The Alumni Angle: Tagging and Tracking Go High Tech
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A typical hive monitoring exercise.
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With "noses" 1000 times more sensitive than that of a dog, today, honeybees have been RFID tagged and trained to seek out landmines as part of a Defense Advanced Research Project Agency (DARPA) project. Radio Frequency Identification (RFID), an automatic identification system incorporated into products, animals and almost every item on the planet, has grown into a multi-billion dollar industry quickly replacing bar codes in conglomerates such as Wal-Mart and the Department of Defense.
Helping the technology develop and flourish over the years, Ron Gilbert, CSU electrical engineer alumnus (B.S. 1978, M.S. 1980) and chief technology officer at Integral RFID, brings 17 years of experience to the small RFID consulting and innovations company. Integral RFID specializes in custom niche applications. Gilbert has used RFID tags to monitor everything from honeybees to railroad cars. Previous to his work at Integral RFID, Gilbert served as the director of hardware engineering for Alien Technology, a world leader in RFID tags and readers, and is co-founder of WaveID, an early RFID company spun out of the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory.
Currently, Gilbert is gearing up for a polar bear project funded by universities and the USGS in Alaska. Kicking into high gear in March of 2006, Gilbert will be responsible for the identification of tagged animals via planes; a project scheduled to be filmed and documented by both National Geographic and the BBC.
Raised in Fort Collins, Gilbert stems from a long history of CSU alumni. Gilbert's father, Doug Gilbert, served as department head of the Department of Wildlife Biology until 1980. His mother, Dorothy Gilbert, still an avid alumna, helps in the dietetics department, and his sister, wife and multiple other relatives graduated from CSU. While attending the University, Gilbert not only succeeded within the engineering department, but also excelled in music and was awarded a trombone scholarship. "Synthesizing" these two interests even won him 1st place at the Engineering Days competition for his senior project entitled "A digitally controlled music synthesizer".
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Gilbert's project tracking and darting polar bears will be filmed by National Geographic and the BBC.
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Today, after working on projects in virtually every major city in the nation, Ron Gilbert resides in Washington State, enjoying the great outdoors, while continuing to help RFID technology grow and evolve.