More recently, he has been researching how remote-control aircraft can be made small enough to fly through windows, and provide war fighters situational awareness inside buildings, caves, or tunnels. In October 2006, Dr. Pines, 41, will chair the Department of Aerospace Engineering in University of Maryland’s Clark School of Engineering, eleven years after joining the faculty. He spoke to USBE & IT recently.

 
USBE: You moved from designing, building sensors and control systems for spacecraft to teaching. What helped you succeed in the early years of your academic career?

Dr. Darryll Pines: After my Ph.D., I took a job at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, close to where I grew up. It turned out they had a space and airplane project, and everything I had learned at school I could apply. I worked on a variety of projects for a number of years until a friend called me up and asked if I wanted a job at University of Maryland. I didn't like academia. I had seen too much infighting among professors at MIT, where I did graduate study. But, I was at a stage in my career where I wanted to make a contribution to the next generation of African Americans, and my wife was aching to get back home to Pennsylvania. So, Maryland was a great location.

There have been many challenges in the last eleven years. One was getting tenure. And it's not about how smart you are; it's about how hard you work. No one gives you a book to read. I hadn't trained to be a teacher, to write a proposal, or mentor people. I had to learn how to be a teacher. My first evaluation was terrible: I didn't know how to educate kids. So, I went to work.  Fortunately, University of Maryland offered workshops where I found some nice skills to hone, and I sat in on classes of professors who won teaching awards to add to my bag of tricks. I got tenure 4 years after I started in 1995. It's been hard work and a lot of luck.

USBE: How did you deal with infighting among professors at University of Maryland?

Pines: I didn't have the biases I had as a graduate student taking classes along faculty, and I was three years removed from being out of school. I had started losing some of the jitters I had that were really negative about an academic career. I found the academic world was a chance for me to do something more than technical works, to mentor students and people at various stages in their academic career, watch them grow; something more valuable than any amount of money can offer you.  There was also the freedom academic life provided.

At Lawrence Livermore, I became a component of a project I didn't create. I was looking for more creativity, freedom to explore. Because, I felt though engineering is part analysis, and how to design and build things, the other part is artistic, more than just mathematics and physics to understand the problem, and design solutions. The academic environment gave me the freedom to think about those kinds of problems. That was new, and free, and very exciting to me.

USBE: How do colleges and universities differ from industry and government?

Pines: Products drive industry and markets, and everything has to be developed with the idea that, hopefully, there is a market for that product. There are resources to improve the product, and increase market share. Government, on the other hand, does things for the benefit of society, like the Department of Energy does many things supporting the infrastructure such as energy and power. In our area, we were supporting national defense issues - looking way out to make our country safe from different types of threats, and the technology we need to do that. The sense of security is motivation for doing technology development.

At a university, it's wide open. Nobody controls the market. You can have an idea and it doesn't matter whether markets or government cares about it. It may be totally irrelevant, but it's interesting. It's more from a curiosity point of view. And it's not that universities are not interested in new entities but that does not drive them, yet universities develop ideas that lead to a product, lead to a market.

The academic research environment is driven by the desire to understand, to engineer, and to create.  Thus, one is not always interested in making a product or transferring technology. Sometimes things are researched for the joy of understanding how something works. For example, how do small insects fly, and why do they flap their wings to generate lift. This has fascinated humans for years.  How can an albatross circumnavigate the globe without landing?  Just some of things I think about.  And, finally, the best part is that, every year, you get a new batch of wide-eyed kids who are willing to learn, who educate you and you help educate them. That always changes and it's always refreshing.

USBE: You've been program manger in the Defense Science Office at the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency program for the last three years, why did you take that position?

Pines: Exactly how I got the job at the University of Maryland. A friend called up and said, 'hey, there's a job available.'  I said the same thing I had when I was at Lawrence Livermore: 'I don't want a job.' But my friend said, 'I think you are a great person for this position because you always have these big ideas, these big visions.' And when I thought about it I said, 'You are absolutely right, I've been looking for a venue to do something much bigger, from a technology perspective, than I can at the University of Maryland.'

