Tech Briefs

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GM's new science chief on an interesting journey

Alan Taub earned a Ph.D. in applied physics from Harvard in 1979. He joined GM this past January as Executive Director-Science, Research & Development, and oversees a staff of about 460 at the Warren Tech Center.

In a world that is moving "from atoms to bits," in an industry that is "on the start of a technology revolution," and in a company that is "banking its future on innovation," Dr. Alan Taub is right where he wants to be. Recently hired as General Motors Corp.'s Executive Director-Science, he intends to distinguish his employer as "the benchmark for global R&D in the 21st century."

Taub plans to take advantage of his staff of about 460 at the R&D labs in GM's Warren Tech Center. "I play to win," he said, "not to place or show. And we have the drive, resources, and talent to get there."

A highly decorated engineer with 26 patents to his credit, Taub left Ford Motor Co. to become GM's R&D commander on January 1. "It's an opportunity of a lifetime," he said. "My personal view is—and I've been in the automotive industry for a little over seven years—we're on the start of a technology revolution in this industry. I happen to believe there will be more new technology on vehicles in the next 10 years than in the past 30." As head of the R&D labs and a member of the company's Advanced Technology Council, Taub will play a large role in determining which technologies advance at GM.

Taub will be more strategist than scientist "on a journey to set up what I like to call the global GM R&D enterprise," he said. GM's global alliances will serve as the backbone of an R&D enterprise that he hopes will reinvent industrial research.

"We're trying to mirror what GM is doing as a corporation with its global alliances, but we're going beyond just lining up our R&D with our alliance partners'—and that's well under way," Taub said. "We're really trying to set up a network of universities, national labs, and our alliance partners so we have an interconnected community."

Despite the downturn in automobile sales and as a result of past hiring freezes, GM is "ramping up for some pretty intensive recruiting," Taub said. He is giving budget priority to on-site recruitment, with an emphasis on identifying "top talent" at selected graduate schools early in their academic careers. "You don't just show up on career day," he said.

Key to successful recruitment will be driving home the automotive technology-revolution message. Developing the electronics and algorithms for vehicle control and telematics are high-tech challenges that should appeal to recruits, said Taub, adding that fuel cells, new materials, and alternative powertrains are some other hot technology topics.

Although alternative powertrains already are being sold, the internal-combustion (IC) engine still has a bright future, in Taub's view. "It's a pretty elegant, sophisticated apparatus, so the real question is what can we drive out in terms of emissions and fuel economy from those IC powerplants for the next 10-20 years," said Taub. "If you don't understand the chemistry, if you don't understand two-phase flow, and if you don't understand friction, you're not going to drive that next stage of improvement. And it (the expertise) is here.

"We've got some good things in the hopper, particularly on the emissions side," Taub added, but "beating the particulate/NOx tradeoff" is the real challenge with IC engines. GM, whose core competency in diesel engines is the modeling of combustion-chamber fluid flow, is working with alliance partner Fiat and subsidiary Opel on CIDI technology, Taub noted.

GM's work with fuel cells focuses on gasoline-reformer and hydrogen-storage technology. How far off an economically viable fuel-cell powerplant is, Taub is unsure. He admits that 20 years ago while at GE, he would never have guessed the fuel cell would be where it is now in terms of cost. Fuel-cell technology is considered both "exploratory" and "innovation" research at GM. Exploratory programs account for 30% of all research and consist of "grounds-up" work beginning with an idea. Innovation programs account for 50% of all research and consist of "big-hit, next-generation" technologies. Development programs account for 20% of all research and consist of present-generation technologies being explored for incremental advance.

Taub said the major automakers share a core R&D portfolio. "The real question is where are you going to make your bets on scale-up," he said. Taub's philosophy is that "you don't go past the exploratory phase without having someone committed to it."

For exploratory-type research, GM has begun establishing focused collaborative university labs. Stanford, Carnegie-Mellon, Michigan, Jiaotong (China), and Brown are among the universities with which it has established such labs, and the company expects to add others through a competitive process.

Research involves the exploration of technologies not only for new product features. Improving manufacturing systems and understanding the cognizance capabilities of drivers are also areas of focus at GM. Six Sigma, "a revolution for quality for this industry," is being adopted at GM, but the company must look at what's beyond that, Taub said.

GM's Six Warren Tech Center Labs

• Thermal and Energy Systems
• Vehicle Analysis and Dynamics
• Electrical and Controls Integration
• Materials and Processes
• Chemical and Environmental Sciences
• Enterprise Systems

Taub Trivia
While an undergraduate student studying materials engineering at Brown University, Taub spent three weeks of a partial differential equation course studying GM's traffic transportation model. His doctoral thesis on amorphous metals explored technology for thermomechanically processing materials to give them transformer properties. GM was working on similar technology, magnaquench, and scooped him on a patent, he said. Taub also worked on high-intensity-discharge lightning prior to entering the automotive industry with Ford in 1993.

- Patrick Ponticel

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Business-savvy engineers

Engineers know what it takes to build a better widget. Now they're learning how to be management savvy via a new entrepreneurial engineering endeavor unfolding at a Michigan university.

"It's not enough, in general, to be a very good engineer," said Laird Johnston, Dean of the College of Engineering at Lawrence Technological University in Southfield, MI. "Companies want, need, and expect an entrepreneurial frame of mind."

The school, Lear Corp., and private sources are initially investing $750,000 in launching Lawrence Technological University's Lear Product Realization Center and Entrepreneurial Skills Program. "To succeed within an increasingly competitive marketplace, business leaders need a full complement of engineering and management savvy," said Doug DelGrosso, Senior Vice President, Product Focus Group at Lear. "Enhancing student skills in these areas has great benefit for companies like ours."

The new program means the university will gain expanded laboratory facilities as well as enhanced curriculum to address topics such as e-commerce, purchasing, intellectual property, marketing, and sales. In addition, automotive professionals will provide real-world feedback on how business is done. Students also will practice communicating complex technical information to a non-technical audience.

"Characteristics that distinguish successful entrepreneurship include creativity, confidence, a strong initiative, strategic thinking, a willingness to take risks, and being well-organized," Johnston said. "Through comprehensive changes in our curriculum, we will place new emphasis on helping students realize their capabilities in these important areas."

Several other U.S. universities, including the University of Southern California, the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga, and the University of Arkansas in Fayetteville, already have or are developing programs that accent entrepreneurial skills for engineers.

- Kami Buchholz

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