KipIngram

I was born and raised in Alabama and moved to Texas in 1981 to attend The University of Texas at Austin. After receiving my bachelor's degree in electrical engineering I worked for about a year and a half for National Instruments and then returned to UT Austin for graduate studies. My PhD research dealt with coaxial linear accelerators, a type of "electric gun." After receiving my degree I remained with that research lab (The Center for Electromechanics) for several years as a staff research scientist.

In 1996 I moved to Houston and joined BP Microsystems (a producer of semiconductor device programming equipment) as a senior engineer. I remained with BP Micro for six years and eventually served as the company's first vice president of engineering before resigning in 2002 to start a consulting company. I stuck with that for five years before deciding that even though I made enough money to justify the effort I was never going to match my earning potential on the open market. I returned to full time employment, this time in the oil and gas sector. After stints with Ion Geophysical (seismic) and SensorWise (down hole tools), I joined Wireless Seismic as their vice president of engineering. Politics were rife there, and after a couple of years I lost a political war and resigned to accept a position with Texas Memory Systems, a producer of flash-memory based data storage equipment.

In 2012 IBM bought Texas Memory Systems and I currently still work for IBM, still in the area of flash-based data storage.

I recently celebrated my 20th wedding anniversary and have five daughters, ages 12-23.