Calkins Selected Virginia Tech's Outstanding Young Alumnus
BLACKSBBURG, Va., October 8, 2007 -- Joseph Calkins, who received all three of his degrees, including his doctorate in mechanical engineering from Virginia Tech, is the College of Engineering's Outstanding Alumnus for 2007. Calkins of Williamsburg, Va., was selected from a pool of more than 10,000 young alumni who graduated in the last 10 years.
Richard Besnon, dean of the college, Joseph
Calkins,
and Ken Ball, head of Virginia Tech's Department of
Mechanical Engineering.
His inclination to exceed in his professional life was exhibited at an early age. During his senior year of high school, Calkins simultaneously attended a local college to get a jumpstart on calculus. When he was an undergraduate in college, he was taking master's level classes. When he was in graduate school, he was performing double duty yet again, co-founding his own, and now thriving business, New River Kinematics (NRK).
"It's no wonder Virginia Tech's College of Engineering named Calkins its Outstanding Young Alumnus for 2007," said Richard Benson, dean of the college. Only one such honor is presented annually.
Calkins, the son of an ophthalmologist and his wife who reside in , attended high school at Lancaster Christian School in Pennsylvania. Nearby Franklin & Marshall College allowed one student from each high school to enroll in a tuition free class each semester. Calkins selected Calculus I and II since it was not offered at his school. His spare time as a teenager was spent as a computer programmer at Kalas Manufacturing, a local wire factory.
As the time came to consider his choice of colleges, his dad asked his patients for a recommendation for where his son should study engineering. Over a two-week period, they all responded with the name of Virginia Tech. "It was so highly recommended that I applied for early admission, was accepted, and did not even see the campus until I went for orientation. It was beautiful. I loved it."
By his junior year, he started working on his capstone design project for Babcock and Wilcox Nuclear Technologies (BWNT), now Areva, of Lynchburg, Va. The project dealt with the design and kinematic analysis of robotic manipulators to replace humans in dangerous nuclear service applications.
"Joe clearly stood out as the best of the senior design group, and was such an asset that BWNT hired him for the summer immediately upon graduation," said Charles Reinholtz, his academic adviser at the time. "Upon starting his master's work, Joe quickly became the key player in all of our interactions with BWNT. Our most significant, but seemingly intractable problem was the real-time correction of errors due to manipulator deflection. Joe not only solved BWNT's immediate deflection problems, he developed general purpose algorithms and the accompanying software to predict and correct for deflections in virtually any manipulator system," Reinholtz added.
"The gains in performance were so significant that BWNT's parent company, Framatome, took note and hired Joe to travel to France and incorporate the solution approach on its manipulator systems," Reinholtz said. His outstanding graduate work on robot deflection compensation earned him Virginia Tech's Paul E. Torgersen Research Excellence Award in 1994.
Kara Goldberg Calkins pins a boutonniere on her husband Joe's lapel
prior to his recognition
as the 2007 Outstanding Engineering Alumnus
of Virginia Tech. Calkins, a mechanical engineer,
was selected from
the more than 10,000 engineers who have graduated from the college in
the past ten years.
Calkins explained this time as "fun" because he was given the opportunity "to solve real world problems. BWNT gave us a lot of latitude with a big problem. I really enjoyed developing robot simulation software for them. We'd have brainstorming sessions and BWNT would shoot down the pie in the sky ideas, and we would bring them back up. It was an excellent introduction to the real-world engineering design cycle."
With his real-world experience, yet still a graduate student, Calkins, Bob Salerno, a Ph.D. graduate, and Reinholtz started NRK in 1994. The company was initially formed to create robot simulation and control software. In the beginning "we chipped in and bought one computer, a Pentium I, and started creating RobotAssist," Calkins said. The result was a powerful robot design and simulation package.
After about a year, NRK received a contract to provide optimization software for nuclear power plant steam generator replacement. This exciting project provided NRK a glimpse of another market -- coordinate measurement acquisition and analysis. The lack of comprehensive software in the measurement industry provided a business opportunity for NRK. The company shifted focus from robot simulation to the development of SpatialAnalyzer(TM) (SA) to fit this market. The product was initially released in 1996. NRK continues to distribute, support, and expand SA today.
The company grew to a new location -- an attic in a doctor's office in Radford, Va., in 1995. Owning his own business slowed down his education some, but Calkins was able to combine his doctoral research with his company's thrusts. His research in measurement uncertainty provided a missing element in large-scale metrology, and was implemented in NRK's SpatialAnalyzer(TM) software as the Unified Spatial Metrology Network (USMN).
As he helped build NRK, he and Salerno orchestrated the company's move to a 6500 square foot office building on four acres in Pulaski, Va. In 1994, he also married Kara Goldberg, a 1992 early childhood education graduate of Virginia Tech. They now have three children: Grace, 7, Paige, 5 and Noelle, 3.
Shortly after Calkins received his doctorate in 2002, he and Salerno moved the company headquarters to Williamsburg, Va., with a satellite office in Seattle, Wash. Calkins currently serves as the President of New River Kinematics, and as one of its principal software developers.
Over the years, NRK's SpatialAnalyzer(TM) product has become the industry standard large-scale measurement software for portable metrology devices. Customers include: Boeing, Airbus, Honda, General Dynamics, Northrop Grumman, Lockheed Martin, NASA, Toyota, United Space Alliance, and Vought Aircraft.