[Rhodes22-list] Interesting Week

[Roger Pihlaja]

Hi Everybody,

Well, I've had an interesting week.  I've been interviewing via the telephone & a-mail for a Group Leader position at Midwest Research Institute (MRI) in Kansas City, MO.  MRI is an independent, not-for-profit organization that performs contract research for business, industry, and government.  MRI was founded in 1944 and had facilities in Kansas City, MO; Cary, NC; Palm Bay, FL, and Washington D.C.  MRI also operates the National Renewable Energy Laboratory in Golden, CO under contract for the United States Dept. of Energy.  The MRI facility in Kansas City, MO employs about 350 people.

The position I'm interviewing for would be a Group Leader of a small multi-disciplinary group of about 10 scientists and engineers doing research into sampling and measurement of aerosols; in the environment, on the battlefield, and in industrial settings.  I will need to get my security classification reinstated for this position.  This research is mostly concentrating on the development of small, fast, reliable means to sample, detect, and measure for the presence of toxic biological and chemical agents.  The US Postal Service and US Army are major clients of this group.

I'm flying out to Kansas City, MO on Wednesday evening, interviewing during the day on Thursday, and flying home Thursday night.  Right now, it's not clear whether they would offer the position as a 6 month renewable contract or as a permanent hire.

The way I got this interview trip is kind of interesting.  Last week Friday, I learned thru a headhunter that his client was MRI & they were interested in interviewing me on Monday via the telephone.  He e-mailed me a job description of the position.  Over the weekend, I researched MRI and specifically what they might be doing in the area of aerosol research.  I was able to figure out that MRI had recently spun off up a small entrepreneurial start-up company called Sceptor Industries, Inc. (Also headquartered in Kansas City, MO)  Sceptor Industries markets a concentrating air sampler under the tradename of SpinCon.  SpinCon air samplers are being installed on every mail sorting machine in the US Postal Service to sample and detect pathogens, like anthrax, being sent thru the mail.  The US Army uses SpinCon air samplers on the battlefield to detect chemical and biological threats.  Naturally, the publicly available information on the SpinCon air sampler doesn't reveal very much about how it works.  But, I took the marketing claims and reverse engineered my own design for an air sampler that could do the same job.  During my telephone interview on Monday, when asked about my expertise in air sampling, I first inquired about whether the group I would be heading up had anything to do with SpinCon and Sceptor Industries.  At first, there were several seconds of stunned silence on the other end of the line & then the interviewer said, "Yes, this group had done the proof-of-concept, scale-up, and manufacturing engineering to set Sceptor Industries up to produce SpinCon air samplers."  I told them that all I knew about the SpinCon air sampler was what I'd read on the web site.  I then described how I would go about developing an air sampler to do the same job.  I went on for about 10 minutes & when I finished I asked, "Well how close was that to the real device?"  Again there was stunned silence for several seconds.  Finally, they told me that not only had I described the basic working principles of the present device, detailed several of the major problems they'd encountered during development & suggested reasonable solutions.  I had also touched on a couple of areas for improvement that the group was working on right now!  I just shrugged and said, "Well, sometimes you get lucky."  I thought the interview went pretty well.  This morning, I talked to the headhunter & he told me I'd made deep impression on the folks interviewing me.  Actually, the way he phrased it was, "You knew so much about a classified system that the guy was freaked out & they are going to be taking a much closer look at how the system is marketed in the future!"  Anyway, the next thing I knew, I was booked on a plane for Kansas City, MO!

Hey, I don't know if I'll actually get a job out of this &/or whether it'll be a 6 month contract or a permanent hire.  At the very least, it's encouraging to have someone interested in me.

Wish me luck!

Roger Pihlaja
S/V Dynamic Equilibrium