Oral-History:Todd Hubing

About Todd Hubing

Todd Hubing has devoted his career to non-military EMC research in academia. He received his bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering from MIT, where he was first introduced to the study of acoustics by Amar Bose. He earned his master’s in electrical engineering from Purdue, where he pursued his interest in acoustics. Upon graduation, he was hired by IBM to conduct research in EMC. During this time, both he and his wife completed doctoral degrees in electrical engineering at North Carolina State University. After seven years at IBM, Hubing, along with his wife, decided to pursue a career in academia. Taking a position at University of Missouri Rolla, he worked with Tom Van Doren to establish an EMC laboratory, among the first university EMC laboratories in the country. As a professor, he became more involved with IEEE’s EMC Society. He began editing the monthly newsletter and served on the Board of Directors before being elected president of the Society. As president, Hubing worked hard to refine the technical quality of the work the Society published and promoted. After 17 years at UM-R, he accepted a position at the International Center for Automotive Research at Clemson University, where he currently teaches and does research.

In this interview, Hubing discusses his rich education in acoustics and electrical engineering, and his brief career in industry. He explains his transition to academia as an alternative path to industrial and military research during the early years of the field of EMC. He speaks extensively about his research projects, from his Ph.D. to his work at UM-R and Clemson. He details his involvement in IEEE’s EMC Society, focusing especially on his tenure as president. Hubing shares his thoughts on EMC as a field that is industry- and standards-driven, and discusses the evolution of the field as EMC technology becomes increasingly computerized, and also commodified for everyday consumer use. Finally, he reflects on the impact various mentors have made throughout his long career.

About the Interview

TODD HUBING: An Interview Conducted by Michael Geselowitz for the IEEE History Center, August 8, 2012.

Interview #622 for the IEEE History Center, The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Inc.

Copyright Statement

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Request for permission to quote for publication should be addressed to the IEEE History Center Oral History Program, IEEE History Center, 445 Hoes Lane, Piscataway, NJ 08854 USA or ieee-history@ieee.org. It should include identification of the specific passages to be quoted, anticipated use of the passages, and identification of the user.

It is recommended that this oral history be cited as follows:

Todd Hubing, an oral history conducted in 2012 by Michael Geselowitz, IEEE History Center, Piscataway, NJ, USA.

Interview

INTERVIEWEE: Todd Hubing

INTERVIEWER: Michael Geselowitz

DATE: 8 August 2012

PLACE: Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania

Early Life and Education

Geselowitz:

Okay, this is Michael Geselowitz with the IEEE History Center. And I'm here at the IEEE Electromagnetic Compatibility Society Symposium in Pittsburgh, interviewing Todd Hubing, who is a past president of the Society. Todd, I'd like to start with the beginning of how you first got interested in science and technology and engineering and your education. Then we'll go from there.

Hubing:

When I first got interested in science and technology, I'm not sure. I guess as a kid. I always enjoyed that. I had a little chemistry lab in the basement and a photography darkroom and chemistry/photography lab and some biology stuff. By the time I graduated from high school I was much more interested in biology than anything else. In fact, that's what I planned to major in.

Geselowitz:

And where did you grow up?

Hubing:

In Stoughton, Wisconsin.

Geselowitz:

And where did you go to school to study biology?

Hubing:

I went to MIT to study biology. I was majoring in biology in my freshman year, and I had to take two semesters of organic chemistry. At the end of my freshman year I realized two things. One is that I was going to graduate after four years and not go to graduate school. And the other thing, I knew for certain was that biology majors who only had a bachelor's degree were not finding jobs. But at the same time, I'm seeing all of these seniors in electrical engineering go off and they're getting these big offers – $18,000, $20,000 a year – which seemed like an enormous amount at the time. And I thought, I'm interested in electronics, too. Actually my dad taught electronics at the high school. I didn't take it from him, but he had built a little board with bells and lights and switches, back before they had kits that you could buy. He had basically built something and I played around with that quite a bit. And I had played with a lot of old televisions. My dad used to actually repair televisions as kind of a sideline because back then they all had tubes. Yeah, my dad was not an expert in electronics but he had a tube tester and could figure out which tube was bad and replace it and that usually did the trick.

Geselowitz:

So was the teaching his main profession?

Hubing:

He was a high school teacher, yes.

Geselowitz:

So he was a high school teacher who taught electronics, but the electronics wasn't his main course. What main course did he teach?

Hubing:

He taught woodworking and auto mechanics primarily. And he did teach the electronics course sometimes but he was not the main electronics teacher. He taught farm and home wiring, which I ended up never taking because I didn't want to actually take a course from my dad. But, yes, I guess I was interested in electronics enough there. And then when I realized that the only way I was going to be able to find a career in biology was to go to graduate school. I kind of decided, well, I think I'll switch majors and I did it slowly. I became bioelectrical for a while and over time became just electrical.

Geselowitz:

Okay. And then, so what happened when you graduated, since you had vowed never to go to graduate school?

Hubing:

Well, the main thing that happened, I think was, I had took a class from Amar Bose. And, Bose – actually he's still involved in his company, even today – but back then he was a multi-millionaire, president of a very successful company that everybody knew. And yet, he was coming in and teaching one class in acoustics every year. Once a year he taught the class just because he enjoyed teaching it. And I was an undergraduate student. You could take it either as an undergraduate or graduate. And I took that class and I actually became very interested in acoustics. Actually I should also mention that in the summers I had been working for the only company in my hometown of Stoughton, Wisconsin that employed engineers. And that was Nelson Industries, which made mufflers. They had their corporate research location there. I had been working with them and knew a little bit about acoustics from that.

Geselowitz:

So what happened next?

Graduate Education

Hubing:

After taking that course I realized if I really wanted to do acoustics I needed to go to graduate school. And then I was actually excited enough about something to be willing to do it. And also, after my freshman year, where it had been quite a shock, the adjustment to school was difficult. After my senior year I felt much more comfortable with school anyway. Actually I chose to go to graduate school at Purdue, precisely because of their program in acoustics. They were very strong in acoustics. Also, I was from Wisconsin and sort of a Big Ten person, and Purdue was a Big Ten school. The year that I was making my decision was the last time that Purdue University went to the Final Four in basketball. And they happened to be playing. And I thought, oh yeah, Purdue. I saw them on the TV and thought oh yeah. They're a Big Ten school in the Midwest. So the next day I requested an application for Purdue, and then ended up going there.

Geselowitz:

So this proves the point we're always hearing from the big universities that the football programs actually, in the best of situations, help support the school.

Hubing:

I'm a firm believer of that.

Geselowitz:

The programs attract alumni support, attract good students and all that stuff.

Hubing:

I'm a firm believer, yea. MIT is an exception that they built its reputation without sports, but very few schools can do that.

Geselowitz:

It's interesting. What did you study at Purdue?

Hubing:

I'm interested in acoustics, that's why I went there. But their acoustics research was done in mechanical engineering. And I didn't want to get a mechanical engineering degree. I wanted to get an electrical engineering degree. I thought, well, I can do that. I can get an electrical engineering degree and all my optional courses basically were taken in mechanical engineering, acoustic classes. And that was my plan and actually worked very well. When I went to look for a job, I had a resume that looked great in acoustics because I had an internship working with a muffler company. And I had taken Bose's course, and actually had a recommendation for graduate school from Professor Bose. I had a wonderful acoustics resume. But this was 1982 and the economy was in a recession. There was very little funding for anything, at that time, except for defense – this is the Reagan era. The economy was in a terrible state, but defense was building up. Largely, they were the only people looking for engineers. Well, not the only people, but there was much more of a demand for military contractors. People looking to support this military build-up. And I was not crazy about working for a defense contractor. But anyway, I rewrote my resume after not being very successful with the acoustics one. Because in electrical engineering I had to designate an area of expertise, or an area of focus. The closest thing to acoustics was electromagnetics. So that's what I designated. As a result, I took a lot of electromagnetics classes, too. And it actually is very similar to acoustics. It was just a natural match. So, anyway, I wrote another resume. This is back when you had to take your resume to somebody and have them type it for you, so I made up another resume, and I now had two. The new one emphasized electromagnetics and I sent that out. I ended up getting three job offers. Actually one of them was in the steel industry in Cleveland. And one of them was IBM in North Carolina. I can't remember what the other one was. But I know my first choice was the steel industry. I can't remember the name of the company. In think it was Republic Steel. Whichever company it was, they've long since gone out of business. But my wife was also looking for a job. And she didn't really like the idea of moving to Cleveland. I remember –the other one was in Melbourne, Florida. But in the end we got this list of the 101 Best Places to Live in America in 1982 edition. Raleigh, North Carolina was right up there. I think it was maybe number four on the list that year.

