Millennium Magazine_2ndEd

348 MILLENNIUM-SECOND EDITION D r. Michael Robert Smith, a prominent optics engineer and physicist, amassed nearly 50 years of experience in his field prior to his retirement in 2014. Interested in engineering from a young age, he attended Georgia Tech and graduated with a Bachelor of Mechanical Engineering in 1959. He remained with the institution, earning a Master of Science in nuclear engineering in 1961, followed by a Doctor of Philosophy in plasma physics from the Case Institute of Technology in 1965. Dr. Smith spent 17 years of his career as a design leader of the LIGO Project, the world’s largest gravitational wave observatory, at the California Institute of Technology. Though he was honored to have had the opportunity to participate in the project and was awarded the 2016 Special Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics, witnessing its three founders receive the Nobel Prize in 2017 was equally as gratifying. He subsequently wrote a memoir about the experience, titled “To Catch a Black Hole from the Bottom of the Pond,” which was recently published in 2018. Alongside his work with the project, he was also a consultant for Caltech from 2013 to 2014. Among his other notable achievements, Dr. Smith is most proud of his entrepreneurial inventions, which include an emergency vehicle warning and traffic control system, an emergency vehicle warning sign, a flat electro-optic display panel, a high-power mirror, a laser recording film with opaque coating, a pulse gas laser with radiation cooling, and an infrared laser photo-cautery device. He holds eight U.S. patents and nine foreign patents. Dr. Smith has maintained affiliation with the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers and was the former chair of the Laser Electro-Optic Society from 1995 to 1997. In addition, he was associated with Sigma Xi and was elected to Pi Tau Sigma, the mechanical engineering honorary society. Married to Lorraine Smith since 2002, Dr. Smith is the proud father of three children. He enjoys teaching Greek folk dancing in his spare time, as well as writing memoirs, poetry and singing. MICHAEL ROBERT SMITH, PHD ENGINEER, PHYSICIST (RETIRED) California Institute of Technology Pasadena, CA