NASA Official Speaks to LI Tech Execs

By Stuart Markus
Long Island Business News
November 9, 2001

The head of NASA's Mars exploration project addressed a group of about two dozen Long Island tech executives last week to rally support for a national high school science competition that aims to generate enthusiasm for careers in technology.

David Lavery spoke to software developers, among them were representatives from 2M Technologies, Applied Visions, EDO Electronic Systems Group, Frequency Electronics, Invision and KeySpan.

The dinner and networking session in the school's library was organized by the law firm Meltzer, Lippe, Goldstein & Schlissel, principal sponsor of Smithtown's new team in the program, called For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology.

About eight other FIRST teams exist on Long Island, out of about 200 nationwide. Law firm partner Richard Lippe said he hoped to enlist the tech firms' support to launch a team at Syosset High School as well.

"Any program that can encourage high school kids to get excited about technology, especially robotics, is worth supporting," said Applied Vision CEO Frank Zinghini, who was turned on to engineering by a high school electronics shop class.

Every January, the teams are given the challenge to design and build a robot to do some specific task, such as placing rubber balls on a rack or hanging inner tubes on a tree-like structure. The students must find a mentor in the high-tech business world and work with that company to build their robot.

It's a chance to see, Lavery said, what the real world of research and development is all about. "An engineering project isn't just a bunch of guys sitting around with calculators," he said. Instead, it includes artists to design what the product will look like, writers to develop reports and other literature, videographers to document the progress, financiers and others.

"The kids that come through the FIRST process are exactly the kind of students that we want to hire to build the next generation of spacecraft," he said, who earlier in the day met with a robotics firm in New York City regarding a future Mars mission.

In addition to his work on Mars exploration, Lavery is the National Aeronautics and Space Administration's liaison to FIRST.

Sometimes the program pays off faster than expected. In his talk about the history and current state of the Mars program - NASA plans a mission every 26 months, when Earth "laps" Mars around the sun - Lavery recounted the story of a high school intern at NASA whose creative thinking allowed a rover vehicle - expected to cost $5 billion - to be developed for only $250 million.

And at a recent competition in Florida, the kids and spectators took a break to watch a space shuttle, whose payload contained a circuit designed by a FIRST student during a summer internship, head off into space.