Geselowitz:

It's still on the list by the way.

Hubing:

Oh, yes.

Geselowitz:

Research Triangle is still perennially on that list.

Introduction to EMC at IBM

Hubing:

Yes, it is a nice place to live. I'm from Wisconsin and my wife is from Houston. I was not going to be able to pull her much farther north. And she was not going to be able to pull me much farther south. We ended up accepting the offer from IBM. And that just happened to be in electromagnetic compatibility. I didn't know anything about electromagnetic compatibility, other than to prepare for the onsite interview. I had gotten a copy of a book by Bernhard Kaiser called ‘‘Electromagnetic Compatibility.’’ I had read that book. I was relatively prepared. But, yes, prior to them telling me that's what the job was, I had never even heard the term.

Geselowitz:

That's interesting because, I think we'll get to this later in the discussion when we talk about your role in the Electromagnetic Compatibility Society, or EMC-S. It's an interesting field because in, say, the Signal Processing Society, people go to school and they major in signal processing and they take a whole range of signal processing courses. And EMC is not structured that way. But IBM recognized it was. What kind of work were you doing for IBM within the EMC?

Hubing:

This was 1982, the first year of the FCC requirements. I think they had come out with them two years earlier, but anyway, there's something magical about 1982. They were building up because they needed, all of a sudden, to comply with emissions requirements. They had done the testing prior to that, but it had not been a law before. They were really ramping up their effort there. It's interesting because when I went for the interview the manager who interviewed me was from the radiation engineering department. They did both electromagnetic compatibility and also acoustics. It just so happened they were also looking for an acoustics person when I did the interview. At the end of the day long interview, he said, you know, we have two positions open. Which one are you interested in? I had been working so hard to find a job in acoustics. But during the interview I saw the acoustics lab. It was a very nice acoustics laboratory there. There was a product being tested when I got the tour through there. It was in the anechoic chamber and there was a window, and there was a technician sitting back there wearing headphones, watching the product turn around. When I had gone into the EMC laboratory, there was a product in there. There were four or five engineers running around. The product was all torn apart, had copper taping everywhere. They were very friendly, but they were also very busy. At the end of the day when he asked me, I just thought at least in this department, or at this company, there was a lot more going on in electromagnetic compatibility. That's, that's the answer I gave him. I think it was very fortuitous. They did also hire an acoustics person who started the same time I did. But I've never regretted that decision one bit, because it was great. It was right as non-military companies were all of a sudden understanding that these requirements didn't automatically get met, that you had to put some effort into the design.

Geselowitz:

Okay. And how long did you work for IBM?

Hubing:

I was there seven and a half years. I had a master's degree from Purdue when I went there. While I was at IBM, that was not so far from North Carolina State University. I had gone to IBM because that's where my wife also thought she could work and would enjoy working. But I accepted the offer from IBM, but then she decided not to accept the offer and to go to graduate school instead. She was in graduate school at North Carolina State.

Geselowitz:

Also in EE ?

Hubing:

Yes.

Geselowitz:

Interesting.

Hubing:

Yes, we had met actually at MIT in a class. We were both electrical engineers, very similar interests.

Ph.D. Studies at NC State

Hubing:

But anyway, I took classes because IBM paid for the classes. They didn't give you time off to take them, but the classes were free and I was interested. After doing that for several years, it seemed to me like I had completed virtually all of the course requirements for a Ph.D. and I thought, well, I might as well try to do that. Plus we had an interesting problem occur with a product that had sort of given me the idea for my Ph.D. dissertation. I had something I wanted to do research on. I decided to basically enroll as a Ph.D. student.

Geselowitz:

The IBM lab was really doing development and you had this idea for this pure research project, which they wouldn't fund. You saw an opportunity to combine, completing your education with solving this problem.

Hubing:

That's exactly right. You put your finger right on it. Their priority was developing new products. My job was to make sure that you met these EMC requirements. They were not really interested in research. You got little certificates and things if you published papers. But in the end, for your performance evaluation, it wasn't about publishing papers or doing research, it was about product support.

Geselowitz:

Then the university said, oh yes, indeed, you've been taking these courses all along and we will let you just enroll and do a dissertation, essentially.

Hubing:

Yes, well I had the background. I was able to be accepted for admission. I had to find an advisor. I ended up talking to one of the instructors I had had, who seemed like he was the most easy-going, but actually, at Purdue I knew there was a big difference in university faculty and how they worked with students. I had my own research idea. I really needed to find an advisor who was flexible enough to let me do what I wanted to do and support it. Dr. (James) Frank Kauffman at NC State, he was actually the graduate coordinator at the time too. But he said, sure. And was basically willing to go along with my crazy idea to look at this thing.

Geselowitz:

For the historical record is there a brief description for the layperson of your dissertation topic?

Hubing:

Well, yes, I think so. In fact, in my presentation I did yesterday for Global University [a workshop held at the EMC Symposium], I was talking about common mode currents and basically told the story. We were in the lab testing a product that was not meeting the FCC Class A requirements. It was actually well above them. But the unique thing about this product that I hadn't seen in any of the products for which I had been responsible before was you could tell that the radiation was coming from one particular circuit. It was a video display terminal. And the video circuit did not exist anywhere in that product except in one circuit where it was physically created and driven up to the display. Unlike most products where you see radiation and it could be coming from 100 different sources, we knew exactly what circuit was causing the radiation. IBM had sent me to short courses where you learn about things, including modeling and they had formulas for calculating the radiation from the circuits. I typed in basically – well, not typed in – back then I wrote down, calculated through the radiation from that particular circuit. Even with all the worst case assumptions, there's no way that that circuit should've been able to radiate nearly that much. It should've met the Class B spec. I was very intrigued by that. Of course, yes, that's research – that's getting away from just wanting to fix the problem, not to really figure out why the model didn't predict what was happening. I actually was going in on the weekends and working. I built a little battery powered version of that same circuit where I could control things better. When I built the battery powered version, the radiation from that circuit met the FCC Class B spec. In fact, it was very close to what the model would've predicted for that circuit. And yet, here's this identical circuit – in my mind at that time identical –acting differently. I kept making changes to try to make them look more identical to each other. But nothing I could do with the circuit on the video terminal would ever make it look nearly as good as the one that was battery powered. I was in there on one weekend – again, I had to be there on a weekend and it had to be a weekend when there was no other testing scheduled if I was going to use the chamber. I was in there on the weekend and there was no other testing. I'm the only person in there and I'm testing my battery powered circuit and the battery died. I wasn't senior enough to have a key to the cabinet with the batteries. I was out of luck. So, I got a power supply off the shelf and I hooked the power supply up to it. All of a sudden that very same circuit was radiating above the FCC Class A spec, much like the product. I thought, oh well, I'm feeding noise back into the power supply. I built a filter over time, and it became a very elaborate filter. But nothing I could do with my filtering would make a significant dent in what the radiated emissions were. I never figured it out that weekend, but eventually, I was in there testing and switching back and forth between battery and power. I noticed that when I hooked up the battery I did have the high rated emission levels. It turned out, well, the power supply was still sitting on the table. But I took the power supply and set it on the floor, and emissions were low again. Just setting the power supply on the table next to it caused the problem, and it's because of the proximity of the power supply’s cable to the circuit. Ultimately I realized that it wasn't the circuit radiating. The circuit was the source of the emissions, but the circuit had to couple to the cable. The cable had provided the antenna! It sounds obvious to anybody who is reading this transcript or watching this video now who is in EMC, and is going to say, “well, duh.” But back at the time everybody was modeling radiation from circuits as if the currents in the circuit were doing the radiating. It was kind of an unusual thought that those might be unimportant. But ultimately, that's what my dissertation was, was modeling that effect. Fortunately, at IBM I had access to fantastic computers, better than at the university. I never would've finished, but IBM had a program where they allow you to take a year off and be a student full-time to complete your degree. It was a competitive program and you had to apply, but I was very fortunate. In fact, it was one of the last they did, because not long after that, IBM had financial trouble and that program disappeared. But I got into that program and so I had one year basically where I was going into work, not on first shift. Going in at other times, working on the computer and didn't have to worry about any kind of products or anything. I could focus on dissertation research. If it had not been for that program, I still wouldn't have it finished.

