Duff Howell ’86

October 7, 2024

Married to Katie since 2000, and have a daughter and son in varying stages of getting through college. Two dogs, currently a lab mix and a jack russel mix.
Home is in the Santa Cruz mountains, north of Santa Cruz proper in northern CA. After grad school at Stanford (Applied Physics PhD, side gigs playing tuba in The Band, and teaching Jujitsu), had a short and painful (but educational) gig at McKinsey & Co learning about how companies run outside the lab, then back into tech where I have been happier. Dozen plus years in semiconductor capital equipment, half a dozen building full genome DNA sequencers, another half dozen in contract engineering services mostly helping startups take their proof-of-concept breadboard to manufacturable, able to meet compliance-codes, DFX-ed hardware. Currently building satellite laser com systems. Bit of home brewing and other fermenting on the side, with some hiking and biking in the surrounding mountains. Still loving good sci-fi. Many fond memories of Mudd, and ongoing appreciation for the breadth in both the technical and humanities/social sciences curricula. Wish I could tell Prof Ives that I finally get it the way he’d put something up on the board in Linear Algebra and then spin around to us like he’d just revealed some of the coolest stuff in human knowledge. It took another dozen years, but yeah, it’s beautiful stuff.

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