A native of San Francisco who worked in the field of
Artificial Intelligence, Jerry has been helping us at the Lyceum since 2005. He
was educated at Stanford University in Physics and Computer Science and co-founded
Machine Intelligence Corp. with three colleagues from the Artificial
Intelligence Center at SRI. He retired in 2005 as a Sr. Engineer / Scientist
from Hewlett Packard’s corporate electronics laboratory in Palo Alto. At the San Jose Technology Museum he helped
create and judge the annual San Jose Tech Challenge for a dozen years. In 1989,
he designed and built a permanent attraction for the museum called the Alphabot (Vanna), an interactive
spelling robot. For the past six years, Jerry
has been on the Board of L.I.F.E. Inc., a non-profit group that assists
children in the East Salinas area with tutoring, especially in the areas of
math and science. Jerry serves on the
Church Council for The Church of the Wayfarer in Carmel, where he recently managed
the installation of a state-of-the–art multimedia platform; and is a member of is
a member of the Carmel Foundation Photo Club.
At the Lyceum he taught several PBASIC robot / computer
programming classes, using a robot called Scribbler.
At our week-long Space Adventure class
last summer, he taught an introductory class on robotics and a class on problem
solving. This year he began a new
venture working with the First Lego
League, wherein children learn to build and program Lego-based robots to
perform a variety of autonomous missions.
This year’s theme is called ‘Food Factor’- minimizing the contamination
of food along the delivery path from the ground to our stomachs! Next year we plan to use Jerry’s expertise to
train teachers and students to form teams in local schools to compete in local First
Lego League Tournaments. Teams will go on to compete in larger venues as we
grow.
The Lyceum is fortunate to have Jerry as a teacher and
advisor. Retirement for Jerry has been a quest to find ways to give back to the
community using the talents he has accumulated. Thank you, Jerry. | 