Teaching Career

Geselowitz:

So what happened when you finished?

Hubing:

Well, then when I finished I actually got promoted right away. But because I really enjoyed the research, after I finished I also contacted NC State and I asked if I could teach a class in EMC. The department chairman called me down to talk to me about it. He said, so you're not expecting any kind of a salary. I said, no, I just want to do this. They were happy to have me come down and teach a class. I really enjoyed teaching that class. I'd enjoyed teaching at Purdue, which is why I thought I might enjoy the class at NC State. But I really enjoyed the teaching, but I had to do that in my spare time. I enjoyed the research, but I had to do that in my spare time. I had a conversation with my second-level manager that I still remember to this day. Basically I had gotten an advanced degree, but the job I had didn't require an advanced degree. My job wasn't going to change. Anyway, I'd probably still be at IBM except my wife finished her Ph.D. and she said that we should apply for academic positions. And I was not crazy about the idea. But she was really gung ho. She typed up my resume for me. She even wrote up the cover letters for it. I basically just signed them. But for the schools that we applied to, we took a list of the top 50 graduate programs in electrical engineering in the United States and we crossed off all of the schools that were on either coast, because, as I said before, she was from Houston and I was from Wisconsin. We wanted to be able to drive to family. Then we crossed off all of the schools that were in large cities, because we had very young kids then. We wanted them to grow up in a small town. Not very many of the top 50 programs are in small towns. That's right, we ended up with a list of four universities. It wasn't four universities who are looking to hire two – remember, we were looking for two positions in the same department. It was just a list of four universities! We contacted them, basically cold-called – it's not like they were advertising positions – and said we were looking for positions. Just oddly enough, we ended up getting to interview at Kansas University and the University of Missouri Rolla. Ultimately got two sets of job offers. My first choice, of course, was KU. Her first choice was UMR.

Geselowitz:

So you went to UMR.

Hubing:

But I have to confess, I was unduly influenced by their basketball program. I am a basketball fan. In fact, I'd say we spend half the day in their athletic facility.

Geselowitz:

Okay.

Hubing:

We're both engineers. We made a whole list of all of the factors and the decision and waited and scored them. And tried to make it as scientific as possible, but my scores ultimately heavily favored Kansas. Hers all heavily favored UMR. She didn't, to me, have concrete reasons. She's like, well, the people just seemed happier at UMR.

Geselowitz:

What was/is her area of specialization?

Hubing:

Acoustic signal processing was her area. She was in the signal processing area at UMR. Well, actually another interesting thing with that was, maybe not coincidentally, Kansas had been interested in me and that's why they were willing to talk to her. Because they had a remote sensing lab and my expertise in the EMC fit in well with what they were doing. At UMR, they were interested in her. The department chairman said he had to fish my application out of the trash after he read hers. Because they actually could hire a woman without any cost to the department, because they had funding for “opportunity hires” from the Provost to the President or someone.

Geselowitz:

Right.

Hubing:

Yes, I probably during the interviews, felt more wanted at KU and she probably felt more wanted by UMR.

Early Membership with IEEE

Geselowitz:

Before we go onto what you worked on and taught at UMR, had you, by this point, become aware of IEEE as an organization?

Hubing:

Yes, I became aware of IEEE after I got the phone call saying that I had been invited for an interview at IBM. But I had had a first interview on campus. They didn't know about EMC. They knew that they needed somebody in electromagnetics, but they didn't know why. It was over the phone that I had heard about EMC and was invited to come out for the onsite interview. I thought I need to learn something about it. That's when I found out there was an IEEE Transactions on EMC. I guess that was my first introduction. I had been a student member. I'm trying to think when I became a student, but I think 1982 is when I became a student member.

Geselowitz:

Right.

Hubing:

After I learned about the interview at IBM. And I wasn't a student member very long.

Geselowitz:

And then when you got to IBM you joined as a regular member?

Hubing:

Right. Converted from a student member to a regular member.

Geselowitz:

And you joined EMC Society at that time? So you could get the transactions?

Hubing:

Right.

Geselowitz:

Because it wasn't available on the web in those days.

Hubing:

Right.

Geselowitz:

Were you active at all while you were at IBM?

Hubing:

No.

Geselowitz:

No. Okay.

Hubing:

I came to the Symposium in 1987 when it was in Atlanta. But people in the lab kind of took turns going to the Symposium back then. It was just an honor to be able to go. I didn't have a paper. At that Symposium, I went mostly to the standards related sessions, because I did testing and was interested in what they were talking about doing, in terms of changes to the test procedures. I hung out with the IBM people. I'm not particularly interested in networking really, because I worked at IBM. All that changes when I became a faculty member and all of a sudden had to build from scratch.

Early EMC Research

Geselowitz:

They had no EMC laboratory?

Hubing:

Although I guess this is another story. But at UMR they had a faculty member named Tom Van Doren, who basically became probably the most influential person in my entire career. But at the time I knew he was there and I knew he was teaching a course in EMC, which was very unusual. Very few universities taught courses in electromagnetic compatibility. But when I interviewed, the department chairman had warned me—he said, stay away from Tom Van Doren. And basically, it was because Tom Van Doren taught short courses. When he taught his short courses he was buying his way out of teaching at the university. He was teaching one semester a year. He didn't have a lot of research at the time. And so, for the department chairman, he saw Tom Van Doren as more of a liability to the department, I think. Although that was just that department chairman. I think the next department chairman we had felt very differently, because Tom was out there. I might not have ever heard of UMR if it hadn't been for Tom Van Doren. But anyway, the department chairman was right at the time. For an untenured person to get involved in short course teaching and things like that would've been a disaster. But because of that I had this image in my mind of Tom Van Doren as being this big imposing mean guy. When I finally met Tom Van Doren, it turned out he was the nicest person. One of the nicest people I've ever met, most polite. More importantly, I have to admit we thought at IBM that we knew more than anybody else about EMC, at least for IBM products and so when we went to a Symposium, we never presented technical papers. I shouldn't say “never,” but it was not encouraged at all, because we didn't want the rest of the world finding out what we knew about EMC. When I came into UMR, I sort of felt like I knew a lot. Tom Van Doren's the kind of person that knew a lot more than I did. But he's the kind of person who can have a conversation with you where you're talking about something technical. And during the course of the conversation he's never telling you you're wrong. But you get the feeling that you're having a realization on your own and that you came up with a great new idea or a great new way of looking at things. And he could just turn it around and it was a very good way of educating people.

Geselowitz:

Now it's interesting because EMC, at that point, is really taking place largely, as we talked about before, in development in industry.

Hubing:

That's right.

Geselowitz:

And there aren't that many places teaching it.

Hubing:

That's right.

Geselowitz:

And there's only a few people, a few labs around the country really doing fundamental research in it. You only applied to UMR because of your two body problem, as it's called in academia.

Hubing:

That's right.

Geselowitz:

And they accept you for a range of reasons, but in the range, one of the reasons was NOT to work with this one other guy who happens to be doing what you're interested in. There were other reasons involving both you and your wife. They wanted to hire you. In fact he says, we're hiring you but don't work with this person.

Hubing:

That's right.

Geselowitz:

And yet, now all of a sudden, UMR is a center for EMC research.

Hubing:

Yes.

Geselowitz:

Because it has two people.

