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Website:
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Arlan Andrews
Founder, SIGMA
Dr. Arlan Andrews, Sr., is a Registered Professional Engineer, Life Member of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America (SFWA), and founder of SIGMA, the science fiction think tank. As an entrepreneur, he co-founded the virtual reality/synthetic environment software company, Muse Technologies, Inc. (NASDAQ: MUZE, 1998 – 2001), in Albuquerque, New Mexico, and the rotary bioreactor firm, Kinetic Biosystems, Inc., dba KBI Biopharma, in Durham, North Carolina.
Dr. Andrews formerly held appointments as an ASME Fellow in the White House Science Office (Office of Science and Technology Policy) and in the Technology Administration of the United States Department of Commerce. In both Fellowship positions, he specialized in international competitiveness, advanced manufacturing and emerging technologies. He wrote the first White House endorsement of nanotechnology and of solid freeform fabrication (“3D printing”) in April 1993 in The President’s Report to Congress on Science and Technology. He later retired from the Sandia National Laboratories in Albuquerque as Manager of the Advanced Manufacturing Initiatives Department, where he had facilitated technology transfer from the government laboratory to private industry and universities. He previously held positions at AT&T Bell Laboratories and White Sands Missile Range, NM. He is presently an Environmental Program Manager for the U.S. government. He holds six patents.
Dr. Andrews is a current or former member of ASME, AIAA, Sigma Xi, Phi Kappa Phi, Sigma Tau, Pi Tau Sigma, Mensa and Intertel. He was a Board member of the Rhine Research Institute in Durham, North Carolina, and for several startup companies. He has published over 500 science fiction short stories, fact articles, speculative and folklore works, computer books, and humor and opinion pieces in 100 venues worldwide, including The New Scientist, Omni, Analog, Asimov’s, and Kindle e-books. While working in the White House Science Office in 1992, he founded the science fiction think tank SIGMA, which now numbers over 40 experienced science fiction authors who have consulted with a number of governmental agencies, NATO and NGOs. SIGMA members are an eclectic group, with backgrounds ranging from Ph.D.-level physics and engineering, to psychology, sociology, poetry, futurism, history, Oriental martial arts, anthropology and more. But all are accomplished and imaginative published writers. The SIGMA website, www.SigmaForum.org, gives more detail on the membership, including biographies, in addition to some historical and current information. Members Landis, Benford and Andrews made presentations at the 100 Year Star Ship Symposium in Orlando, Florida, in October 2011, on the topic of interstellar travel.
Dr. Andrews and other SIGMA members have been interviewed by USA Today, The Washington Post, Fox News, New Scientist, CNBC and National Public Radio. About SIGMA, Dr. Andrews says, “Having spent our entire literary careers creating and evaluating possible futures, our members are very well qualified to consider many alternatives in every situation – including disruptive technologies and events, socioeconomic effects, and political impacts. Our uninhibited way of thinking encompasses a multitude of possibilities, many outside the range of typical technical, business or political considerations. This capability is extremely useful for government policy makers and business analysts.”
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