Curriculum Vitae
Also see Tim's publications.
Robert Timothy Scully, Ph.D.
| 8/27/44 | born, Berkeley, California |
| 4/58 | won honorable mention in the San Francisco Bay Area science fair for the design and construction of a small computer. |
| 6/59-9/59 | employed as stock boy at Emmond's Electronic Surplus, Oakland, California (payment in electronic parts). |
| 1959-1961 | designed and built a small linear accelerator to produce a neutron flux by a deuteron-deuteron interaction. This was intended for a Science Fair project to make gold from mercury by use of thermal neutrons. I learned electronics, high vacuum techniques, glassblowing and physics through work on this project. |
| 6/60-9/60 | employed by the University of California Lawrence radiation Laboratory at Berkeley, as a lab assistant. |
| 9/61-1963 | studied math and physics at the University of California at Berkeley, having been admitted by examination at the end of my junior year of High School. |
| 1963-1965 | employed by Atomic Laboratories Inc. as electronics design consultant. Designed radiation detection and measurement systems for educational applications, a nuclear soil density and moisture content gauge (using gamma ray and neutron backscattering), portable scintillation counter systems for water flow measurement, etc. |
| 1964-1966 | formed a partnership with George Gabor, Attika Development Co. (working in my grandparent's attic) and did consulting work for Atomic Laboratories Inc., Quantum Electronics and General Radioisotopes Inc., including work on electrochemical plating of cobalt-60 onto stainless steel strips, a Hall effect gaussmeter, and a nuclear magnetic resonance spectrometer. |
| 1965-1966 | spent several months traveling with the Grateful Dead, a rock band, doing electronic design of custom audio systems including direct electrical recording of their instruments. |
| 1966-1969 | learned synthetic organic chemistry through work in "underground" laboratories and independent study. Helped to develop efficient purification procedures for LSD-25 and synthetic techniques for STP and MDA (psychedelic drugs). Some work on the design of high vacuum flash evaporators and systems for preparative column chromatography. |
| 1969 | arrested on drug manufacturing charges stemming from an underground laboratory in Denver Colorado. These charges were eventually dropped, but this arrest led to the end of my involvement with drugs in 1970. |
| 1969 | organized Aquarius Electronics, a California corporation. |
| 1969 | earned a private pilots license, learning to fly in a Mooney M20E. |
| 1971-1976 | was president and sole designer for Aquarius Electronics, designed numerous innovative biofeedback and physiological monitoring instruments and systems, including microcomputer based systems for educational, medical and process control. This work involved analog and digital circuit design, using discrete components and integrated circuits. I learned assembly language programming techniques and high level languages. I sold my stock in Aquarius Electronics in October 1976, shortly before going to prison after losing all appeals. |
| 1973-1974 | indicted on Federal drug manufacturing and distribution charges stemming from my 1968-1970 activities, was tried, convicted and sentenced to a 20-year term of imprisonment. 7/74 released from McNeil Island Penitentiary on appeal bond. |
| 3/75-6/79 | granted advanced standing and accepted as a student in the Humanistic Psychology Institute's Ph.D. program, and began study and research on the development of biofeedback systems and techniques for use in drug rehabilitation programs. I eventually built an 8080A microcomputer physiological monitoring system for analyzing EEG, EMG, GSR/BSR and skin temperature and did some basic research on the identification of specific patterns of physiological response associated with specific emotional states. This involved the development of hardware and software, including extensive assembly language programming for real-time data collection and analysis, and BASIC programs for multivariate statistical analysis (which run on the same 8080A microcomputer). |
| 1975 | volunteer work at Centerpoint, a polydrug program in San Rafel, and at Ames Lodge, Mendocino Alcohol Project, in which I gained practical experience in clinical work with addicts and alcoholics and designed specialized biofeedback systems for them. |
| 1976 | volunteer work at Gladman Memorial Hospital, Oakland, CA and research with newly designed biofeedback systems in the Gladman outpatient drug clinic. |
| 1975-1977 | volunteer community service work, including the design of electronic aids for the Albion Volunteer Fire Department, Albion, CA and unpaid work with various patients referred by local doctors in Mendocino County. Also helped a non-vocal handicapped young lady, Robin, with biofeedback training and discussed the possible design of a microcomputer communication system for her. |
| Helped design and write assembly language software for an 8080-based microcomputer system to control a weighing machine which weighs and dispenses down (feathers) for garments and sleeping bags. | |
| 1976-79 | served on master's committee of Sonoma State University student Nancy Berman (Chairperson: Eleanor Criswell, Ed.D.) |
| 12/76 | I was among the first group to pass the Biofeedback Society of California's certification examination. |
