Kevin Skey Brings Industry Experience Back to MITRE
MITRE NEWS
By Cheryl Balian
July 21, 2007
Twenty years ago, Kevin Skey, lead integrated circuit engineer in D620, began his career at MITRE in D87 designing and building sub-systems for MITRE's wideband HF radar and communications research program. He left the corporation to work in the private industry for several years but returned to MITRE-Bedford last year.
"Kevin brings new ideas and perspectives to the table because of his experience working for the number-one industry supplier of electronic design automation," says Roberto Landrau, principal investigator of a MITRE Sponsored Research (MSR) project that Skey currently works on, entitled "Emerging Technologies for VLSI Application." This MSR researches and develops microelectronics design techniques, software tools, and resources for future technologies that allow MITRE to explore efficient electronic system architectures for sponsor use.
What brought you back to MITRE?
The wide range of interesting work and the exceptionally creative and entrepreneurial-minded people I knew I'd be working with every day. I have always enjoyed MITRE's systems perspective, which provides the opportunity to branch out and gain skills in other technology areas. This is very different from commercial industry, which desires skill specialization. Although my specialty is integrated circuits, I work with technology experts in areas ranging from signal processing, sensors, optics, communications, antennas, hardware and software. This creates a unique environment to innovate solutions for our sponsor's challenges.
Working with people who love what they do makes going to work fun. Many days it feels like I'm working back at a start-up company.
I started at MITRE in 1985 and worked in a department that was always pushing into new technology areas. Every year would bring something new to learn. I did everything from transistor layout for full custom VLSI chips, to designing analog and digital hardware, to writing embedded software for radar and wireless applications. In one instance, I was able to use this background for the US Department of Transportation's Intelligent Vehicle Highway System (IVHS). We successfully built the first prototypes for the digital transmission of highway information over FM radio. This technology was later demonstrated at the Atlanta Olympics.
What were you doing during your non-MITRE years?
I worked for a variety of commercial companies designing consumer and industrial products ranging from GPS plotters for boats, to computer chips for telecommunications. The software company I worked for is Synopsys, the current leading supplier of Electronic Design Animation (EDA) software. As a consultant, I was put in a unique position to help companies like Intel, Broadcom, and AMCC build their latest System-on-a-Chip (SoC) devices using Synopsys software.
How do you combine your MITRE perspective and your industry experience in your work on emerging technologies?
It's a matter of knowing how things are done outside commercially, and trying to leverage those things here. There is plenty of research to our work, but it's also about trying to focus the research more sharply to align with what is happening in commercially. We want to develop things that our sponsors can use near term.
MITRE doesn't actually fabricate the devices-IBM and other companies do. Our constraints are based on what they can do. It's a huge task to keep up with the semiconductor industry, which changes lightning-fast. Intense market competition in portable devices such as cell phones is the cause of the rapid advances.
How do you strike a work/life balance? Do you have any interesting hobbies or pursuits?
My wife and I live on a "cut-your-own" Christmas tree farm, and it's a family business. We plant and grow the trees, which have a seven-year growth cycle. We sell the usual Christmas tree variety, like Douglas firs and spruces. Throughout the year, we refresh the fields and do a lot of pruning. The weekends between Thanksgiving and Christmas are quite busy, when customers come to tag and cut down their trees.
We spend the fall and spring performing forest management. This means thinning the woods to provide a better growing environment for oak, maple, and cherry trees to be selectively harvested in later years for lumber. Last year, our thinning generated 30 cords of firewood.
I also spend a lot of time in my woodworking shop, where I'm making cabinets for our kitchen remodel. My wife and I are also finishing a barn we started last year, and we did most of the work ourselves.