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Good afternoon everyone, and welcome to the RIT
Innovation Hall of Fame induction ceremony.
And I am Bill Destler, president of RIT, and I am a very proud
president on this, our innovation weekend.
Technically, every weekend, in fact, every day, at RIT is
innovation weekend, but this weekend is when we celebrate the
incredible energy and innovative spirit found on this campus
every day.
We begin with today's ceremony and the induction of the fourth
class of awe-inspiring innovators.
The Innovation Hall of Fame is still fairly new, but already it
has demonstrated RIT's substantial connections to
innovation in the arts, sciences, and industry.
The innovators, who are part of the Hall of Fame, and those
being inducted today, are individuals who have impacted
the world through a comprehensive body of artistic,
creative or technical work, or through innovative intellectual
property, products, technologies, systems, designs
or businesses.
Each has been recognized regionally, nationally or
internationally for his or her unique contributions to a
profession.
Innovation takes on many forms, and RIT is proud to celebrate
the many different ways in which innovation energizes this
educational community.
Today we shine the spotlight on six individuals with deep and
meaningful ties to this great university.
Individuals who have expanded the body of knowledge in their
fields and, arguably more important, enriched the
educations and lives of RIT students.
It is gratifying this year to say that four of the six have
served as full-time RIT faculty members and all six have served
as mentors to RIT students or student teams.
So in addition to their innovative accomplishments, they
have intentionally passed the innovative torch to future RIT
generations.
There are several people I'd like to welcome and acknowledge,
but first of all I am grateful for the support of our
professional sign language interpreters without whom this
event could not possibly be fully inclusive.
Thank you.
Let's give them a hand.
And I also want to welcome the honorable Joseph
Robach, New York state senator and my personal friend
representing the 56th senate district and a strong supporter
of invasion initiatives in western New York.
Joe, stand up and take a bow.
In addition we have Wendell Castle, Jim decaro and
John Hamilton, all distinguished members of the inaugural
Innovation Hall of Fame class of 2010 with us this evening to
welcome the innovators of 2013 into the fold.
Would you please stand up and be recognized.
And finally, I want to thank the members of the two
committees who sought and selected the people you will see
honored tonight.
First, this year's nominating committee narrowed the hundreds
of nominations down to a select pool of candidates.
That committee included Jon Schull, Gary Behm, Michael
Ruhling, Elizabeth Perry, Andreas Savakis, Emerson
Fullwood and Ken Reed.
Would you please stand and be recognized.
And committee handed the nominations to the Selection
Committee, which had a very hard job -- wonderful worthy
candidates and the Selection Committee is Lorraine Justice,
Andrew Sears, Barry Culhane, Brian O'Shaughnessy, Dean Kamen,
Susan Holliday, Andrew Brenneman, DT Ogilvie and Kelly
Redder.
Would those individuals please stand up and be recognized.
Both of these committees were chaired by the
director of RIT's Simone Center for Student Innovation and
Entrepreneurship, Dr. Richard demartino.
I ask that you join me in thanking the members of our two
committees who chose this outstanding class of innovators
before you today.
And thanks very much, Richard, for your leadership.
As I said at the outset, today's induction is a
gateway to a weekend of innovation on campus.
Tomorrow we will host our sixth imagine RIT festival, a truly
amazing day that showcases the talent, creativity and spirit of
innovation in the RIT family.
And by the way, you know, we've had six of those things and it
has rained a total of 15 minutes.
That's pretty amazing.
We will bring our class of 2013 innovators together for a panel
discussion on the intersection of engineering, commerce,
science, art and innovation.
RIT provost Jeremy Haefner will be moderating that discussion.
Today, Dr. Haefner has another role: MC for the ceremony.
While the university at large lays claim to fostering
innovation, I can think of no person more committed to making
innovation an integral part of every student's education here
at RIT.
Please welcome Dr. Haefner to begin our celebration of the
class of 2013.
Jeremy?
>> Thank you, Bill, and before I begin I want to
acknowledge another alumna of our innovation Hall of fame.
Patty Moore has joined us, a recipient of 2012.
Patty, would you please stand up and be recognized as well?
Well, it truly is an honor to join you today and
recognize the unique accomplishments of these
individuals.
As president Destler said I am passionate about fostering
innovation on the RIT campus, but this passion is not mine
alone.
It is shared by our students who embrace discovery and pursue new
knowledge with creativity and a no-barriers spirit rarely seen
in young people elsewhere today.
It is also shared by the RIT faculty members who support
those students, spurring them to deeper understanding of their
academic areas and always encouraging them to ask why or
perhaps just as often, why not.
At RIT we strive to foster innovation in every area of our
campus, from classrooms, to labs, to research centers, it's
evident that students are encouraged to find new
solutions, take different paths and to look at things from a
different point of view.
In fact, this evening's ceremony also brings a little flavor of
innovation because this is the first time we've actually held
it in a spot where the audience members could sit down.
So we think that's quite an innovation.
Next year we'll find a place where it's
air-conditioned.
How does that sound?
to support those traditional academic venues and
kick innovation into high gear, RIT has built an innovation
ecosystem that connects all the colleges and fields of study
through cross-disciplinary projects, inspiring speakers and
visiting professors, and an array of other opportunities to
enrich every student's studies.
The outcomes of many of these opportunities will be on display
tomorrow at the festival, and of course, today's celebration of
these extraordinary innovators plays an important role in
showing what innovation as a life pursuit means.
