Remembrance by Kenneth Waldron

Remembrance

When I think about Kos, I feel I was observing a low Earth satellite: always on the move, operating all around the globe, from Japan to Switzerland to Mexico to Australia and back to the US, diligently attending to the needs of each site, and maintaining a huge international network of contacts. However, a satellite passes through the outer reaches of the atmosphere and slows and lowers its orbit little by little until quite suddenly the atmosphere captures it and it burns up and is gone.

I first met Kos in 1986 when Manjula and I came to Stanford on sabbatical leave from Ohio State University. At that time he was completing his doctoral work with Phil Barkan, and was one of Phil’s TA’s in the brand new course in Design for Manufacturability. Kos got my attention with his ready smile, and the broad Australian accent he had at the time, complete with expostulations like “blimey charley” and “stone the crows”. I learned that he had lived in Sydney and attended North Sydney Boys’ High School. Later, he had also commissioned power plants in a variety of locations in Australia during four years as an employee of Toshiba.

I talked to Kos about joining Ohio State University as a faculty member. He did apply and received an offer, which he ultimately accepted. Characteristically, at OSU he hit the ground running. He soon had established projects with several automotive companies, and with GE. Shortly after, the Engineering Research Center in Net Shape Manufacturing was funded by the National Science Foundation. Kos was Co-PI on that proposal and worked on several ERC projects.

Kos was very popular as a classroom instructor, and as the faculty adviser to the ASME student chapter. Together with Gary Kinzel he obtained funds from NSF and GE to establish a rapid prototyping laboratory. All of this earned him early promotion to Associate Professor with tenure.

At this time Kos wanted space to establish a laboratory for numerical modeling of manufacturing processes. The department was crammed into the ancient Robinson Laboratory building where there was no suitable space available. However, as a result of a large project I had formerly headed myself, I had control of a building on West Campus. It was an old iron building that had once been a Volkswagen dealer’s repair shop. Kos moved his students and a bunch of computers into the former office area of this building to establish the LEGOS Laboratory. It would be the prototype of the Stanford Manufacturing Modeling Laboratory.

One of those students was Kurt Beiter who is now the MML Laboratory Manager. Kurt had a black Labrador mix dog named Satch who quickly came to be a laboratory member, starting a tradition that continued until quite recently. An advantage of being far from the academic center of the university was that nobody really cared very much what we did around that building. One of the highlights of the period was the day that Satch fell through the ceiling. To this day I don’t know what he was doing in the attic above the laboratory. It’s one of those things I don’t think I want to know.

In 1993 I became department chair at OSU. At about the same time, Phil Barkan’s health started to fail and I soon became aware that Kos had been approached by Stanford to take over Phil’s activities. That was the beginning of an extended negotiation. Kos was very well thought of at OSU and I was able to work with the Dean to push through a promotion to Full Professor. However, he ultimately decided to come to Stanford anyway, starting in 1994. Six years later, when the time came for me to step down as department chair I also moved here. I was welcomed into the Manufacturing Modeling Laboratory and started working as a mentor with project teams in Design for Manufacturability.

Kos had a unique ability to keep his industry sponsors satisfied. Likewise, many of the off-campus sites at which the course is presented have continued to participate for many years. Kos was recognized with the General Motors Outstanding Distance Learning Faculty Award in 1996. He was appointed to the Science Council of Japan. I successfully nominated Kos to receive the ASME Ruth and Joel Spira Outstanding Design Educator Award last year. That award was to have been presented at the International Design Engineering Technical Conferences in New York City last year. Unfortunately neither Kos nor I was able to be present, so the ASME Design Engineering Division leadership elected to reschedule the presentation to this year’s conference. Kos never actually received the medal that constitutes the award.

Kos will be sorely missed by his family, his colleagues, his students and former students, and by the numerous people around the world with whom he interacted at one time or another.

Kenneth J. Waldron
March 5th, 2009