Hubing:

Well, that's right. Although even before that, when I had been working at IBM, actually right after I got my Ph.D., IBM had some money allocated to sponsor research in areas of direct interest to IBM. One of those areas that were identified was EMC. Our department got $50,000 to award, to sponsor research basically, on a university. The second line manager came to me and he said, it's my responsibility because I was familiar with academia a little bit, so it was my responsibility to locate a university that could do some research for us for this $50,000, which is by today's standards not much money. But back then it was a nice research grant. I took the Symposium proceedings and I'm paging through looking for authors from universities. And there were very few back then. And when I would find one, I would call them up and say, we have $50,000 to sponsor a research project. I saw that you did this paper in this and would you be interested in writing a proposal for this money. And nobody would take it. They would say, well yeah, we did that, but we're not really EMC, you know. We went to that Symposium because it was convenient or for whatever reason. I worked pretty hard on that because it also was a job that I was assigned. It was part of my performance review. It had come from the second line manager. I never did identify anybody. They ultimately, did make the award about the time I left or maybe just after I left. They awarded it to my advisor at NC State and he was not EMC really. His EMC portfolio was the paper he published with me. But I don't know. I don't actually even know how that work turned out. But the impression it made on me, at the time –and this is before I was thinking I'm going to go to academia, that if I ever do go into academia, I'm going to start an EMC research lab because there is absolutely no competition. I think I only mentioned it to my wife, and, actually that's what I did. Once I realized that is what was going to happen.

Geselowitz:

What happened next?

Hubing:

There was kind of a long period at IBM. At IBM, if you knew you were going to resign, you didn't tell them until you were ready to be walked out the door. As soon as you'd say, oh, I'm going to resign next month, that day, you were never left alone and you would be walked out the door. So I didn't tell. I told one person who was a manager, because I wanted to find out what to expect. And he agreed. Every evening when I left work I was taking my stuff out. IBM had this closed desk policy where everything was sealed up. My office was being emptied out, but nobody could tell, because all the cabinets were closed at the end of the day. But I was taking all my personal stuff out. And actually getting rid of stuff and shredding and shredding. You could throw it away at IBM, but basically emptying out my cabinets. Because when I did go in to tell my manager I had this job offer from UMR that I accepted, I was kind of counting on being walked to the door and getting that last two weeks. Two weeks before I went in to talk to him. He had me stay in his office while he called personnel. And they were on the phone a while, and ultimately they decided because I was going to a university and not a company that I could go ahead and work the last two weeks. I had an emptied out office, but I did stay around. But anyway, during that last period of time I was working on the logo for the center. I mean, my plan was to start an EMC center. I wasn't counting on Tom Van Doren at the time. But it turns out the center wouldn't have taken off if Tom Van Doren had not been there.

EMC Lab at UMR

Geselowitz:

So you did establish one of the first academic centers for EMC research?

Hubing:

I guess that's right.

Geselowitz:

How long did you end up being at Missouri Rolla?

Hubing:

17 years. That worked out very well. Tom Van Doren had lots of contacts through his short courses. While he wasn't really doing a lot of research, he knew the people who wanted research done. My first project was with Intel before I got hooked up with Tom Van Doren. But my very next funded project came from Boeing. And that was directly through Tom's contacts and Tom was also on that research project, and we worked together. I think we worked together very well. And we just sort of built up. And that's like the next big step was when we hired Jim Drewniak just a couple of years later. What Jim brought that neither Tom nor I had, was that Jim was very good at making measurements, precise measurements. Working at IBM, I had gotten used to kind of just making the measurements that gave you the information you wanted. But Jim came from the University of Illinois and was very good at, “here's the right way to do it.” Also, Jim, coming from the University of Illinois, was very good at understanding the role of graduate students and how to recruit and mentor good graduate students. I basically learned everything I know about working with graduate students from Jim Drewniak. When he joined, then we started to grow. And Dick DuBroff, who had been a faculty member in acoustics in the department, started working with us.

Geselowitz:

Now, how did you recruit graduate students to a field that is not widely known, what kind of students did you get and how did you recruit them?

Hubing:

Well, until Jim Drewniak showed up, I was getting some graduate students. Basically, there are always students looking for research support. They come by your office looking for support and if they hit you at the right time, and they seem reasonably good, you take them – but that’s not the best way to recruit graduate students. After Jim joined we started basically recruiting selectively, especially from China and India, and getting just really good students. In fact, we usually let Jim do the communication with the students, and tell us which were going to be good and which weren't. Yes, that made a big difference and the quality of our graduate students stepped up.

Editorship with IEEE

Geselowitz:

And was it during this period that you got more involved with IEEE?

Hubing:

Almost immediately, because when I first came to UMR, I was the only one in EMC. I knew I needed to all of a sudden network. When I was at IBM, if I went to a conference, I'd hang out with the IBM people or by myself. When I knew that I was untenured, I knew it was critical to my career to get out there and talk to people and know who's who, and have people know who I am. And it doesn't come naturally to me. I remember going to conferences where I would go down to the welcome reception and come back up to my room and just go, “sigh,” and think, “okay, if I go down and talk to one more person, then I can come up.” I had to force myself to be put in these kinds of social networking situations. But anyway, as far as IEEE, I wanted to become more involved in the EMC Society all of a sudden, whereas, I hadn't been particularly interested when I was at IBM. Shortly after I had started there, a call was in the newsletter of the EMC. The associate editor of “Chapter Chatter,” Charlie Anderson, was retiring from that position. There was a call in there for a new associate editor for “Chapter Chatter.” Of course, if you're in the newsletter your picture is appearing four times a year in front of people. I don't know how many people read the “Chapter Chatter” column, but I thought this can only be good in terms of name recognition anyway. But I had never been a member of a chapter. Never even been to a chapter meeting of any kind in IEEE. Because I had never lived anywhere where there was a chapter. In Raleigh we didn't have an EMC Society chapter. And in Rolla, Missouri there certainly was no chapter. I didn't have a lot of experience to fall back on. I basically wrote a letter to the editor and I said that I would be the ideal candidate because I have no chapter bias, because I'm not located near a chapter. And in fact I'd never been to a chapter meeting. I'm the ideal person to report on the chapter meetings. The editor was Bob Goldblum, and he wrote a letter back saying welcome to the newsletter.

Geselowitz:

It shows how much they need volunteers.

Hubing:

Well, he had told me that he had only gotten three applicants for it. It was very fortunate for me, though. Whereas the “Chapter Chatter” had been just a listing of chapters and activities. I'm going after name recognition, basically because I'm brand new. So I started writing a little article prior to the description of the chapters. I tried to make it kind of humorous and entertaining so that people would actually read it and maybe remember it. It was largely through the “Chapter Chatter” column that I got some name recognition. And then, I remember the first time I went out to speak at a chapter. Everybody seemed to know me because of the “Chapter Chatter” column. Nobody knew what kind of research I was doing. But at least I had some name recognition. It's funny how there was nothing technical in that column, but you get some technical credibility just because people know you, even if they don't know your work. It's like the sports team and the school. Oh, there's Purdue playing basketball. They must have a good acoustics program.

Geselowitz:

Right. How long did you do that for?

Hubing:

Well, I ended up continuing to do it for, I think, eight years. I stopped when I was elected president or when I became president elect. Because then I had to write a president's message and I didn't want two columns. And also, it was a lot of work. That one column, in order to try to make it entertaining, that requires hours and hours of time.

Geselowitz:

Does that column still exist? Did your successors continue to--

Hubing:

Yes, Todd Robinson, took over when I stopped doing it. There's still a column in the front of the thing. Todd actually has solicited input from other people. And other people contribute and write the column. But, yes, there is a column and it still tries to be humorous.

Geselowitz:

So you started that tradition.

Hubing:

I guess so. Also, very few people realize this, but the first letter in the first column is always bigger, IEEE does that. I don't know why. But anyway, my first column just happened to start with A. I wasn't thinking about it. But anyway, I thought for the second column, well, I'll start it with a B. And I continued to do that all the way for 30, to which, I went all the way through the alphabet and cycled from the beginning again. But I don't think anybody ever commented on it. I mean, it was very obscure, and might be kind of scary if somebody did notice it. But consecutively you can tell when the column was written by the letter that it starts with.

