Michael Sand is a staff engineer in the Software System Lab of Systems Division, part of Radar Communications Systems of Hughes Aircraft. The offices he works at are located in El Segundo, CA, where Hughes develops and produces airborne electronics (avionics) systems. "Many of our systems (e.g., a radar system) can be characterized as a collection of sensors connected to a computer," he explains. "The computer controls the operation of the hardware, interacts with the operator and with the other systems on the aircraft and processes the information received by the sensors. The lab I work for writes the software for these computers. I am on a project for which the basic software has been written and is now at the testing stage."
"Currently I am investigating particular problems in the functioning of a pilot warning system. Testing will reveal some problem which will be assigned to one of our team members. Further testing will be done to determine the source of the problem, which could be anything from a simple error in the code to a flaw in the design of an algorithm. Sometimes we just run into a set of circumstances that was not anticipated. The next step is to find a solution to the problem, change the code if needed and then test the results."
"In the past separate people might have done each task. The trend now is to divide the work by problem, rather than by skill. This does not mean that only one person can work on a particular problem, but that a specific person is responsible for getting it solved, employing others as needed. So now instead of 'analysts' and `programmers', we have `end-to-end developers'. A consequence of this trend is that I am learning how to function in may different arenas. I analyze problems, find solutions, write code and work in the lab. Initially, I was primarily interested in the analytic part of the job. As time went on, I found the other parts to be interesting as well. Having a good idea is only part of the challenge. The rest is making it work within the confines of the system."
Mike has a B.S. from the University of Utah and a Ph.D. in mathematics from University of California, Berkeley. After obtaining his Ph.D. in 1994, he had two one year appointments at University of California, Riverside. After sending out 180 applications to schools and seeing little prospect of obtaining a permanent position, he decided to look seriously at industry.
"Hughes was the first place I looked for a job," Mike remembers. "I had worked at Hughes for two summers as an undergraduate. From contacts I made at that time, I was able to find a job fairly easily compared to my academic job hunting experience."
"Since the work of my lab involves extracting information out of the environment, mathematics plays a fundamental role. Here one can think of signal processing as a primary example. Mathematics shows up in a variety of other ways as well. One problem I looked into involved inertial navigation. This is using an aircraft's previous position, and knowledge of its motion, to compute its new position. Another problem I investigated arose because a discontinuity in a function was not handled properly."
Mike finds that many of the problem solving skills he acquired in his academic career are essential to his industrial work. "Mathematics at various levels of sophistication is fairly pervasive at the Lab. There are also many tasks which are not primarily mathematical, but which benefit from mathematical thinking and experience. Thinking logically is certainly helpful when writing code and mathematical problem solving skills translate very well to industrial problem solving."
"Standard core courses in mathematics like abstract algebra and analysis, provide excellent mental training for a job like mine," he says. "Any applied course is also beneficial. Probability and statistics are useful in a wide variety of contexts. To work at a place like Hughes, courses in physics and engineering are quite helpful because they give insight into how mathematics is used to solve real problems. They are also helpful for general scientific competence."
Mike talks more about his job in Life After Academia, a piece that appeared in the Young Mathematicians Network Newsletter, Communications of Young Mathematicians.
