Thomas D. Sharp

Principal, SDL

Vita

Dr. Sharp is Co-founder and a Principal of SDL. SDL is a limited liability company specializing in providing products and support that help their customers embed intelligence in their products. He has 15 years industrial and academic experience in product development, quality control systems, system dynamics and control applications. This experience includes leading R&D efforts to develop commercial instrumentation, medical diagnostic devices, and data terminals. Dr. Sharp has developed state-of-the-art manufacturing quality control systems and linear and non-linear control system designs.

Education

Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering: emphasis on human computer interaction and applied system theory, University of Cincinnati, 1996.

Master of Science in Electrical Engineering: emphasis on computer systems design and manufacturing quality control systems, University of Cincinnati, 1992.

Bachelor of Science in Electrical Engineering: University of Cincinnati 1984.

Experience

Co-Founder and Principal, Sheet Dynamics, Ltd., 1996 – Present. Primary responsibility is to manage company focus and vision. Current research efforts include:

- Principal Investigator, Nation Science Foundation Grant to explore fundamental cause of chatter in rolling mills.

- Guest Investigator on the Mid-deck Active Control Experiment, US Air Force Research Lab, goal is to demonstrate active vibration control based on SDL's proprietary Spatio-Temporal Filtering. Scheduled to be flown on the International Space Station in late 2000.

- Process improvements for rolling and coating sheet steel, Sheet Dynamics, Ltd.,/AK Steel. Modeling and design of active magnetic bearing control strategies to control vibration and shape of sheet product during rolling and coating operations for quality improvement and cost reduction.

- Tension reel system dynamic analysis, AK Steel. Coupled torsional/lateral dynamic analysis to reduce rolling mill sheet tension variation and tension reel assembly vibration induced fatigue damage. This ongoing work will evaluate solution approaches including active vibration control and active drive motor control.

Senior Engineer, Telecommunications Division, Random Corporation, 1990-1992. Directed product development teams, initiated and completed research into new product ideas.

- Principle designer in Forms product development for portable terminal. Responsible for design of system architecture and coordination of software development. This product allowed customers to automate their data collection processes by allowing them to use computerized forms to gather and store data off-line and then at a later time transfer this data to their host computers.

- Managed research of new user interfaces for portable terminal product. This included the development of a prototype voice recognition system and a touch screen interface.

- Redesigned terminal power management section significantly improving battery life, reduced charging time and greatly increased reliability.

Senior Engineer, Diagnostic Division, Random Corporation, 1986-1989. Directed medical instrument design group for medical diagnostic division. Managed multi-disciplinary teams involved in research and development of novel sensing technology for medical diagnostic instruments.

- Project engineer on QuikRead instrument. Responsible for project management, electronics design and software design. Managed team of engineers. Designed and produced an instrument that outperformed all others.

- Project engineer for TRAK pack reader. Responsible for project management. Developed prototype instrument to support ongoing research in product development at large pharmaceutical company.

Design Engineer, Random Corporation, 1984-1986.

- Designed high precision analog data acquisition system.

- Designed power supply used in battery operated equipment.

- Software development for terminal emulations.

- Software development for signature verification data base.

- Developed multiprocessing system that was used for the engineering development system for Random's engineering department.

Engineering Co-op, Random Corporation, 1980-1984.

Visiting Scientist, Wright Patterson Air Force Base, 1989-1990. Studied state of the art manufacturing quality control systems. Created an automated optimization system for Self Directed Controllers.

- Developed Self Directed Optimization. This is a system that optimizes the knowledge base of a Self Directed Controller.

- Thorough understanding of Taguchi's method, Statistical Process Control, Self Directed Control and Evolutionary Operation.

Publications

• Shelley, S.J., Moore, K.R., Sharp, T.D., "Active Vibration Control of Optical Space Systems," 18'th International Modal Analysis Conference (IMAC), San Antonio, Texas, February 7-10, 2000.

• Sharp, T.D., Shelley, S.J., "Simulating the Dynamics of a Cold Roll Tension Reel System," 18'th International Modal Analysis Conference (IMAC), San Antonio, Texas, February 7-10, 2000.

• Sharp, T.D., Shelley, S.J., Denoyer, K.K., "The Application of Adaptive Spatio-Temporal Filtering Based Control to the Middeck Active Control Experiment II," Paper 99-4587, Proceedings of the AIAA Space Technology Conference & Exposition, Albuquerque, NM, September 28-30, 1999. Note: This paper was published in the proceedings with the incorrect title, "Robust Line-of-Sight Stability and Jitter Compensation using Spatio-Temporal Filtering Based Control Approaches".

• Bosse, A.B., Sharp, T.D., Shelley, S.J., Denoyer, K.K., Erwin, R.S., "Control of the UltraLITE Precision Deployable Test Article using Adaptive Spatio-Temporal Filtering Based Control," Proc. SPIE Vol 3668, p. 462-472, Smart Structures and Integrated Systems, Norman Wereley; Editor, March 1999.

• Shelley, S.J., Sharp, T.D., Denoyer, K.K., "Robust Line-of-Sight Stability and Jitter Compensation using Spatio-Temporal Filtering Based Control Approaches," Proc. SPIE Vol. 3430, p. 236-247, Novel Optical Systems and Large-Aperture Imaging, Kevin C. Bell; Michael K. Powers; Jose M. Sasian; Eds. Dec. 1998.

• Shelley, S.J., Vold, H., Mains, M., Sharp, T.D., "Structural Control and Monitoring Using Adaptive Spatio-Temporal Filtering," 15'th International Modal Analysis Conference (IMAC), Orlando, Florida, Feb 3-6, 1997

• Sharp, T. D., Helmicki, A. J., "Applying the Abstraction Hierarchy to Intensive Care Medicine," Proceedings of the Symposium on Human Interaction with Complex Systems-96, August, 1996 .

• Sharp, T. D., Helmicki, A. J., Donnelly, M., "The effects of feeding on heart rate can be detected by Fourier transform power spectrum analysis," Proceedings of American Association of Medical Instrumentation, 1992.

• Sharp, T. D., "Self Directed Optimization," Proceedings of Workshop on Self Directed Control, 1989, WPAFB.