Geselowitz:

Starting with this publication activity, how did you get drawn into other society activities that ultimately led you to becoming president elect?

Board of Directors at IEEE

Hubing:

Well, as soon as I was on the faculty, I was going to symposia, and volunteering for anything. I think the very first position I held was with TC4. It was just forcing myself to talk to people, and I talked with the chair of TC4. He said, well, why don't you come to the meeting? At that time it was more formal and you actually had to be a member of the committee to go to the meeting, at least for most of the committees. I was honored to be invited and then he's saying, why don't you run for, I can't remember, I think I was vice president and I thought, “Oh my gosh, I've only been a member for one meeting.” But anyway, that was my first position there, but I mostly volunteered. I think the biggest thing was then running for the Board of Directors. Bob Hofmann, who was the president back then talked to me. Bob has done this for a lot of past presidents, by talked to them. He was talking to me and encouraging me to run and saying, it can't hurt to run. Even if you're not elected the first time, running once might help you the next time. And I ran and I was elected and largely because of the “Chapter Chatter” name recognition. Running for the Board is largely name recognition. And that one column, I think, gave that to me. But anyway, once I was on the Board, then I was much more aware of what was going on across the Society. And that actually helped for volunteering too, because I could see when there was a real need, and there was nobody particularly to fill it. And that helped me know what to volunteer for. And also, what not to volunteer for. That was 1995, I think. And then, other than after you're president –when you have to have one year off the Board – I've been on the Board ever since.

Geselowitz:

And when you first joined the Board in 1995, what were the issues facing the Society?

Hubing:

Everybody's always concerned about the conference because the Society lives or dies based on those conference revenues. And having a successful conference was a big deal. I know that when I joined they had a different officer structure. You had directors. You had one vice president. One president, secretary and treasurer. And then you had these directors. In fact, my first office on the Board was Director of Member Services. In that structure, when you're elected vice president you then usually ran for president, but usually you served two terms. Elections every year, but you served two terms. I'm a new member of the Board, but there's a little bit of a tension when Dan Hoolihan, who was the vice president ran for president against the president who had only served one term. So it's “are we going to break from tradition?” But anyway, one of the major changes that was made shortly after I came on the Board was to redo that structure where at the time we had four VP's and a president elect and a president. But it was automatic from president elect to president to past president. And the term was a two year term, just set. That structure causes less controversy, I think, on the Board. It's more clear how things are going to unfold.

Geselowitz:

I don't expect you to remember exact numbers, but how many fellow academics were on the Board versus industry people? Because there seems to be a very industry-driven society compared to certain IEEE societies like Signal Processing.

Hubing:

Absolutely. Over the years, since early 1990's to now, that's been probably the biggest change in the Society is the percentage of academics. I'm trying to think if I was the only academic on the Board. I think at one point I was. I think when I was elected president, I was the first president from academia, other than Ralph Showers, because that was just very rare. EMC was driven by industry or the military. It just wasn't really a subject of research. It was fixing things. More like a skill, a trade even. I mean, we have something that's broken. It's not working. Here's what we do to fix it.

Geselowitz:

Well, you knew that earlier when you said that the measurements didn't have to be that precise at IBM. Because I just have to solve the problem, not scientific precision.

Hubing:

That's right. Or meet the standard.

Geselowitz:

Right.

Hubing:

It was kind of ironic because the standards of it. You'd have to calibrate your equipment to within, like a half a db and you'd have all this stuff. But then the test procedure would be written to where they don't specify where you put cables. So things that could make tens of db difference in a measurement are not specified! But the calibration of the equipment itself is very tightly controlled. That always bothered me. At IBM I kind of thought that well, we can change that. Since, I've come to the conclusion that no, we're not going to change that. We're never going to make the standards to where they would have the repeatability and accuracy that most academics would require.

Geselowitz:

Right. And it's also a very standards-involved society compared to a lot of others. There are other IEEE societies where standards are not a big issue. I mean, all that IEEE has a say in the standards operation and all of the societies are involved in one way or another, but this seems like the society that is very heavily involved in standards.

Hubing:

That's right. Just because a lot of the people concerned with EMC are concerned with meeting a test requirement. They don't want to have interference, but when they're designing the product, the goal is to pass the test, not necessarily to not have any interference. All of them, supposedly, if you pass the test then you won't have interference problems.

Geselowitz:

Right, I'm presuming the people setting the standards are interested in the end result. And the people in the end result are interested in helping to set the standards.

Hubing:

That's the presumption.

Geselowitz:

On paper anyway. Have you seen that? Now is that changing though? Are there other more and more academic programs in electromagnetic compatibility?

Hubing:

There are definitely more, but still relatively few. Actually, those that exist are largely due to the efforts of the EMC Society and its Education Committee in particular. And we've got this university grant program, where we basically provide grants for people who want to start a course in EMC. And providing materials that educators can use in classes on EMC or to integrate EMC into other classes that they teach. That has really helped. There are still relatively few universities who actually do research, I would say in the US. The other thing that's really changed is our international involvement. You go to the Symposium in 1987 and the number of people from overseas was very small. And our membership in the EMC Society, the percentage of international membership was relatively small. When Dan Hoolihan was president, he made that one of his priorities, probably his main priority – to try to make our Society more international. And he was the first one to take the Board for a Board meeting outside the US.

Globalizing EMC

Geselowitz:

Now, obviously there has been overall increasing globalization of societies and of IEEE even as a broader organization. Do you think there are other factors involved?

Hubing:

Well, there always are. Actually, I say there are hardly any academics that were active members of the Society. If you actually looked at our membership, I can't remember the percentage, but a very large percentage of our membership was academics. Because they, like me, joined the Society to get the transactions. I was also a member of several other societies because I wanted to receive the transactions, even though I never went to the meetings and never paid attention to the other activities of the Society.

Geselowitz:

And that's because the technology cuts across other fields. So there might be someone working in the Computer Society but they need to know something about EMC, so they join just to get the transactions.

Hubing:

Right. And I was a member of MTT and then Antennas of Propagation Society because they publish articles related to electromagnetic modeling, in particular, or just electromagnetic behavior and I was interested in that. I was a member of those societies, but not active. And so for EMC Society membership, when the first survey results that came out, I was kind of shocked. But it does make sense that we had a large number of academics who were members of the Society. But when we surveyed the attendees at the Symposium, very few. They are surveying the members attending this Symposium and I think there are a lot of academics here.

Geselowitz:

Now how about the globalization, I’d like to ask you a specific question. This is what I think and you can respond.

Hubing:

Okay.

Geselowitz:

Is it possible that a lot of EMC work coming out of World War II and into the Cold War was military?

Hubing:

Right.

Geselowitz:

And with the end of the Cold War, attention shifted to consumer products. And that's going to lend itself better to globalization than military, because our military is not going to share information with other militaries. But if companies are marketing globally, they're going to be interested in global standards and global compatibility. Does that make any sense?

Hubing:

It does. But I'm not so sure that the Cold War was as big a factor as you believe. I really think it was more that in 1982 the new FCC requirements became a big boost in EMC Society membership and EMC activity. The other key event was when the European Union requirements took place, because the FCC only regulated radiated emissions. But the European Union regulated electrostatic discharge susceptibility and radiated susceptibility and all of these other things. And all of a sudden people had to test for things that they had never had to test for before. Also, there was the medical industry, which the FCC had exempted from the requirements; all of a sudden in Europe they were no longer exempt. And compliances, which are exempted in the U.S., were not exempted in Europe. So there was another big rise in the interest in EMC internationally.

Geselowitz:

Now what led to the concerns of the European administrators to have such tight standards in so many areas?

