Philippe Collard gave a presentation reflecting on his 40-year career in technology. He discussed his early exposures to technology like video games in the 1960s and 1970s. He studied programming which required patience dealing with hardware. His career included jobs in medical imaging, working for Digital Equipment Corporation, and moving to the US to work on PET imaging at UCLA. Throughout his career he continued working with advanced technologies in space, satellite imaging, robotics, parallel computing, aviation, and more. He discussed how the capabilities and uses of technology have vastly changed over his career from large expensive machines to powerful and connected personal devices.

1. Philippe Collard
Presentation to Tandem Launch.
February 12th, 2015.
A 40 years journey in technology

2. Over the past 40 years, I have been involved in or witness to amazing changes.
Technology has been part of my life for as long as I can remember.
Yet, what YOU call technology today is very different from what it was 10, 20, 30 or 40
years ago.
So I am inviting you to a voyage back in time…
My only purpose is to share my experience with you…
And have you reflect on what “technology” will mean 40 years from now…
So if you are ready, suit up and embark on my time machine!
Note: between the time I started my career and now, China went from a backward 3rd
world country to being the 2nd economy in the world.

3. First exposures:
My father had bought one of the
1st “video games” that you could
hook up to your TV…to play ping
pong…absolutely AMAZING!
I was fascinated by space exploration and watched
the 1st moon landing live in 1969…I wanted to go to
space…it seemed so “easy”..

4. Education: University then “Grandes Ecoles”
Programming required a lot of PATIENCE to deal with all
the mechanical “things” involved…

5. First job: medical imaging: hardware + software

6. Marking in into the “club”! In 1980 I was recruited by the French Atomic Energy to be the systems
engineer for their Positron Emission Tomography project. At the time, there were no more than 15 people in the
world having this kind of job!

7. Digital Equipment Corporation: groovy baby!

8. Time-Of-Flight PET…picosecond technology!

9. UCLA calls..off to AMERICA! In 1983, UCLA School of Medicine Biophysics Division called me to come
work for them on the clinical PET project. It was a dream come true!
Michael Phelps Henry Huang Edward Hoffman John Maziotta
The best team in the world working on the future of PET at UCLA in Los Angeles was asking
me to come join them for their next project: making PET a clinical imaging technology.
6 months later, I landed in Los Angeles with two suitcases and $2500!

10. Making clinical PET a reality! A joint venture between UCLA and CTI!
Over the course of the 2 ½ year project, my team and I wrote
100,000s of lines of codes, became one the 1st users of the ORACLE
RDBMS product, developed a distributed image management system
(a precursor to PACS), incorporated some of the XEROX PARC UI philosophy,
and developed one of the 1st software configuration management system.
CTI was sold to Siemens for $1B in 2005.
The VAX 780 was
“my” baby for 2 ½ years!
A 1 MIPS machine!!!
We were one of the 1st
users of Ethernet.

11. Going back to space! In 1987 I was recruited by the California Space Institute (San Diego) to work on
space technology. Cool!!
Jim Arnold. He worked
on the Manhattan project
and contributed to carbon
dating.
Sally Ride. First US woman astronaut.
And a very very smart woman! Head of
the California Space Institute
David Criswell. He was director of the
Lunar Institute (where they processed the
moon rocks brought by the Apollo missions).
And he is a really crazy dude!
Say they call and tell you: “Hi Philippe, want to come join us and build
the next generations space technology?”
“Sure when do I start!”

12. Ada – The love of my programming life 
In 1983, the US DoD, after a contest, selected the Ada programming language
for ALL its mission-critical systems. The winning team was…FRENCH 
Ada is an amazing “world” as far as programming is concern.
I was an early fan of the language. As a matter of fact, I became one of the very
early world experts. It was mainly an academic pursuit…
Then NASA decided to implement all the software for the Space Station in Ada…
And there were not a whole lot of people that knew what it meant!
I was one of them…

13. Cal Space – Satellite imaging work!
Question from the US Navy. Can you automatically determine what is
the cloud cover over a specific patch of ocean from AVHRR (satellite)
imaging.
Answer. Can be done with a whole LOT of math and a whole lot of
computing power.
Answer from the Navy. OK do the math and we will provide the
computing power!

14. Cal Space – Space Robotics Work
At the onset of the design of the Space Station, NASA envisioned
to build a robot to help the crew for maintenance and rescue missions.
I worked on the software architecture for the robot, and, primarily, on
how it could be implemented in Ada. I also advised the Space Station
Level 1 office on real-time Ada implementation issues. And participated
to a US Senate sponsored panel related to Automation & Robotics for space
missions.

15. Cal Space – AI and parallel processing!
Why not implement my cloud recognition
algorithms with Ada parallel features on a
Sequent parallel computer using Bayesian
statistics. Sounds like fun!
Exploring LISP machines…
Toying around with neural
networks…
One of my main project became
to implement AI systems on
parallel computers written with
the Ada programming language.
Believe me, at the time, it was really
really hot!

