Dave Adams received his General Engineering degree in 1980. His parents met here as undergraduates, and he grew up with an Illinois pennant hanging on his wall. He counts 20 family members who are Alumni of this campus. He was born in Lake County at the dawn of Space Travel and was deeply influenced as a boy by television coverage of the Gemini and Apollo Space Programs. His Father worked for a number of years for a local Dairy, and Dave was fascinated by the various automated machines and process equipment he saw running when he was allowed to accompany his Dad to work.
He graduated from Warren Township High in Gurnee and attended the College of Lake County before transferring to the U of I. In addition to having an Engineering bent, he talked his way into an unpaid position as the Drum Instructor for the Marching Illini just a few days after arriving on campus. He spent two additional seasons as the Drum Section Leader of the Band before he graduated. His avocation influenced his selection of Acoustics as his Field of Concentration. The drummers in the Marching Illini are still playing music he wrote as a student.
His Senior Project was to have profound influence on his career. Working under Professor Brent Hall, Dave and two other students designed an in-line inspection device for FMC Corporation which saved the company several hundred thousand dollars a year. The team also won a Lincoln Award for their work. He was recruited by Lockheed Space Systems and moved to the Silicon Valley right after graduation. After two years of working on Classified Projects, he headed for Cal Berkeley. There, he earned a Master’s in Mechanical Engineering, concentrating in Dynamics and Control Systems. He spent 45 years creating products in the Silicon Valley before retiring to Paris France earlier this year. He’s here today to give you a taste of what his career was like.