Hubing:

I think it was more a compromise. Germany always had very tough requirements. At IBM for shipping things into Germany, we were doing lots of tests on our products that were just for Germany. Of course, a lot of companies would say, well, we're not going to ship to Germany. IBM obviously needed to be able to ship to Germany. But with the European Union some companies had virtually no requirements. And they all had to compromise and come up with a set of requirements that everybody could agree to. And that's a very long painful process. But I think that's where that came from. Germany and the countries that did require susceptibility tests weren't just going to give that up. But I'm not really an expert in that field. That's my perspective on what was happening.

President of EMC Society

Geselowitz:

Okay, back to your IEEE career. You're on the EMC Board and you're working your way up and so now they decide it's time for you to be president, or you decide.

Hubing:

Well, yes, I decided to run. Actually, when Dan Hoolihan was president, I actually had liked what he had done. He had had a clear kind of mission, his globalization thing. And taking the Board to other countries and doing things that would encourage more international participation, particularly on the Board. We actually changed the bylaws to require that we have a Board member from Regions Eight and Ten. The way the rules were structured, Region Nine didn't have enough members to actually require a position on the Board, but Dan was also interested in getting somebody from Region Nine on the Board. But anyway, I liked that he had a clear idea of what he wanted to do in the Society and the impact he wanted to have. What I wanted to do, I wanted to emphasize the technical. I was concerned about what had happened with the transactions a little bit, for a little while, in terms of the technical reputation. And also that of the Symposium. Back then, papers for the Symposium weren't reviewed. You sent in an abstract. Somebody read the abstract, but virtually everything was accepted if you wrote a reasonable abstract. But there was no paper review, and as a result, for Symposium papers actually the quality was poor. The attendance in the technical sessions wasn't that great. Yes, we were publishing these proceedings, but that basically wasn't worth very much. I saw that as my mission when I was president. I wanted to emphasize increasing the technical stature of the Society.

Geselowitz:

While continuing the globalization that Dan had begun?

Hubing:

Well, absolutely. Yes, that expanse, the mark I wanted to make was more of the technical stuff.

Geselowitz:

And do you feel you succeeded?

Hubing:

Well yes, we took concrete steps. We put term limits on the transactions editor, which actually several other societies had already done and seemed to work very well as far as getting the politics – or the perception of politics anyway – out of publishing papers and the transactions. We had some IEEE Press issues where IEEE Press was publishing books with our logo on them that the perceived quality wasn't very good. We basically made changes. We found out we really couldn't control IEEE Press. But we changed our liaison person and made an effort, at least, to draw attention to the fact that we were not happy with what EMC books were being published by IEEE Press. And yes, and then also, the newsletter was a newsletter back then. But we started paying attention more to the technical content of anything that went into the newsletters.

Geselowitz:

Is it still a newsletter or has it become a magazine?

Hubing:

It became a magazine, just this year!

Geselowitz:

Great. So that was a long gradual process that began with your focus on publications to be high quality, even though it's a just a newsletter

Hubing:

I guess so.

Geselowitz:

Does anything else strike your mind as something important that happened during your presidential term?

Hubing:

Well, I guess the other thing would be we decided to take the Symposium to Hawaii for the 50th Anniversary of IEEE in 2007. We were throwing ideas around. Somebody, I can't remember who it was, mentioned Hawaii as brainstorming ideas. And it was basically kind of oh yeah, that's real funny. But I thought, why not? Actually, back then we were flush with money. We ran a big surplus every year. Our reserves were big enough. We could've withstood a bad Symposium and still survived financially. Why not take a chance and see how that works? Actually, at a meeting where that came up, I was sitting next to Janet O’Neil. Because I was president, Janet was the secretary. And I said, you know, Janet, could you find out what would be involved in taking the Symposium to Hawaii? And she said she'd look into it. And fortuitously, Magdy Iskander, who was the president of the Antennas and Propagation Society at the time, moved to Hawaii. He was at the University of Hawaii and he was actually working with conference people there. It turned out in 2007 we went there and the Antennas and Propagation Society went there and MTT went there. Magdy actually helped a lot of conferences to come there. But anyway, Janet came back. We had three proposals: Hawaii, St. Louis and Fort Lauderdale. I was running the meeting so I was trying to not be biased, but I was biased and we did end up voting to go to Hawaii. I won't take credit for going there, but that was something significant that happened.

Geselowitz:

It's interesting. It's fortuitous because if I'm reading the timing right, you'd been planning this since four or five years in advance. You were back on the Board in time for the celebration. Because, as you mentioned that there is a hiatus after one is President.

Hubing:

It was in Portland the year before. I would've gone to the Symposium no matter where it was.

Geselowitz:

Right.

Hubing:

But no, that's true. I was back on the Board. We don't pay for the Board to go to the symposia, so there's no financial incentive.

Geselowitz:

Okay.

Hubing:

But it was fortuitous for a couple of reasons. One is I mentioned we had this large surplus. The year I was president, the tech bubble burst and all of a sudden IEEE investments lost money for the first time in a long time. And all of a sudden the surplus people thought they had was reduced. And not only was it reduced, IEEE took control of it. Now all of a sudden, money was very, very tight. There's no way a proposal to go to Hawaii could have been successful the following year. In fact, I believe I'm the first president of the Society where the Society ever lost money, at least on paper. We ran a deficit basically during the year and that's because of the reserves dropping.

Geselowitz:

That’s the way it was handled by IEEE.

Hubing:

Right, right. But well, you know, probably that we'd always run a deficit budget, but then the investment income, which was never factored into the budget, was always positive. And so, yes, we ran a deficit but we made this much money. And it was always actually quite a lot of money. We hadn't been too concerned and then all of a sudden it was a big concern.

Geselowitz:

But now you were committed to Hawaii in 2007. So how did that Symposium go?

Hubing:

Oh, fantastic. It was well attended. Janet O'Neil ended up chairing that. She brought the proposal forward. She chaired the conference. She's a fantastic organizer. We knew it was going to be hard for people to get permission to come out there. We knew people would want to come. But we knew it was going to be hard to get people to come out there, and exhibitors, in particular, to get all of their stuff out there. We count heavily on the exhibitors for our bottom line on our Symposium. We had special incentives and we established Global University, as we were talking about during lunch today, at that time. And all these incentives or new initiatives to get people to make that trip.

Geselowitz:

Since you were in Hawaii was there an effort to recruit for the Pacific rim? From Japan and South Korea and countries that maybe had not previously come to North America?

Hubing:

Yes. I'm just guessing, and I don't know the statistics, but I'll bet we had a higher percentage of people from Japan at that conference than we've ever had before or since. Because, yes, for the people from Japan particularly it was a very easy trip. In Honolulu, there is a large Japanese population so it was very successful. Then the following year, 2008, the economy just tanked out. The stock market plummeted. If our Hawaii Symposium had been in 2008 instead of 2007, we would've taken a real financial bath in it. It was just very fortuitous the way it all worked out. In 2008, we held the conference in Detroit. Attendance was way down. A lot of people working at automotive companies in Detroit couldn't get permission even to go to the conference in their own city.

Growth of EMC Field

Geselowitz:

Well, obviously, all of engineering is subject to these cycles. Would you say though that in EMC there's been an overall trend of growth, despite these little blips?

Hubing:

Oh, absolutely.

Geselowitz:

I don’t mean just the Society, but I mean even the field as a whole.

Hubing:

Yes, yes. As a matter of fact, I started in 1989 as a professor. The economy's gone up and down all that time, but my students have never had a particularly difficult time finding jobs. Even in the down economies there seems to be a demand for EMC engineers. For most of the time we can't meet the demand. I get emails all the time saying, oh, we have the ability to hire somebody. Do you have a student for us? And usually the answer's no.

Geselowitz:

And again, there’s been the incredible growth of consumer products and the global economy and all that. There was talk at the Founders lunch earlier today that apparently Apple is here advertising for ten EMC engineers.

Hubing:

They actually have a recruiting booth in the exhibit hall, yes.

Geselowitz:

So that's pretty impressive.

Hubing:

It is. Although I was talking with one of our former students that worked with Apple, who I think is largely responsible for manning that booth or having that booth. But I asked him if he's presenting a paper. And he said that Apple's discouraging –actually stronger than discouraging –its people from presenting papers. It reminded me of the IBM, the old IBM where you were discouraged from presenting papers, because IBM was concerned that some of their real valuable knowledge would be leaked to other companies. And I thought, the Apple of today is sounding like the IBM from 1982. I don't think that's a good sign.