You can't do something that's $50 million at the University of Maryland, but you can do something that's $50 billion in the U.S. government for the Department of Defense. I decided to take a non-traditional sabbatical at a government agency to learn how research and development works in the Department of Defense environment and in government in general.  Little did I know that this would expose me to a broader picture of R&D in this country, especially to my field of aerospace engineering. I went to DARPA [Defense Science Office at the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency with a big vision/mission to carry out.  This vision had its roots and beginnings in my research.
 
USBE: Tell us about your work with nano air vehicles.

Pines: They are small, miniature air vehicle systems that can fly inside a building, outside a building. They're almost like toy or hobby planes, but much smaller. For the past decade, the community has been trying to develop these systems to make them robust and more capable of flying inside buildings and caves. We haven't gotten there yet, but that's what we're trying to do, which has opened up a whole new branch of research. We're getting closer and closer to biological flight - insect flight and the physics we didn't understand. The new push to go smaller has opened a whole new realm of physics that we still need to understand.

USBE: How have you balanced your time?

Pines: I was officially on leave of absence from the University of Maryland, but of course I am there every week. It's been difficult, because I've taken on one and half jobs, if not two jobs, for three years. It's been difficult for my graduate students because I am not there every day, but I've learned to spilt the time and come in on weekends. It's worked out.

USBE: Giving up the job of program manager of nano air vehicles will be much like giving up your hobby.

Pines: It's going to be tough (laugh). I've been entrusted by the government to develop technology for the betterment of the Department of Defense, for the U.S. population. That's an artificial sense of power and if you let it go to your head you will get caught up. I ask a question of myself and that is: 'why I am here?' My answer: 'To do something very significant in engineering that makes a contribution to society at large and helps saves the planet for a long time.' That's how I look at the world.

USBE:  What are your responsibilities going to be as a university department chair?

Pines: I'm going to be responsible for 18-19 faculty members. I will be directing divisions of the department in a collective discussion. As a department head - a role similar to a program manager, you have power but it is at the privilege of your peers. They, too, want to steer the direction of the department. What you want to do is engage them in a discussion on different areas that you may initiate but that they have a part to contribute to. Another part is managing the undergraduate and graduate population, the academic side - what we are going to teach. The other is dealing with all the administrative issues related to the department. I intend to spend the first three months understanding the inner workings of being a department chair. While I do have a big vision, and several ideas that I want to work on to raise the stature of the department, I will need to confer with faculty to share these ideas and get their input before moving in a particular direction.  The chair may be caretaker but the faculty, staff and students all have ideas to share

USBE: You are couple of months shy of 42, aren't you a little young for the job?

Pines: I think I have had unique experiences that have given me a sense of wisdom. Yes, from a total career perspective, most people are in their 50s and 60s when they do this job. From another perspective, I interviewed for the job because I wanted to make a contribution at this level. I feel like I can easily interface with kids at the graduate level and undergraduate level; maybe better than guys in their 50s and 60s because I am still in the middle of my career. I am having fun, and I am excited about everything I do.

And I can hopefully impart that excitement to all of them. I can still hang out with them, play basketball, play soccer with them; an additional camaraderie that I can share. By doing that they can feel it's a great place to be. That you care about their academic program, their progress, and their career, and they will do a better job; and by doing a better job will represent the school very well. 

The other thing, when I was student, there were very few African American students, very few of anybody. I wanted to be the head person in charge so that when African American parents, minority parents, see me they feel they can talk to me directly. I'll be giving them the hearing they don't feel they are afforded and hopefully that will help, in some way, increase the numbers of minorities in engineering.

USBE: What advice would you give to a grad student, postdoc or a beginning professor?

Pines: I always tell graduate students that they need to love their subject matter more than they love money or anything else.  If they intend to obtain a Ph.D., they must become experts in their field and to do this they must be willing to commit hours in the library and lab working on this proficiency. They must have a dying thirst for knowledge that drives their ability to make a contribution in a field of research.  It doesn't take a genius to get a Ph.D., but it does take hard work and perseverance.

 Finally, I would tell them to seek out their dreams and pursue those dreams to the fullest extent that is possible. In the US, I believe anything is possible with just determination, willpower and a lot of luck.