While innovation is all around the campus, selecting the
individuals to induct into the Hall of Fame is not so easy.
Now, if you've watched the academy awards show you know
this is where they bring out the accountants to tell you how the
winners were selected.
But our accountants are very busy today, no doubt checking
how the provost spends his money so rather I will give you an
idea of what goes into the final selection.
Nominations come from RIT alumni, faculty, staff, past and
current administrators, corporate partners, just about
anyone who is closely connected to the university and wants to
recognize the work of an innovative individual with
strong ties to RIT.
After a thorough review by our nomination committee, a slate of
candidates is presented to the Selection Committee.
And the Selection Committee digs deep into the history of the
individual's work and assesses the breadth of the impact of the
nominees' creations.
This committee strives to build a class of innovators that
represents the nature of innovation at RIT, diverse
perspective; representative of technology, the arts, science
and business; and always, always game-changing.
So now, let's get on to the fun part of the program and the part
that we've been waiting for.
I'm very pleased to introduce the first member of the class of
2013 is Dr. Lynn Fuller.
When the history of microelectronic engineering is
written, there will be a very long chapter devoted to Lynn
Fuller.
Dr. Fuller is an RIT alumnus from the class of 1970, and by
the way, if you're passing by Clark gym, take a look at the
athletic Hall of Fame where you will see Lynn's picture there as
well.
He joined the electrical engineering faculty and made
RIT's first transistors in 1978, teaching a senior level
professional elective course in semiconductor devices.
That course and Dr. Fuller's dedication led to the launch of
RIT's program in microelectronic engineering.
And at the time no other university in the world had
attempted to educate undergraduate students in the
area of microelectronics.
Dr. Fuller had founding responsibility for the
development of the program, funding and creation of the
laboratory facility, and development of the graduate
programs in microelectronics, including the creation of the
RIT Microsystems Ph.D. program.
The microelectronic engineering program now has over 1,000
alumni working in the semiconductor industry
worldwide.
The program has become nationally and indeed
internationally recognized for excellence in microelectronics,
as has Dr. Fuller.
We have a wonderful video now for you to watch and enjoy.
>> Lynn fuller: when i first came to rit we had
no transistors, there weren't any.
I think i remember when rit got its first transistor.
Now we have cell phones with billions and billions of
transistors in them and things have changed just incredibly.
The integrated circuit was created in the 1960's and by
1970 there was rapid growth with the creation of the
microprocessor and by 1980 it was a full blown multi hundred
billion dollar industry and the universities had fallen behind
in creating the engineers that industry needed.
>> robert pearson: i started at rit as an electrical engineering
student before there was a microelectronic engineering
program.
Dr. Fuller put together some equipment for making integrated
circuits and he said that a friend of mine and i could come
in and do whatever we wanted as long as we wrote it down.
We made the first solar cells at rit, the first photo masks, the
first transistors and resistors and it was really, really
exciting and later the notes that we had done for that course
were what laid the groundwork for the microelectronic
engineering program.
>> fuller: the industry needed these engineers and they came to
rit because rit had imaging science but they wanted an
engineer that understood the electrical engineering aspects
of microelectronic engineering as well and no such program
existed.
We had to create an entirely new program with more than a dozen
courses and we also had to create a laboratory that was
huge, we had to build a new building, raise money, put in 50
million dollars worth of equipment.
>> pearson: lynn was the person that was at the right place at
the right time.
But more than that, he was the right person in the right place
at the right time.
As a faculty member and also as an alum, i think he knew a lot
of people here, so when an opportunity came to start a
unique program he could sit down and talk to the various players
that needed to come to the table to put this all together.
>> fuller: i think innovation can both be inspirational and
very methodical.
In the case of semiconductors in microelectronic engineering,
it's more of the methodical side we have to put together a
billion things the size of an atom and they all have to be
right.
If there's one mistake the circuit doesn't work.
In our laboratories we actually make semiconductors with
thousands of transistors.
Our processes are very similar to what they do in industry.
The integrated circuits we make are pretty sophisticated and
pretty amazing to make at a university.
>> pearson: i think one of the most innovative things that lynn
brought to the program was just the concept that you can teach
very high level material and concepts to undergraduate
students.
We have a class and it's a lot of hands on, interpersonal work.
Disbursed throughout the clean room are all of these teams
working on different pieces of equipment and he then moves
between the groups dispensing wisdom and information on
whether they're doing things right or wrong and that's not a
normal way to teach a class.
And these are the kinds of things that when these students
get out and go to work in industry, it's that experience
that makes all the difference.
>> fuller: the other day in class i was talking to my
students about how long i'd been there.
I like to tell them that i came to rit before rit was here.
There were no buildings here when i came to rit; it was just
a swamp out here.
And then one of the students pops up her hand and says, "my
dad was your student!"
and that's interesting.
>> pearson: lynn's career at rit has spanned a tremendous length
of time and so lynn's perspective is invaluable.
He can remind the students of where we've been and where we're
going.
>> fuller: our program was unique and i've seen other
schools copy our program or at least try to do something
similar to what we do and that's also very gratifying.
And today i think we made a real impact in changing the way
education is done for engineers that end up working in the
semiconductor industry and i believe that it's helped the
industry, not just rit.
