[Clem1640]

I became a 1640 mentor at the end of the team's 2005 rookie year when my eldest daughter was recruited onto the team.

My work background and training was in chemical engineering. At the time I joined I had just successfully completed managing a large engineering project in China relating to large scale atmospheric pressure chemical vapor deposition. While chemical engineering is not such a close fit to robotics, I did bring some robot-useful knowledge:

1) Project management skills
2) Team management skills (multicultural)
3) I had designed a lot of the specialized chemical vapor deposition equipment; mechanical design was not a new area
4) I was familiar with 3-D CAD (using it to design equipment & systems)
5) I had designed and debugged process control logic for real-time chemical processes. Robotics control systems are also real-time.

So, while I had no specific robotics skills whatsoever, I was able to utilize my work skills and bridge some of these (with a lot of new learning) to robotics.