16. Cal Space – Advanced Space Propulsion!
I worked with a bunch of really “crazy” folks on advanced space
propulsion systems..like giant space tethers…or systems to mine
deuterium on the moon…or organize the Olympics in space…
And then, one day, I decided to go into the
business world…

17. Hot stuff of that era!
• Intel discusses at a Hot Chips Conference a…100mhz processor….WHAT ???
• Unix Unix Unix Unix
• The Macintosh vs Wintel war…
• Sun Microsystems
• The Web is born based on hypertext.
0.6 MIPS
0.8 MIPS
0.3 MIPS

18. Ada compilers for massively parallel computers!
Cray X/MP
nCUBE
I was the Product Manager for Ada compilers targeting
HUGE machines  ….at the time!

19. Opportunity knocks again! Microtec Research…
Gail Hamilton called and said “Hey Philippe,
we are building the compiler suite for the
PowerPC chip for Ford…want to come join us?
180 MIPS…WHAT!!!!!!
I was the Product/Project Manager for the PowerPC compiler
suite for Microtec (embedded systems). And later for the $68K
family…and also their real-time operating systems (Ready Systems).

20. Chips chips chips…
When you build compilers for embedded systems,
You need to be familiar with lot of chips!

21. From California to Siberia…uhhh Quebec!
Mostly analog. All digital.

22. Accelerating the design/coding/testing process.
• Draw and test your graphical design
• Draw and test your logic engine
• Build a complete prototype
• Integrate the prototype with the rest of the software
• Automatically generate the code!
• Put the code in the final product.
Et voila!
All on the hot thing of the days….
Silicon Graphics!

23. The F22 validation!
First flight of an F22 aircraft with Block 3 avionics.
The cockpit display software had been entirely prototyped
and the code automatically generated with VPI products.

24. Back to space…
NASA selected our company for the Atlantis shuttle
cockpit upgrade…up to embedding automatically
generated code in the flight instruments!!!
Unfortunately the 2nd shuttle disaster put a stop to the
project.

25. From cars to giant blimps…
Mercedes Benz…and BMW…
CargoLifter

26. Tools of the trade!

27. More turn-around, more start-ups…
Optimization of logistics routes. Industrial robotics. Industrial automation.
Automated license plate readers. Portable multi-modal biometric systems.

28. Time for a BIG CHANGE!!!!

29. Technology for sport horses!
This horse is worth $15M…and will generate $25M in
breeding fees over the next 5-7 years.
This is a VERY expensive asset that needs to be fed, massaged,
trained, watched over 24/7, transported, vaccinated, etc etc etc.
There is a HUGE market for technology product in the sport horse
market and it has yet to be completely addressed…

30. So I got involved in technology for sport horses 
Very high grade supplements
and feeds. 25 years of biotech
research.
Pulsed magnetic blanket.
Pulsed magnetic boots.
Infrared solarium.
Aquatread.
Cold therapy.
Ultrasound therapy.
Next is to monitor a horse physiological parameters in real-time and provide them to a rider on her/his AppleWatch!

31. Back to the “real world”…so to speak! Cellular Imaging…
Advanced automated cellular imaging analysis.
From genetic toxicity studies to cancer detection to
karyotyping.
All done automatically!!!

32. Today…a very amazing technology….IMAGITIVE….

33. Other things I am involved in…
• Wearable technology for the cosmetic industry (real-time evaluation of cosmetic products)
• More technology for the horse market (real-time monitoring of performance)
• A logistics market exchange in South Africa
• An interior design company involved in “vegetal design” (Vertuose)
• Raising funds for a charitable organization whose mission is to teach women how to properly
feed themselves when they are pregnant so their babies are healthy
• Training to compete in dressage this summer

34. Tools of my trade  • Email (I have had an email address since…1981)
• The Web
• Skype
• Dropbox
• Word/Excel/PPT + Linkedin, Facebook, Twitter
iPad2 iPhone 5S HP Pavillion ACER Aspire
1600 MIPS 18,200 MIPS 12,000 MIPS 8,000 MIPS
$700 $700 $1200 $800
That is a total of 39,000 MIPS for $3,400…”my” VAX 780 offered 1 MIPS for $500,000.
And all my devices are wi-fi connected, connected to each other via the cloud and iTunes…
I also have several 100s Gbytes of storage (32Gbytes on my iPhone alone) and more than
a Tbytes of off-line (back-up) storage. “My” VAX has 600Mbytes of storage.
I have 50 times more power in my iPhone than in the Cray-2 that I used to to weather modelling…

35. Famous last words 
I am looking forward to see what you all are going
to invent as far as new technologies….and I hope you
are going to have as much fun has I have had.
BUT, I am not done yet   
Philippe.collard@lelink.ca
514-927-7717
If I had a suggestion….make teleportation
real 