Ladies and gentlemen, Dr. Lynn Fuller
>> I'm greatly honored to be selected to the RIT Innovation
Hall of Fame and I'd like to thank, and I'd also like to also
congratulate the other recipients that will be
honored later tonight. I'd like to thank my family
for all their support over the years.
My wife is here and my two daughters and their families,
and especially my grandchildren, Olenka, Dianna, Ian, Oliver and
Griffin.
I spend many, many hours at homeworking on RIT-related
things and don't always get time to teach them or work with them
on what they need, and I think they have actually enjoyed
working with snap circuits and learning Morris Code and
whatever it was.
So i've always had the opportunity to work and learn
with thousands of students at RIT, and two of the best of them
are here, Dr. Robert Pearson, who was featured in this film,
is here.
He was one of the first faculty in the microelectronic
engineering program, and Dr. Ivan Puchades, who was one of my
first students in the Microsystems Ph.D.
Program, and I hope they will carry on with the innovation in
the future.
This particular area of microelectronic engineering for
the past 40 years has moved very fast, has been very interesting
and I think it will continue to do that.
Thank you.
>> Thank you, Lynn, and congratulations.
Our next inductee is Jacki Pancari.
At RIT we have a number of faculty who can tell us how
light behaves.
But Jacki prefers to show us.
She is a glass artist whose fascinating work goes beyond
creating beauty with glass.
She merges glass and science and nature and the human experience
to create her works.
Jacki works out of a studio near Alfred, New York, but has been
an associate of RIT's School for American Crafts for some time.
She has a collaborative exhibit in the student innovation hall
mounted especially for tomorrow's festival, and I
genuinely invite you to go down and take a look at that
tomorrow, and particularly when the light strikes it at
different angles, it's absolutely gorgeous.
She has served RIT students as a visiting critique, three years
as an artist in residence, and three years as a visiting
artist, in all these cases sharing her unique perspectives
and helping students to hone new skills as glass artists.
Let's watch the video.
>> Jacki pancari: glass is about the
moment, and i know when i'm creating my work that if i have
that moment where i go, oh wow!
You know, that's cool, that's really neat.
I know that i'm getting somewhere or i know that i've
got it.
>> robin cass: what makes her and her work innovative is her
openness to different kinds of inspiration and research and
processes and so what that does is it makes her work more
accessible i think to the general public because she's
keeping in mind an audience that's wider than the art world.
>> pancari: it's the properties of glass that i'm really
interested in, it's the physics of the glass.
The moment where maybe you see a little bubble in the glass and
that bubble it's beautiful and when you put light through that,
all of a sudden you're seeing something about the glass that
was in essence invisible.
>> cass: i think that that's one of the things that makes her and
her work so special is that she doesn't' stay within any
boundaries as far as the expected or the normal,
traditional glass working processes.
>> pancari: i'm really interested in natural
phenomenon.
I love to go on walks, i love to take pictures.
I have probably 24,000 images now and that's, it's really
inspirational for me to take that information, bring it into
the studio.
>> cass: jacki's inspirations often come from the most
seemingly mundane things or occurrences that most people
would just walk right by, like the way water droplets form on a
windshield and move upwards rather than down and that would
lead to a whole piece.
So she invites you in to share her sense of wonder at it.
Some of jacki's projects she's starting with traditional glass
processes, but she's taking it in new directions like some of
her reflective hemispheres, she'll put in a central piece to
make patterns of the glass, but she's brought it to a new place
by celebrating the optical potential of that combination of
this pattern with the silvered bowl she's taking something very
old and very new and presenting it in a new way.
>> pancari: first i go into the hot shop and i create the work.
So then i take all of that work back to the studio and that's
when the fun begins because it is, it's like a laboratory, i'm
experimenting, i'm making discoveries.
It's about having these objects and putting them together and
playing and discovering new things.
And the thing about glass is really the material is alive and
in a sense i'm really trying to bring out the best qualities of
the material.
>> cass: i think she really thrives off of that energy that
comes from being surrounded by her ideas.
>> pancari: i don't throw anything away.
You know i tell students all the time, don't throw anything out
because you may find that that is your best piece and you just
don't know why yet.
>> cass: the school for american crafts has evolved and what
we've done all along is bring in the best makers and thinkers who
specialize in various materials and traditional techniques but
not in a way that is just to preserve those traditions, but
really to use them as a foundation for innovating, for
doing new things with these processes, these techniques,
these materials, see what can be done.
>> pancari: i think that innovation is about taking away
all preconceived ideas about something and taking it in a new
direction.
>> cass: she has this way of being able to take these small
moments and transform them into powerful pieces of art and in
that way other people get to be in her brain and get to
experience life the way she does, which is a wonderful place
to be.
>> pancari: my hope is that when somebody is looking at my work
that they get the same kind of experience that i do in the
making of the work to sort of have that moment of aha or awe.
>> Ladies and gentlemen, Jacki
Pancari, Innovation Hall of Fame for 2013.
>> Thank you so much.
I am thrilled to receive this recognition.
I'm especially proud to be associated with Rochester
Institute of Technology, and I want to thank Jon Schull for
nominating me and the committee for choosing me, and also I'd
like to thank Robin Cass, Michael Rogers and David
Schnuckel and the students in the glass department for all
their help, for current work now and for previous work that i've
done, and of course I'd like to thank my family, and this honor
has really been an inspiration for me and really just the right
kind of medicine I need right now.
