Biographical Information for George K. Watson

George has been actively involved in software and hardware architecture, design, implementation, and deployment in a variety of capacities for over 20 years. He has worked in the scientific, engineering and business domains designing, developing and coordinating the deployment of many systems ranging from small, embedded implementations to large-scale insurance claims processing systems. George has been an independent engineering consultant for eleven years, having co-founded and acted as vice president of a successful Boulder consulting firm prior to that.

George has been a speaker at a number of academic and industry conferences including ACM/OOPSLA, ACM/SIGGRAPH, DB-Expo, The Embedded Systems Conference and many others. He has authored numerous papers and articles on topics ranging from a discussion of closed form, high order curve intersection to speech synthesis in public safety environments to various programming language topics. George lectures at the University of Colorado, Boulder on computer science topics through the Continuing Education department.

George was most recently instrumental in developing the technology and architecture for a new Internet advertising inventory system, working through a number of difficult mathematical and scalability challenges in implementing the patented technology.

In mid-2005 George completed a new server-based CTI (Computer Telephony Integration) system for a large call center client. The system is in use on over 2000 desktops.

Working for Sandia National Laboratories, George also recently completed the design and implementation of a secure, air-to-ground payload data network, allowing secure, over-the-horizon telemetry data to be exchanged with a high-altitude research aircraft.

As part of a contract with NASA and the AFRL George designed and developed an electronic control system for a novel cryo-cooler. The controller used an innovative, cascading MOSFET switch for high voltage/high speed actuation of downstream electrostatic devices.

In 2003 George headed a team to develop a new factory automation system for doing production tracking and quality parameter monitoring for large scale (200+ machines) factory operations. The system is currently operational in the medical device, automotive and consumer products domains.

Outside of work, George is co-founder and managing director of the Magnolia Road Internet Cooperative (MRIC), a rural, mountain-based WISP with approximately 400 subscribers covering about 300 square miles of territory in the Colorado Rocky Mountains. MRIC provides low cost, high-speed Internet service to its isolated subscribers on an almost entirely volunteer basis. George is a licensed extra class radio amateur with numerous operating awards and several articles published in various amateur radio journals. He has organized and led 3 mountaineering/radio trips involving complex logistics and difficult conditions.

Living in Colorado since 1986 has fueled George's active outdoor career. He has authored 60+ rock-climbing first ascents and summited several mountaineering routes in the western United States. George enjoys seeing the world and has taken advantage of international travel to climb peaks in Europe and Mexico. George also holds a PADI Open Water Scuba Instructor certification and is an active technical/mixed gas scuba diver, holding Advanced Trimix and Full Cave Diver certifications. He has been married since 1978 and has 2 sons.

For a more extensive, traditional, and somewhat windy CV see here