| 3/77 | turned myself in at McNeil Island to resume serving a 20-year sentence after losing all appeals. My pilots license was suspended for one year. |
| 4/77-6/79 | worked as Dr. D.B. Nakashima's (Staff Psychologist and Research Director) research assistant. Under Dr. Nakashima's supervision, I established a biofeedback stress management training program, and began teaching the members of an inmate peer counselor group, Aequalis, to be biofeedback facilitators. The biofeedback program has thus far served about 210 inmate clients. I completed a research study on the personality and physiological characteristics of biofeedback training dropouts, developed a BASIC computer program for classification of MMPI scores (the MMPI is a standard psychological test), and otherwise aided Dr. Nakashima in his research. |
| 1976-1978 | designed, built and programmed an 8080A microcomputer communication system for Robin, the non-vocal handicapped young lady mentioned earlier. This system allows her to put messages onto a TV screen by movements of one knee (see Scully, 1978). |
| 11/77 | my sentence was reduced to 10 years, with parole eligibility in early 1980, as a result of a Rule 35 sentence modification motion. |
| 1978-1979 | began teaching a class on computer design and programming for Federal Prison Industries, built a second handicapped communication system for FPI, and worked on the development of improved software for such systems (8080A assembly language). FPI has demonstrated this system to the Veteran's Administration. I video taped two lecture series. One 12-hour series was designed to train biofeedback facilitators. The second series of lectures, 10 hours long, was a drug education class describing the effects of drugs on the mind and body (for the McNeil Island DAP unit). These tapes were also used elsewhere in the Federal prison system. I taught a tai-chi class in the McNeil Island Drug Abuse Program. |
| 1/79 | named "Outstanding Young Man of the Year" by Washington State Jaycees. |
| 6/79 | graduated with Ph.D. in psychology from the Humanistic Psychology Institute. Dissertation: Physiological Pattern Analysis: A Key to Improved Biofeedback Systems for the Voluntary Control of Events in Consciousness. |
| 8/79 | Transferred from McNeil Island to half-way house in San Francisco. Began work as consultant to Prof. Joe Kamiya in the psychophysiology lab at Langley Porter Institute on a part time basis. Duties include instrument design and repair, computer programming and assisting with research in psychophysiology. Began work as a part time consultant to Dr. James Hardt in the psychophysiology lab at Langley Porter. Duties are instrument design and repair and assisting with ongoing research. |
| 10/79 | Established Pacific Bionic Systems, a sole propritorship and began doing consulting work for the Washington Research Center on computer systems, for the Esalen Institute's Transformation Project on data base management techniques, for the Children's Television Workshop (Sesame Street) on computer games and for Computers for the Physically Handicapped on non-vocal communication aids. |
| 1980 | Appointed lecturer in parapsychology at John F. Kennedy University. Taught Par 5050 "Psychotechnology and Computers" with Dr. Jean Millay as co-lecturer. I was also appointed Assistant Research Psychologist II at Langley Porter Institute, University of California, San Francisco (a part-time position in Professor Kamiya's psychophysiology laboratory). |
| 8/80 | Pacific Bionic Systems, the sole proprietorship, was reorganized as Mendocino Microcomputers, Inc., a California corporation. I was appointed President of the corporation and Chairman of the Board of Directors. |
| 1980-1987 | lectured on biofeedback and psychophysiology, served on thesis and dissertation committees for graduate students in psychology, designed and built biofeedback and physiological monitoring systems, repaired and consulted on communication systems for the non-vocal handicapped and wrote educational video game software for Joyce Hakansson Associates. I became an AutoCAD dealer in 1983. |
| 1987 | earned an instrument rating (single engine land) |
| 1987-2000 | consulted for Autodesk, Inc, writing device drivers for video displays, digitizers and plotters. This started out as part-time but rapidly grew to full-time and eventually edged out all other work except for the repair of old instruments and computer systems I had sold in the past. |
| 1995-now | chairman of the Little River Ad Hoc Airport Committee, which became an official County-appointed board in 1998. |
| 1995-2001 | I slowly took on increasing responsibility for my mothers caregiving as she battled with Parkinsons. She died at home in May 2001. |
| 2000 | lost my pilot's medical certificate due to a diagnosis of hypertrophic cardiomyopathy (an inherited heart disease), had a dual-chamber pacemaker and defibrillator implanted on 5/12/2000. At this point I had logged 1805 hours, including 223 instrument approaches. Almost all of my time was in a Mooney M20E. |
| 2000-2005 | Autodesk finally forced me to stop being a consultant and become a full time employee instead, working as a senior software developer. |
| August 2005 | retired from full time work at Autodesk (still doing a little part time consulting for them). |
| December 2005 | working on research for a book and doing part-time consulting. |