>> Jacki, it's safe to say that your work and the
work that you do here at RIT is an inspiration for all of us.
So thank you so much.
Now we're pleased to induct Paul L. Taylor III.
Paul is an innovator who quite literally helped to change the
life experiences of deaf and hard of hearing people.
Paul saw an opportunity to combine Western Union
teletypewriters with modems to create the first
telecommunication devices for the deaf, known as tdds or ttys.
But he didn't stop there.
He then helped to create a network of these devices as well
as using them to launch local telephone wake-up services for
the deaf and the nation's first telephone relay system for the
deaf, which he expanded to a statewide system.
RIT was fortunate to welcome Paul as chair of the engineering
support team at the National Technical Institute for the Deaf
in 1975.
And he remained on our faculty for 30 years, continuing to
innovate and advocate in telecommunications for the deaf.
Ladies and gentlemen, excuse me, but let's watch the video first.
>> Taylor: in 1964 when i saw the picture
phone at the new york world's fair, i could see the solution
coming.
It just blew my mind!
It just hit me that i could communicate on a wire.
>> alan hurwitz: i remember very well paul was always just a
dreamer.
He was always thinking about new ideas.
One of his most frustrating times was when he was not able
to use the telephone.
>> taylor: all my life i had not used the telephone.
I had always asked my mother, my high school friends and other
people who knew me well if they would mind making a phone call.
I would write out the number for them and they would do me a
favor.
One problem that i had with that, it doesn't look very good
to call a girl through your mom and ask for a date!
But i could see problems in the future as well.
For example, if i'm in employment, people want to call
me, people want to work on something together over the
phone, how would that work?
>> hurwitz: he came across a good friend of ours from
california who had invented technology that would allow us
to use old teletypes that would fit with a modem and that way we
could use the telephone lines and the telephone system.
>> taylor: he said he would be able to send me an acoustic
converter and that would allow me to change the wiring in my
tty.
I went into the basement, took the thing apart and made some
adjustments, put it back together and then he suggested
that i call him at his number.
So i dialed, and he answered immediately.
Hello, go ahead!
It was an exciting moment.
To be able to communicate directly to california for the
first time.
His response was instantaneous, we were able to talk back and
forth.
And people started coming to my home to see this machine in
action.
They were astounded.
It made me think, if the entire deaf community could be
connected like this throughout the entire country.
>> hurwitz: he was able to network with the telephone
companies and be able to talk with different people.
I think the idea of him establishing the tty network was
not only for communicating between two deaf people, but the
other part was he really wanted to establish an answering
service, the relay service, so that he could be able to contact
people who were not deaf, and i believe that that really helped
deaf people to become more functional and much more
independent in their professional lives.
>> taylor: ntid had heard about me and the work i was doing.
They knew i had an engineering degree and they offered me a
position to come and work with them.
>> hurwitz: paul is probably one of a few out of a handful of
deaf people who have achieved their professional engineering
license.
That was one of the reasons why we really wanted him to come to
ntid at rit and we felt that he could make a huge impact on the
lives of young people.
>> taylor: slowly the tty's became less and less mechanical
and more and more electronic.
They became smaller and smaller, which was wonderful, then
eventually.
>> hurwitz: with today's technologies, with mobile
phones, facetime, videophones, all of that, i think paul can
sit back and be proud that he was one of the pioneers that
made it possible for us to have everything that we have now.
>> Ladies and gentlemen, Paul Taylor.
>> I am very honored to be considered part of RIT's
innovative Hall of Fame.
At the same time, I feel very humble because I did not do this
alone.
Before I continue, I want to give you a sign, the sign for
innovation is you form the hand shape of a 4.
So maybe you come up with eight ideas and then you innovate
something.
So this is time for innovation.
You're using your imagination, you're thinking, you're
innovating, you're coming up, you're creating.
So I want to see all of you in the audience copy me, please.
Innovation.
Great.
Thank you As the film pointed out, I was at the 1964
New York World's Fair where Sally and I were sitting down,
apart from each other, and it was the first time in our lives
that we were able to communicate from different rooms.
It had never happened before, and so after that I just talked
about that all the time with other people.
There's a few people I'd like to thank.
I know that I only have 90 seconds , but I would
like to start with just a few important people that helped me
along the way.
I want to thank my father-in-law.
He's 101 years old, still living.
He heard me talk about the picture phone that I had seen at
the World's Fair, and I would talk about it again and again,
so he just happened to know several people in the management
of Western Union, a teletype company, so he got to thinking,
i'll call my friend and see what they could do to help.
Myself and Sally realized that we could communicate in this way
over the wire.
So he contacted Western Union and they said, oh, we have many,
many old teletypes from World War II.
They're just stacked up, and they said that they would like
to see these devices put to good use.
The second person I'd like to thank is the inventor, there's
that sign, the inventor of the acoustic converter.
He knew that the teletype device at that time, quite some time
ago, used private lines.
They were not hooked up to the audio part of the phone network,
and so he figured a way how to combine the talking, the audio,
with the teletype technology, and he came up with an idea.
Every time you hit a key it would send pulses, and each
pulse was different, depending on which key you hit.
And the pulses would be converted to sound, and then in
turn on the other end of the line the receiver would receive
that sound and convert it to the exact same electronic pulse that
the person who originated the -- that sent -- the signal sent.
So that made this possible for people to use the phone -- for
deaf people to use the phone network.
