Home Page for Leif S. Kirschenbaum

I work at Space Systems Loral in Palo Alto, CA as a Principal Systems Engineer in the Electrical Systems Engineering group. I architect and design the electrical subsystem for SSL spacecraft for data handling (which includes both spacecraft commanding and telemetry) and some power systems. My work extends from command/telemetry database content, to wiring design, to electronic unit selection and interface, to databus selection and management, to spacecraft link encryption, and to spacecraft operations. Sometimes I even work in the SSL Mission Control Center* on the Command & Data Handling console to monitor the spacecraft data handling systems and direct responses in the event of an anomaly.

* The SSL MCC only handles spacecraft from launch, through orbit raising, deployments (of antennas, thrusters, robot arms, etc.), and in orbit test. Then we hand over the spacecraft to our customer.

I briefly worked at BAE Systems in Santa Clara, CA on unmanned ground vehicles (aka war robots!).

I worked at Texas Instruments at their Sunnyvale Gibraltar Court office. I was in their DLP Emerging Markets and DLP Product Integration division and I helped develop test and measurement methods and analyze all kinds of data to help with tool development, yield improvement, and other issues. I carried out DVT for the Pico projector, which is slated to be integrated into cell phones or small standalone projectors. I also interfaced with vendors in the Silicon Valley area to track their progress in developing and building tools for Texas Instruments and sign-off on completed tools for them (they are headquartered in Dallas). Our office was closed and I was laid off September 26, 2008.

Before that I worked at Reflectivity, a small startup company which was trying to produce a micromirror device for business projection displays. We actually did manufacture thousands of micromirror devices, however the company did not achieve profitability and was acquired by Texas Instruments. While there I analyzed all of the company's yield data and wrote code to generate all of the yield and SPC charts including high-level yield and SPC dashboards as well as direct Gage R&R studies, and formulate the overall company manufacturing control plan. (links to come)

I worked at IBM in San Jose, CA (the Cottle Road plant site) performing tape head hardware development. My job was concerned with testing, characterization, and failure analysis. This was my first position after finishing my doctorate. My doctoral research concerned 1/f noise and transport studies of discontinuous Giant MagnetoResistance multilayers and GMR spin-valves. GMR devices were fabricated at the National Institute of Standards and Technology, where I was also affiliated with the Magnetics Group. I was in Chuck Rogers' research group in the Condensed Matter Lab in the Physics Department at the University of Colorado at Boulder.

More specifically, I measured the 1/f noise of Ni₈₂Fe₁₈/ Ag multilayers or NiFe/Cu spin-valves. I also examined the effects of high current density on them. The devices were fabricated at N.I.S.T. Boulder, where there is a UHV sputter deposition chamber or at Quantum Peripherals {bought by MKE, Japan and later closed} in Louisville, CO.

I met my wife Susan Hanson at the opera St. François d'Assise in October of 2002, our first date was January of 2003 when Susan took me to a piano concert by Lang Lang at Davies Symphony Hall in San Francisco, I proposed in November 2005, and we were married in September 2006 on Rosh Hashannah!

It was a beautiful wedding in a Napa wine cave, and sometime soon we will put pictures online to share. Soon after the wedding just after we received our wedding photos and negatives, four crystal methamphetamine addicts burglarized our home and stole our wedding negatives and CD-ROM scans in addition to many other valuables. Although they were apprehended, the negatives and CD's are in a Martinez landfill. We did however have prints of 2/3 of the photos which we have had professionally scanned and we will place selected scans online.

I believe that the web has a great deal of information content: I often look up random questions on the web. What occurs to me is that most of what I could put on my pages would not be an original contribution to the web.

I could post a list of Tom Swift Sr. books because I collect them, but there are several sites which describe the series of books written under the ghost name Victor Appleton.

I could post a list of books and description of C. S. Forester's Horatio Hornblower books which I also collect, but again, there are already sites which describe these books.

I could post pages about recipes and cooking, but there are already sites which describe these things in detail. So what could I contribute that would be original?

I am an amateur winemaker and have made Cabernet several times. We also cultivate 24 carbernet vines (clone 337) in our front yard. The first time came out delicious, the next three times did not. Therefore I do not offer any advice to winemakers other than:
read Jeff Cox's book From Vines to Wines.
take some classes at an institution which trains professionals in the wine industry such as Napa Valley College or UC Davis

I came up with three things:
(but have yet to load any photos for them)

Leif's gingerbread houses

and

Leif's Annals of Disasters in Experimentation

and

some explanation of 1/f and telegraph noise, but perhaps this would be better placed in wikipedia

I attended Swarthmore College as an undergraduate. (class of '92)
I did an undergraduate thesis there on photon echo spectroscopy. Here is that lab.
I am a private pilot. Here is a list of the airports I have flown into.