Geselowitz:

Industry's always concerned about trade secrets and so forth and so on. But Apple has a particular reputation of wanting to control everything. Every aspect of the product and supply chain and the information.

Hubing:

Absolutely. But this is new. Because we've been working through our Center at UMR with Apple for a long time and Apple's always been very interested in being on the cutting edge of technology and learning the latest stuff. And so, they've been involved in that. And we've published lots of papers actually with the engineers working at Apple in the past. Now this is a change. There's a change in leadership at Apple. And this is a change in management philosophy. Whereas, before people were encouraged to be out there giving papers. Because if you're not giving papers, you're not getting the feedback and you could be off doing something totally obsolete or crazy.

Geselowitz:

Yes, you're in a big echo chamber like you were at IBM. You're just talking to yourselves.

Hubing:

Yes. And, ironically, Apple owes a lot of its success today to the crazy way IBM behaved back in the 80's.

Geselowitz:

Right.

Hubing:

Now Apple's adopted that behavior.

Geselowitz:

And that's how Microsoft got started, because of IBM's silliness.

Hubing:

That's right.

Evolution of EMC Technology

Geselowitz:

So you continued to be active on the Board since then. Now, like you said, the economy recovered and then crashed again since then. Have there been other changes and issues that you've seen, or it's been this continuing of, sort of the growth globalization and publications? Or is anything in the past now since that 2007 meeting, sort of in the past five years? Have any other issues arisen for the Society?

Hubing:

Yes, well, there's always something boiling or there's always some issue. But in terms of a general trend, I can't think of anything particularly significant. I don't think we're discussing the major kinds of changes that took place a few times over the past 20 years. Yeah, I think there may have been changes in EMC technology quite a bit.

Geselowitz:

Well, what are those?

Hubing:

Well certainly, when I started back in 1982 I had these great computers at IBM, which by today's standards are nothing, but was doing numerical modeling, which was relatively new for EMC at the time. Since then, of course it's been a long time, but I'd say since 1989 the role of computer modeling in EMC has just skyrocketed basically. And that's just really changed the way we approach EMC problems. And it's allowed us to do EMC research that we couldn't really do before. Largely you fixed products by trial and error, because that was all you could do before we had very good modeling techniques. And the modeling techniques we have now directly or indirectly rely on the computer modeling. For example, the ability to solve Maxwell's equations. The impact has been tremendous.

Geselowitz:

And yet, your first fundamental contribution came through observing something in the physical world that I'm not convinced would've been included in the model or that a model would've captured. In other words, if you'd modeled that original video circuit in, let's say, back then through a time machine, you had today's computers, I don’t believe that you would've taken the power supply off the table in the model.

Hubing:

Probably not. And/or spend a lot of time chasing things that weren't really physically relevant. I like to think of myself as a big proponent of computer modeling. But on the other hand, I did a talk in the Introduction to Numerical Modeling session on Monday and the main message is don't think you're going to solve EMC problems by using computers or doing computer modeling. Because that's not going to happen. Computer models are great at helping you as the engineer understand field behavior. And understand how making changes in the structure effects how the currents flow on it. And what kinds of fields are produced and things like that. So in a general way, modeling simple structures, you can build an intuition that you, back before computers, just never could build. People back then built an intuition, working on products and just had the craziest ideas. They would say, you need to put a ferrite there. Well, why? Well, because…and they would go to this lengthy description on what was happening that was just crazy. It couldn't be right. But it didn't matter because they had built their own intuition and a lot of times putting it right where they said really did make the difference. But now the computer modeling tools have allowed us to actually build an intuitive feeling for what the fields and currents are doing in the structure and that helps us design better products. But if you go down to the exhibit hall, people want to hear that, yes, just put your product into the software and it'll spit out basically what the radiated emissions will be from your product. And that's crazy. It will never happen. Not because computers aren't powerful enough, but because we're never going to know enough about the structure to model electromagnetically. Electromagnetic models give you very precise answers to a very precisely defined problem. And in electromagnetic compatibility, you can almost never precisely define the problem. We’d need infinite computing power.

Geselowitz:

And if you don't know the boundary conditions, you're not going to get anywhere.

Hubing:

That's right.

Geselowitz:

You're not going to converge to an answer.

Hubing:

And if, by some chance, you knew every boundary condition that was important, you would know how to fix the problem. You wouldn't need the computer anymore. So, yes, that's never going to happen. And so largely, my role in that Introduction to Numerical Modeling course is to adjust expectations. You know, these are amazing tools. You can learn an awful lot from them. But you're not going to analyze a product and you're not going to use these tools to find a problem with a product. And in our laboratory, we have all these tools available. We do modeling with them all the time. Never once has a product come in where we've said, oh, I wonder what the problem is here? Never once have we pulled out a numerical modeling tool to try to model anything. That's where you're back to your intuition and well, let's see what's going on in here, and where are the currents flowing. And you're using the knowledge that you gain from the tools. But you're not trying to model your product.

Geselowitz:

So that's a big change I would say across all engineering obviously. The use of computers in engineering and modeling has been a huge change in the past ten years.

Hubing:

But especially in electromagnetics. When I was a student, a graduate student, every antenna we analyzed was a rod or a cone or a sphere of some kind. Or maybe it had to have some amazing symmetry. And then we had to make some assumptions just to get an answer that was reasonably exact anyway. Now, with a computer anything you can think of you can analyze.

Current Research: Possibility Modeling in EMC

Geselowitz:

And besides that anything else that pops in your head of big changes in the field in the past five to ten years? I mean, that's pretty big, but perhaps there is something else

Hubing:

Yes. Well, I think the recognition that common mode currents are important, of course, really changed the way people thought about things. Because the common mode currents required to produce a radiated emissions problem are usually two, five microamps on a one meter cable is enough to cause you to fail. And in the lab normally you can't even measure five microamps of current. I mean you have to go out of your way, down in there, your normal noise floor. Whereas, you see all these other currents up on the circuit that are tens of milliamps and so you naturally expect the problem's going to be there. But the realization now, that very tiny common mode currents are often the problem, has sort of changed the way we look the products. And in my own work, it's been focused on, my whole career I was trying to sell the development of a numerical modeling tool to companies, because that's what I knew how to do. And we developed a tool called the EMAP. We got funding from Intel to do that for many years. But I was trying to sell companies on the idea of supporting research developing this numerical modeling tool. But everybody wanted a tool that they could type in their product parameters and it would tell them if it was going to pass the FCC spec or not. And I was out there telling them, I'm sorry, but that'll never happen. I didn't get the funding. People getting funding for things like that were people who basically believed that it was possible, or ultimately someday would be possible, I suppose. But what my emphasis of my research has been is not trying to predict how much it's going to radiate, but predict how much it could possibly radiate if everything we don’t know about it were the worst it could possibly be, what's the most radiation that could get out of this device? And we've actually been working on that since 1995, 17 years roughly, on that idea and developing algorithms and we've actually made lots of progress there. And that's a really useful concept, because it's 90% of the stuff on this circuit board I can ignore. Because worst case, there's no way that that 90% of the stuff could ever radiate – I could hook a dipole antenna right onto it, and it still wouldn’t radiate. There's not enough ability to drive that antenna there for me to ever worry about. That helps eliminate a lot of the design effort. Now I can focus on the stuff that, at least theoretically, could produce enough radiation. It doesn't mean it does, but it could. In our automotive work lately, we just started guaranteeing that if we work with a design of your product, you'll pass. And we're using these algorithms. We're basically ensuring that every circuit on that board is incapable of driving any antenna on that board hard enough to exceed the automotive EMC requirements. I would because it's my research, but I see that as the future of computer modeling. The computer isn't going to try to calculate the radiated emissions. Computers are going to try to calculate all the possible ways that the circuits on that thing could radiate, given that the things it doesn't know. It sees a connector. It doesn't know how long the cable is attached to that connector. But it's going to assume basically the worst case for that. And everything it doesn't know, it assumes the worst case.