Another person I'd like to thank is my life-long good and strong
friend.
He's a very good mechanic.
He got into the teletype business with me way back when,
back in 1965, and we both went to school to learn how to work
on the teletype device, how to make the adjustments, to change
the wiring configurations, so we learned a great deal together,
and then we were ready to make the connection to the coupler.
And so he was with me throughout that time, and he knew many,
many things that I didn't know, so he was extremely helpful.
My friend's name is Gene mcdowell.
We both lived together in St. Louis, Missouri back at that
time.
Another group I'd like to thank is the deaf community located in
St. Louis, Missouri.
The deaf community there saw what myself and Gene were doing,
and they were amazed.
They said, oh, you can take this phone and put it on the coupler
and tie -- I demonstrated, "Hi, Gene, how are you?"
And Gene would respond, "I'm fine."
And I mean, it blew all of these deaf people's minds.
The first time they saw the possibility of communicating
from one house to another house where they didn't have to drive
over to their friend's house to knock on the door, ring the
doorbell and meet that, they didn't have to do that anymore.
They could communicate there home, from house to house using
the phone network.
And the last person I want to thank, you saw her face in the
movie, my dear wife Sally.
Sally, please stand up and be recognized.
Sally, are you here?
Sally did a lot of the paperwork for me, and when
we developed the teletype repair manual for the deaf, it was a
much easier version than what was available at the time.
The old version was quite complex, so we made
modifications to make it accessible to the deaf
community, used a lot of visuals, a lot of photographs,
with some captions.
So it was much easier to comprehend with the English
subtitles -- or captions, and so Sally organized some of the
work.
We had these girls coming over to type the captions, to help,
and so every time Western Union or AT&T would release teletypes,
we would have to sign the necessary paperwork, for obvious
reasons, and Sally took care of all of that for me.
I'm not a paperwork type of man, so thank you, Sally, for all you
did.
You were a tremendous asset, and she gave me a lot of inspiration
through the years, and after 45 years I was tired, but she said,
one more step.
Keep going, one more step.
So thank you, Sally.
So thank you so much for this honor, and I will
cherish this all my life.
Thank you, all of you, for coming out.
>> One more time with the innovation sign.
>> I'm glad he did it because I was going to do it one
more time for you.
I'll share a little story that I had a conversation with Paul
before this event.
I was talking to him, and I was struck by his eyeglasses,
because they're stunning, and I made a comment that I thought
his eyeglasses were wonderful.
And he then proceeded to tell me what his next invention is going
to be because he's going to take the Google glasses, which is the
new invention from Google that puts the computer interface
right there in your -- in front of your eyeglasses, and do the
same kind of invention that he did for us through the TTY.
So, Paul, again, thank you so much for your wonderful
innovations and the spirit that you bring to RIT.
Thank you.
Next up is entrepreneur and RIT alumnus of
our computer science program, Robert Fabbio.
Bob is not just a successful entrepreneur.
He's a visionary entrepreneur.
When he launches a startup, which he has done many times in
the last 30 years or so, he's usually looking to change the
entire industry in which he's working.
He did it in 1979 when he launched Tivoli Systems, an
enterprise computer management system, when there was no such
thing as an enterprise computer management system.
He did it again in launching Dazel Corporation.
He became so adept at launching world-class innovative
businesses that he was awarded the Ernst & Young entrepreneur
of the year award in 1997.
Currently, he is innovating in an industry sorely in need of
new approaches.
His latest venture, White Glove House Call Health, stands to
revolutionize the way health care is delivered to the
consumer.
Bob shares his entrepreneurial experience and perspectives on
business innovation to our students in numerous ways,
including speaking at our annual entrepreneur conference and
mentoring student entrepreneur teams.
Let's enjoy the video for Bob Fabbio.
>> Robert fabbio: disruptive innovation is
all about bringing innovation to a market in an unexpected way
that ultimately creates new markets, new categories, new
products, new solutions that completely disrupt the fabric of
the industry.
It's generally the case that disruptive innovators attack an
existing player.
When we started tivoli we were this teeny little company in
austin, texas, and we were competing against ibm and at the
time at&t and hp and sun and all these gigantic computer
manufacturers and they said you can't compete against those
guys; how are you going to ever win?
>> Christine whitman: it's the opportunity to create something
that is significantly better than what's being delivered
today and in bob's case it's always game changing.
>> fabbio: mainframe computers were the predominant backbone in
corporate america.
Networks of computers were beginning to emerge and i said,
well why can't we manage a network of computers like a
mainframe and do it with a graphical user interface and
people went, huh?
But that idea, that germ of an idea, created the third or
fourth largest software category in the world today.
>> whitman: a big idea or an industry transforming innovation
is what gets an entrepreneur excited and white glove health
was based on bob's passion for developing an alternative health
care delivery system.
>> fabbio: i get up to go to the doctor's office, i leave the
house at quarter to nine, you know, get through all the
traffic downtown, struggle to find parking, go sit in the
waiting room, fill out the clipboard of forms, wait some
more, the whole nine yards, right?
End up going to the diagnostic lab, the pharmacy, the grocery
store and now it's 2:15 in the afternoon and i went, oh my
word!
It's healthcare!
Tackling one of the largest, messiest markets on the planet,
complex subject matter and then there's umpteen things that i
could do differently with the experience i had today with
technology.
I said i've got it.
