manager in writing one of the first books on analog to digital conversion.

· He designed and evaluated radiation hardened electronics for various spacecraft programs. Radiation effects included transient (TREE) plus power generation (RTG) and natural background effects.

· He used computer circuit simulation extensively for both design and radiation hardness simulation.

· Installed, modified and extensively used an early IBM linear circuit analysis program (ECAP) for the radiation effects, worst case design analysis, as well as in general circuit design activities.

· He instructed other people in our division in the use of ECAP.

· NATIONAL SCIENCE FOUNDATION

– Widener University – September 1963 to June 1963

· Student Engineer –

· Mr. Schober managed and worked on a NSF grant project: Character Recognition by Associative Memory.

· He performed circuit design of associative memories, shift registers, and decoding logic as well as vidicon tube sweep electronics, output amplifiers and digitizers.

· SCOTT PAPER COMPANY

– Research Laboratory – June 1963 to September 1963

· Staff Engineer –

· Mr. Schober designed an electrical control system for the first machines that printed patterns on paper napkins, paper place mats, and toilet paper.

· WIDENER UNIVERSITY

– ENGINEERING DIGITAL COMPUTER LABORATORY – June 1961 to June 1963

· Computer Laboratory Instructor –

· Mr. Schober organized a new Digital Computer Laboratory and managed it for its first two years.

· He attended IBM school during the first summer while an IBM 1620 computer was being installed at Widener University.

· Mr. Schober instructed students in programming and computer operation for the duration of the assignment.

AWARDS AND PATENTS:

· Mr. Schober is the sole author of a series of patents on cardiac pacemakers and CMOS integrated circuit library technology. He is the primary author of RFID application which will result in numerous patents, as well as Ingestible Low Power Capsule and Low Power Ultra-Sound communication circuits:

· US 4388927 Schober – Programmable Digital Cardiac Pacer

· US 4557266 Schober – Programmable Digital Cardiac Pacer

· US 6198324 Schober – Flip Flops

· US 6252448 Schober – Coincident Complementary Clock Generator for Logic Circuits

· US 6297668 Schober – Serial Device Compaction for Improving Integrated Circuit Layouts

· US 6333656 Schober – Flip-Flops

· US Application US 20070046369 Schober – High Sensitivity RFID TAG Integrated Circuits

· WIPO Application WO/2007/014053 Schober – High Sensitivity RFID TAG Integrated Circuits

· US Application US 20080161660 Schober – System and Method for Acoustic Information Exchange Involving an Ingestible Low Power Capsule

· In several editions of Marquis Who's Who in Frontier Science and Technology, Who's Who in the West,

Who's Who in America, and Who's Who in the World.

· Received a special award for the all-time highest individual contributor in American Hospital Supply Corporation from the Chairman of the Board/CEO.

· Most outstanding electrical engineering student in Philadelphia area for 1964-65 school year (IEEE Philadelphia Chapter).

· Triangle Club – honorary engineering organization affiliated with Tau Beta Pi.

· Scott Award – full two year scholarship presented to the outstanding member of the sophomore class.

· Dean's list for academic achievement on a continuing basis.

Schobers Oracle

Some PUBLICATIONS:

· High-Speed Radiation-Hardened Memory Composed of Novel SOI-Specific Circuits. ESSCIRC.

· Novel SOI-Specific Circuit from High-Speed Radiation-Hardened Memories. IEEE Electron Device Society – 2008 IEEE International SOI Conference Proceedings, October 6-9, 2008.

· Memory Technologies – Closing the Gap between Data Processing and Memory Speed and Reliability, October 1, 2004 (Memory that writes and reads fully error corrected data at each and every cycle of a greater than 4GHz microprocessor clocking rate).

· Low-Power Low-Noise Analog Circuits for On-Focal-Plane Signal Processing of Infrared Sensors. 1993.

· New Self-Cascoding CMOS Circuit for Low-Power Applications. 1992.

· Authored a chapter on The Future of Cardiac Pacing book by Seymour Ferman, the leading authority on pacemakers at the time.

ACTIVITIES:

· Organized an electrical engineering club at Widener University. Chairman for two years. Received IEEE affiliation in the second year.

· Member IEEE – Solid State Circuits, Electron Devices, Computer, Circuit Theory, Biomedical Engineering, and other IEEE technical transaction groups.

· Member of Association for Computing Machinery.

· Consulted for numerous companies during my career.

CIVIC ACTIVITIES:

· Active in the local PTA during the years when my children were in school.

· Taught personal computer classes at a local school system.

· Co-administer a large (~150 person) Intelligent Design colloquium every other Saturday evening.