[Rhodes22-list] Interesting Week

[Ronald Lipton]

Best of luck.  I hope you like barbecue.

Ron
On Dec 21, 2004, at 10:09 PM, Roger Pihlaja wrote:

> 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
>
>
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