I'm going to find a way to deliver everything to the
consumer: the care, the meds, the foods, the beverages, the
over the counters and do it in an affordable way.
>> whitman: any of us who are entrepreneurs see the huge waste
in healthcare, so someone like bob couldn't help but think that
he could find a better solution.
>> fabbio: today we use our insurance for sore throats to
sinus infections to knee replacements.
But that's like buying car insurance for oil changes.
We don't do that.
What we did was we invented a membership based business where
if you want care, you join, just like costco's or a gym, and you
pay a flat fixed fee every year and then you have unlimited use
of the white glove health care system.
>> whitman: if you think of the heart of innovation as solving
problems, it's definitely true for bob, and bob was successful
in growing that company 600% in three years.
>> fabbio: i've been bombarded, and the company's been
bombarded, with individual feedback from people about how
we've changed their lives, their work, their families, the fact
that they're receiving healthcare maybe for the first
time in their lives where someone actually focused on the
customer experience.
The ideas that i've had have ultimately created over a
billion and a half dollars of shareholder value at time of
exit and that's hard for me to believe but it's true.
But when you sit back and you look at the businesses that have
been built and all the jobs that were created, the wages that
were paid and the families that were fed, et cetera, et cetera,
that's pretty amazing.
I gravitate to ventures that are big ideas, that are very
disruptive, that solve a big market need where there's a
potential to make lots of money.
>> whitman: when i asked him which of his ventures was his
favorite, his answer to me was, "the next one."
>> fabbio: innovation is something that's a change agent,
it's something that when really bright people get in a room and
they go, "wow, that's brilliant!
No one else on the planet has ever thought of it!"
and it is something that creates new markets, that creates new
categories and industries so to me that's what innovation is
about.
A warm welcome for Robert Fabbio.
>> I need my granny glasses on.
Good evening or good afternoon to everyone.
It's truly an honor to be recognized by RIT.
As i've said repeatedly over the last few weeks in talking about
this, I'm humbled to be in such great company this evening.
So congratulations to everybody.
I never imagined when I attended RIT back in the mid-'80s to
obtain a master's degree in computer science that I'd be
standing here this evening.
Since graduating in 1985 I'm flattered to say that I have
formed relationships with the last two presidents of RIT.
I've served as a board of trustee member, i've spoken to
students and faculty members and board of trustee members on
multiple occasions and entrepreneurism and innovation
and now inducted into the RIT's Innovation Hall of Fame.
I've been asked how did RIT shape me as an innovator and the
answer jumped quickly to me.
It was simple and clear.
While RIT taught me many things as a student, the most important
was to take risks.
You can't innovate without taking risks.
As a young man completing my master's degree, I took a big
risk by seeking permission from RIT to use software that I had
developed in my master's thesis in a commercial setting.
Well, I knew that at that time that was generally not allowed,
I asked anyway.
I was told I was the first student to ever be granted the
permission to use software from RIT out of a thesis project in a
commercial setting.
And ultimately that became a critical piece of innovation for
a Massachusetts startup that I worked for that then went
public.
So RIT taught me a very valuable lesson in my formative years,
that nothing ventured, nothing gained.
In the end, for me, to innovate is core to who I am.
With every business i've been a part of, the most exciting
aspect of it is finding novel, innovative ways to solve
problems, problems that others may have looked at but hadn't
seen the same kind of solution.
In closing, it's rare for my family to enjoy the fruits of my
labor or the professional accomplishments that have come
my way, so it's special for me to have my family here tonight.
Thank you very much for your support and your presence here
this evening.
And thank you again for this unexpected acknowledgment.
>> Once again, congratulations, Bob.
We're glad to count you as one of our own and proud of the work
that you're doing to change our health care system for the good.
Next we present Dr. Bruce Smith.
Bruce is an RIT alumnus as well and professor of
nanolithography.
Between student years and faculty years, he has been a
member of the RIT community for over 35 years.
Bruce is the director of the Microsystems Engineering Ph.D.
Program in the Kate Gleason College of Engineering, and the
founder of a semiconductor R&D equipment company in Rochester,
amphibian systems, with over 6 -- sorry -- with over $6 million
in sales and contracts with companies in the U.S., Asia and
Europe.
A prolific inventor, Bruce holds 27 patents with 24 issued in the
United States, two from Japan and one from Europe, all in the
fields of optics, microelectronics and
nanolithography.
He also has two U.S.
patents pending, one with 131 other inventions referencing it,
a good indicator of its importance in the field.
Hits technical advances in nanolithography have made an
impact on the way that semiconductor devices are now
made, which has in turn changed the way many of us live our
lives every day.
Let's watch the video.
>> Smith: microlithography is an integral
part of building a microchip, which is your computers, your
iphone, your camera and so forth.
It's what provides the functionality for your
electronics and microlithography is what does all the patterning,
what does all the creation of those small tiny features within
those devices.
The word lithography means patterning, so microlithography
means doing this really small.
Microlithography generally means maybe on the micron scale
splitting a meter a million times.
Nanolithography is splitting it another thousand times more than
that.
>> ryne raffaelle: he practically wrote the book, i
guess he did write the book on microlithography science and
technology.
Bruce's work has been trying to make those lines smaller and
smaller and smaller and developing the techniques and
the materials to enable that.
>> smith: there is some limitation to just how small you
can make the features that are in your microchip and you're
going to hit the limits of physics, the limits of how small
you can optically make something.