Automotive Research at Clemson

Geselowitz:

So how did you get involved in particularly vehicular applications?

Hubing:

Well, we had research when I was at UMR funded by General Motors. That was actually very similar to the IBM thing. They had like $40,000. Somebody at GM said we have this money to sponsor a research project. We need to identify areas of interest to the company. EMC was identified as an area of interest. And by then we had a pretty well established lab. And so we were the best, we were the biggest. Well, I’m being biased, but we were the natural place to come to. And so we did some work with them on decoupling and then later we did some work with vehicles with them. I had a little bit of experience working in automotive, but I became much more automotive when I moved to Clemson.

Geselowitz:

So how did it come about that you left UMR and moved to Clemson?

Hubing:

Well, for our kids we chose Rolla because it was a small town and a nice place to raise kids. After both of our kids were out of the house, it was still a small town, and we were just kind of ready to move on. Also, I was a full professor and the next career step would've been to have an endowed chair, but endowed chairs are usually awarded to attract faculty. So staying at the same university, it would be unusual to receive an endowed chair, almost unheard of I believe. I was kind of looking around. Actually I, from the first month I started, I always read IEEE Spectrum ads for faculty positions--you should always be looking for your next job.

Geselowitz:

That's the advice they give.

Hubing:

Yes. Anyway, I saw an ad from Clemson University for their International Center for Automotive Research, and it was an endowed chair position. And it was in vehicle electronics. I'm electromagnetics or EMC. This was in vehicle electronics.

Geselowitz:

You had done the GM work.

Hubing:

I had done the GM work and it was actually a very nice position. The endowment was good. And I thought I could write my resume up to emphasize the things like that. Because I had done enough automotive work. And one of the big issues with vehicle electronics is unintended interactions between the electronics and the electromagnetic interference problems basically. And so, I figured well, I can make the argument that nobody knows everything about vehicle electronics, but in one important issue actually I'm an expert. And so, I wrote up a resume that had all the same information, but emphasized the automotive stuff I had done. And ended up getting an interview. And it was actually a very fortuitous situation, because the position is in the electrical engineering department at Clemson, but the responsibilities are to the automotive engineering degree program, which at that time was in the mechanical engineering department. The candidate for that position had to be interviewed by the mechanical engineering department and the electrical engineering department, who, by the way, didn't see eye to eye on a lot of issues anyway, especially what this endowed chair should be. It just so happened, it was almost kind of a fluke, because I was not really vehicle electronics. I was electromagnetic compatibility, who had done some work in vehicle electronics. But I had basically the skills that the automotive engineering people were looking for. I had the knowledge of automobiles. And I had worked with automobiles. When I was a graduate student I owned a lot of old ones. So by necessity I worked with automobiles quite a bit. But anyway, I had taken a lot of mechanical engineering classes when I was at Purdue. It worked out well with the automotive, with the mechanical engineering people in automotive engineering. But the electrical engineering people, they had a big emphasis on electromagnetics. And so, I was a candidate for automotive engineering, who actually had a knowledge or a background that fit in well with what was important to them. I'm not so sure that any other candidate would have been acceptable to both sides. And it turns out I was the only candidate that they actually brought on campus. And then subsequently, they made me an offer too. That's how that all worked out.

Geselowitz:

Now what did your wife do? Was she also at this point a full professor at UMR?

Hubing:

No, she was an associate professor, but she was the director of the freshman engineering program. She had become more of an administrator and the part she really enjoyed about the job, the teaching part, she was doing less and less of it. And she was ready just for a career change. But she didn't really want to resign. So, she saw this as an opportunity. In fact she pushed it. At one point when we were looking for jobs, when I was looking to maybe move to Clemson, I looked at a couple of other places and we were talking and said, well, gee, next year we could be in anyone of these cities. And she said the only one that wasn't acceptable to her was Rolla. She just was ready for a change. And she was working on writing a book for a while. Then, actually she's had several different projects. And she's actually got a company called Math on Time, which does video tutorials for people studying for the math part of the ACT.

Geselowitz:

Interesting.

Hubing:

And so, she just had time to pursue those other projects.

Geselowitz:

Okay, so that brings us up to the present then. You've finished your presidency, but you're still on the Board of EMC. You're here at the Symposium, hoping to still run the Global University. You're at Clemson running the Vehicular Electronics Laboratory there. That's a pretty full career.

Hubing:

Yeah.

Reflections on Mentors

Geselowitz:

Is there anything that we didn't cover that you'd like to get on the historical record that you think we missed? About either your professional career or your IEEE involvement.

Hubing:

Let's see. Well, maybe a couple other points, maybe not in order, but I probably should've mentioned that when I was at IBM we had a visiting professor come and work with us one summer, and that was Clayton Paul, who came from the University of Kentucky. And at that time, my opinion of university faculty, as far as having any useful knowledge for working with products, particularly with EMC, was pretty low. I just assumed they're very good at the equations and solving. I'd taken lots of courses in electromagnetics. But I didn't think that they had a lot of knowledge that could be practically applied to electromagnetic compatibility. And Clayton made a big impression on me. I'm not so sure I would've considered an academic career if it had not been for my experience with him, where here's somebody, an academic, he's teaching, doing research. But at the same time, down to earth enough to work on real problems and to realize that some of these problems don't have really nice numerical answers. But that doesn't prevent you from using the knowledge of the equations and the behavior from doing useful things. And anyway, he made a big impression on me in terms of thinking about the possibility of an academic career. At that time I hadn't completed a Ph.D., but anyway he had an influence on me. And then there was Tom Van Doren and his abilities. He helped me learn to interact with people. I mentioned sitting up in the hotel room, having to force myself to go down and talk to one more person. But more than that, I was pretty arrogant. And not necessarily a good listener. And I had little patience for people who clearly knew nothing about what they were talking about. And mostly by example, Tom showed me that you can talk to anybody and that nobody in this business is an idiot. What they're saying at the time may be completely wrong, but maybe you can learn something from them. And so, maybe you should continue the discussion and you don't say, “you're wrong.” But you continue the discussion and if you're as good at it as he is, eventually they decide that they were wrong. And they decide that they could come up with a better idea. And you basically educated them without alienating them. I remember taking a short course. IBM sent us up to short courses all the time, which is largely where I had my low opinion of people out there teaching EMC, and why I had low expectations for Tom Van Doren before I ever met him. And Henry Ott was a good instructor, excellent instructor…still is. But I took a course from Henry Ott, and IBM had brought him out there. And I remember after the course sitting down at a table with a couple of other engineers and Henry. And telling him that, yeah, I thought he was right about this, but I thought he was wrong about that. And now, looking back on that, I was a young engineer. Henry had lots and lots of experience. Clearly, had studied any of this much more than I had. And I was just kind of point blankly telling him I think you're wrong. And I was not good at interacting with other engineers. I think I missed out on some good technical discussions as a result of alienating people too early back then too often.

Geselowitz:

So he came along at the right time to mentor you when, right at your transition to academia.

Hubing:

He really did. And it's funny, because shortly after I was hired, the department set up a structured mentoring program where junior faculty were assigned to senior faculty as mentees. And I was assigned to the department chair. He was my mentor, not Tom Van Doren, who’s actually working on research projects with me and interested in the same things I am. But it was just interesting that the department chairman was so worried about him that he wouldn't assign him as a mentor. And yet, at this point in my career, actually I didn't necessarily consider him a mentor then either. It's only now I realize what a big impact he's had on my life.

Geselowitz:

Well, I think that's another reason that universities moved to having more formal mentoring programs. Because when it works, it works really well. But some people are not good mentors. Some people are not good mentees. It doesn't always work out. So now they're trying more hard to really match people and encourage them and give them support and that sort of thing.

Hubing:

It's sort of like an arranged marriage. It's not always going to work.

Geselowitz:

Great, anything else?

Hubing:

I guess not.

Geselowitz:

Okay, thank you very much. It was a great interview.

Hubing:

Okay. Thanks, Mike.