Well, one way to extend that is to start using wavelengths that
are shorter than optical heading towards the x ray.
Extreme ultraviolet lithography, what we call euv, is actually
part of the x ray spectrum, using x ray wavelengths, x ray
light in order to produce very small features.
>> raffaelle: one of the things that makes bruce an innovator is
his ability to look ahead, not just look at where the industry
is today.
You know, if uv's not good enough, i think i'm going to
work on deep uv materials and if deep uv isn't good enough, you
know what, if air's not good enough, let's work on immersion
lithography.
>> smith: well water immersion lithography is something that my
students and i have worked on for a long time now, about 12
years or so, where we've used fluids, in this case we've used
water, as an imaging media to extend the resolution capability
of patterning and now immersion lithography as we first
envisioned it is employed in every semi conductor process,
high end semiconductor process in the world.
>> raffaelle: bruce was able to demonstrate a tool that could
produce these kinds of small lines using immersion
lithography which was much less expensive than say any
commercial manufacturer.
It was such an innovative idea that he then went ahead and
patented the idea and established a commercial
venture, which i'm proud to say actually got its start out in
our venture creations incubator.
>> smith: rit in that sort of way, just historically what
we've been for many, many, many decades has been a great place
for innovation, for coming up with solutions to problems.
In the past there have been fairly large leaps in
technology.
What we're doing more now is looking at more subtle
differences, small changes, that will still have enough impact to
allow the industry to make continual advances.
The best way to move any technology forward is not
through revolution, it's through evolution.
Just small amounts of latitude, a percent or a fraction of a
percent, being able to make that much improvement doesn't sound
like a lot, but that could be enough to really change the way
that you're able to do something.
I think rit is a great place to drive innovation and invention
as well and it comes down to what rit has traditionally been
for a long time and that's a university of applied practice,
applied engineering in the engineering field because what
we do with our students is we force them to think about how
things work and do it themselves.
We spend a lot of time with our students in the lab, hands on
kind of experiments and to see the impact that they are making,
they become key players in this field.
>> raffaelle: he's not training students to be great on day one,
he's really training them to be great on day 101 and 1,001 and
10,001.
>> smith: i consider myself really quite lucky in that what
i do and what i love to do and what i love to work with
students on, happens to be needed today and over the past
ten or fifteen years the things that we have done have been
needed in this semiconductor industry.
If we look at today's technology it's inspiring to see what we
can hold today that we couldn't have even imagined a few years
ago and it certainly has been a lot of fun to be involved in the
innovation that has taken us to far to where we are today.
And there will be something for the next generation and
generations after that.
So i think there's plenty of room for young students and new
students and students for generations to come to be
involved in new innovations that we can't imagine today.
>> Ladies and gentlemen, Dr. Bruce Smith.
>> That was a really good video.
It's the first time we get to see that.
Well, I want to thank everyone, and I did write down a
few remarks.
I know i've got to keep this brief.
My parents are here today and also my wife as well, and I'm
real grateful that they could attend, although I can't quite
see you up there.
I've been fortunate to have entered the semiconductor
industry in the early '80s, starting my career in Silicon
Valley, San Jose, California, with my lovely wife.
At a time when the industry was still rather young with a lot of
innovation on the horizon, pushing technology to where it
is today.
In the course of the past 30 or so years i've been grateful to
have contributed to this innovation, especially in the
field that I am involved in in microlithography.
There have been many individuals along the way all over the world
that have been -- i've been fortunate to have worked with.
In the many years i've been at RIT, this has been an
exceptional place, an exceptional environment to
support such innovation and creativity.
I mentioned my parents are here today.
My dad is also an RIT alumna, as am I, and it's also my father's
birthday today, May 3.
(Cheers and Applause) So I'd like to wish him a happy
birthday, and I kept these comments very brief because I
know i've got ten seconds to sing him happy birthday, right?
i'll start.
His name is Bruce.
(singing) Happy birthday to you, happy birthday to you, happy
birthday dear Bruce, happy birthday to you.
>> Bruce, congratulations.
We're pleased to welcome another RIT graduate and faculty member
to our Hall of Fame.
And that brings us to our final inductee for 2013, Dr. John
Schott.
John is the Frederick and Anna B.
Weidman professor in RIT's Chester F.
Carlson Center for Imaging Science.
He has been a respected member of RIT's faculty since 1981.
His early work at RIT laid the cornerstone for the university's
imaging science program, where he has been a leading
researcher, educator, and mentor of students for decades.
From this post, John has also been a part of NASA's Landsat
science team and the founding director of the Digital Imaging
and Remote Sensing Laboratory at RIT.
Please join me in watching the video.
>> John schott: imaging science is a really big
field, and then remote sensing is a subset of that.
It's the images of the earth from aerial and satellite
systems.
So google earth, you know everybody knows remote sensing
now because everybody's seen google earth, that's a piece of
it, but it's typically more the quantitative extraction of
information.
How clear is the water?
How healthy is the vegetation?
This is the kind of stuff that we're more focused on.
I started here in what was then called the photographic science
department and by the mid 80's when the center was formed it
was clear that there was going to be a sea change in how we did
imaging but also there was a big push to do research.
>> Ed przybylowicz: he was one of the early people that
recognized that an active program in research was a vital
element in his teaching.
If a faculty member is doing cutting edge research and he has
students that are involved in that research, and they then
after graduation take a job in industry, that's a direct
technology transfer.
>> schott: the fact that i'm training remote sensors who are
trained in imaging means that they're trained in optics,
they're trained in linear systems, the mathematics of
images and all i have to do is sort of put the frosting on the
cake and they end up being world class remote sensors.
>> przybylowicz: he works very effectively with students
because he is viewed by them as their mentor, he's not viewed as
a boss.
And i think john works the same way across collaborative lines
with industry.
>> schott: one of the things that we've done here, and
everything i've done is a 'we've done', but it's a simulation
modeling tool called dirsig and what that model does is it lets
you see the world as a new sensor would see it long before
you build the sensor, and long before we should start bending
tin and building billions of dollars of systems and so this
tool is a tool that was conceived of here at rit and
built here at rit and is now used by aerospace companies and
the government all over the country to try and address these
problems.
Landsat is the longest continuously running program to
look at the earth from space.
The value of landsat is not just the individual scales but this
time history so we've now got 40 plus years of images that we can
not only look at as pictures, but we can quantify so the
foresters got all excited.
They could see and map all kinds of neat new things in the
forests, the agricultural community could see all sorts of
things in terms of what was growing where, how much was
growing, the geologists could see all sorts of land forms and
map land forms they had never thought of.
People looking at the glaciers could see things that they had
never had a chance to see before.
The water guys, i'm a water guy, the water people could see all
sorts of things happening in the water that we had never been
able to see at these kinds of scales.
I want to build the tools for all these other guys to use and
so landsat gave us this huge challenge of how do you do that?
>> new speaker: three, two, one, zero.
We have ignition, and liftoff of the atlas five rocket on the
landsat data continuity mission.
>> schott: landsat eight was launched in february of 13, it
was actually a spectacular sight, it was beautiful: sunny,
clear, blue skies in the background and it uses a new
technology.
It scans the earth like you're sweeping up data with a push
broom.
You push these big lines of sensors as the satellite moves
down the face of the earth.
What's exciting about this new technology is that these new
instruments will let us be able to decipher much more subtle
variations in the world in general, for my purposes, in the
water in particular.
The ability to work with students lets you do far more
than you can do on your own.
They look at problems differently, they attack
problems differently.
You get them started and then nudge them a little bit and then
you grab their coattails and let them take you for a ride.
>> przybylowicz: he's like the director of an orchestra, he
recognizes what the flute section has got to do, he
recognizes what the violins has to do and he's able to bring
those together in a collaborative context and yet
provide the leadership for that.
>> schott: i like solving problems, it's really that
simple.
Trying to solve a problem for somebody, trying to figure out
something that someone doesn't know is just fun.
>> Please give a warm welcome to Dr. John Schott, a
2013 inductee for the Innovation Hall of Fame.
>> It's humbling to be in this rather August company.
Some of you know I'm not often humbled.
I'd like to begin by going off script and thanking Ed
for his generous input to the video, and I think on behalf of
all six of us, thanking the team that put the videos together.
It's the first time we've seen them.
They're very enjoyable.
And I'd also like to thank the people, at least the
ones I'm aware of, who were involved in my nominations.
Debby has been my ally in a number of nominations and Al
Simone for his generous words.
Back to my script.
Sir Isaac Newton wrote that perhaps we're able to see
farther -- he was able to see farther, because he was standing
on the shoulders of the giants of science who came before him.
This notion of building on the work of our predecessors has
become an axiom of modern science.
In my case, I have had a small army of young men and women who
hauled me up on those giant's shoulders, propped me up there
and pointed the way for me to look.
To be honest some of them aren't so young, I was reminded of that
the last few days where I sat in
Washington and watched four of my former students brief some
of the senior intelligence community about the work they
were planning on doing with your tax dollars.
All four of them are Air Force colonels and many of
them had hair the color of mine.
Anyway, I thank the efforts of these students who worked
closely with me.
They dragged me up on those giant shoulders, propped me
there, pointed the direction, showed me where to look and what
to look for.
There are many other colleagues, secretaries, even a few
administrators who but for time I'd like to acknowledge.
However, there is one other young lady who I'd
particularly like to thank.
She propped me up, often told me where to look and what to do.
My partner for many decades, Pam Schott.
May she stay forever young like these young men are in my
vision. Thank you.
>> Congratulations, John.
All of our innovators, I think you'll agree, represent the
model of a teacher/scholar, who makes sure that whatever they do
they pass along their knowledge to the next generation.
I think we can be proud of all of these inductees, and I hope
you have found that the work of these innovators, as inspiring
as I have.
The entire RIT community is so proud to have individuals of
this caliber working amongst us.
Please join me in a round of applause one more time for all
of our class of 2013 innovators.
And if you are, please stand for the recognition
And with that, ladies and gentlemen, this brings us to
our close.
I invite you all to join us for a lovely reception in the
University Gallery immediately following this ceremony.
There are staff members here to help direct you to the gallery,
which is on the second floor, and to the left of where we are
right now.
And, please, please come back tomorrow for the imagine RIT
festival where you'll see inspired work of our students
and faculty, the next generation of our inventors, and please
don't miss the panel discussion featuring these innovators for
2013.
I guarantee you'll find the opportunity to get inside their
minds very intriguing.
And on behalf of Dr. Destler and all our innovators, I thank you
all for attending today and we look forward to greeting you at
the reception later.
Thank you so much.