Here’s to the future

Kent Misegades, president of Computational Engineering International (CEI), recently announced his retirement from the company he has led since 1998. Misegades was named President of CEI, a leading provider of CAE pre- and post-processing tools, in 1998 and has worked diligently to promote CEI over the past nine years.  He will be missed, not only by his colleagues at CEI, but also by the many customers, vendors, and partners that he has formed relationships with over the years

We spoke to Kent to find out a little more about him and his involvement in CAE and CFD through the years and find out why he’s leaving the company.

1.    What is your background and how did you become involved in simulation?

My first work in simulation was as a co-op engineer studying nuclear engineering at North Carolina State University.  I worked at Bechtel Power Company in Gaithersburg, MD, in the fall of 1976 at the age of eighteen.  My job was preparation of input for the program RELAP, used to simulate loss of coolant accidents (LOCA) at nuclear power plants designed and built by Bechtel in the United States.  

For my masters thesis at the von Karman Institute (VKI) I used an early CFD program to predict the aerodynamics of complex high-lift systems for commercial aircraft, running on DEC PDP and VAX computers. This led to my job as an aerodynamicist at Dornier in Germany where all of my work involved writing, testing and using CFD programs for a variety of aerospace applications.

2.    When you were growing up, did you have any idea you were going to be an engineer?  What did you want to do as a child?

Kent solos a Ka-4 glider, Hornberg, Germany 1981

My first love was, and remains to this day, airplanes.  My poor eyesight kept me from pursuing my dream of a career in the military and aviation, so I tried the next best thing, a career in the nuclear navy. Eyesight again kept me out of submarines so I studied nuclear engineering.

My love of airplanes pulled me to the von Karman Institute for Fluid Dynamics for graduate school because of its well-known programs in aerodynamics, my favorite technical topic.

My father and grandfather were both engineers who spent most of their careers at General Electric. My grandfather was instrumental in the development of the first room air conditioners, making living in the southern United States more comfortable.  My father was a pioneer in GE's appliance business, and was partly responsible for the in-door ice maker/dispenser.

I grew up around engineers and often challenged my Dad to math problems and complex calculations on a slide rule, which I learned to do, for fun, as a teenager.   Boy Scouts was also a big part of my life for many years; I spent four summers in the wilds of Kentucky and Alabama as a "primitive" camp counselor. This and my participation in my high school's Air Force Junior ROTC program were my first opportunities in leadership.  Both of these experiences prepared me for the responsibilities of married life and running a business.

3.    In your opinion, what is the biggest area of progress in simulation over the last five years or so?

The biggest areas of progress in simulation that I’ve seen are simplicity in modeling. Modern GUIs are simply amazing, and numerical methods have progressed much faster than I thought would have been possible. I recall briefing Cray Research, Inc.’s Vice President for Sales and Marketing in 1984, just after I joined the company. I was hired as the CFD Applications Manager (at age 27), and claimed that "there will never be general-purpose CFD codes" due to the complexities of solving the Navier-Stokes equations and creating 3D meshes. Boy, was I ever wrong!  

I am especially proud to have been involved in major advances in CFD during my career, in particular in meshing and post-processing.  I'm also proud to have my name on a display of computers in the aerospace industry at the Smithsonian Air & Space Museum in Washington D.C.  It has been amazing to be part of the revolution in computing, from punch cards to virtual reality.

4.    What do you see as the important developments ahead in the next five years?

Meshing will remain the most important area for development, but good progress is being made.  Next will be automation, since better meshing will lead to engineers performing tens, hundreds or even thousands of computations each week. It will be a challenge to manage all this data and then to make sense out of all these results.

5.    How and why did you come to work for CEI?

What became EnSight originated in Cray’s Applications Department in the late 1980’s as MPGS. Because of my work at Cray, I have been involved to a certain degree with CEI's products for over 20 years. When my former colleagues spun off from Cray in 1994, they were looking for someone with marketing and sales experiences in the CAE industry, and I was looking to move back to the United States, preferably to the South, after five years selling the CFD code FIDAP in Germany. I guess it was in the stars.
 
6.    CEI has been very successful under your leadership.  Why are you leaving?  And why now?

I strongly believe in sticking with any new challenge for at least five years.  I have been with CEI for 11 years, which says something about how much the company has meant to me.   Last year our youngest child left for college, freeing us from the yoke of the government school calendar for the first time in nearly 20 years. My wife and I decided it was time to consider the next chapter in our lives.  In the past few years, CEI's success has allowed us to hire more people, all of whom are competent professionals who now need little guidance from me.  In short, I have worked myself out of a job, which I believe is a good leadership characteristic.  Lastly, I think that companies need new leadership at least once every decade; otherwise they become comfortable in their set way of doing things. I am very confident that CEI's best years lay ahead of it.

7.    Were your colleagues at CEI surprised by your decision to leave?  How do you think they will cope without you?

I believe that my colleagues all understand my motives and that I have worked hard to prepare the company for this inevitable event. It would be egotistical to think that CEI will suffer from my absence. I am but one of many here with a particular job to do; CEI is truly a team where no one individual plays a critical role - we all contribute to the whole, and this includes our partners around the world who I consider as equally important team members. This is why the company has weathered the storms of the CAE industry and overcome many hurdles since it was founded in 1994.  I look forward to reading CEINews and watching CEI continue on its upward path, knowing that I played a small role in its early success.

8.    What are you going to do now?

Ben(22), Tineke(24), Tim(19) Misegades

I helped my wife Ulli raise three wonderful children, that took about 23 years of our free time, but Ulli gets most of the credit for this.  I love to fly my 1952 Cessna 170 tail dragger, which I call the "flying pickup truck".  I hold various roles in several local aviation organizations, www.eaa1114.org and www.iac19.org. I’m currently Vice Chairman of NC100, a small-business advocacy organization in North Carolina, www.nc100.org.  Recently I’ve begun helping my wife with her art business, www.ullisart.com. I started an initiative to build affordable, world-class, community schools, the first targeted to open in mid-2008.  Reading, mostly about public policy and military history is another of my hobbies. Finally, I have, for many years now, written two award-winning newsletters for my flying clubs. I write frequently on public-policy issues, and am working on a book regarding public education in North Carolina.

9.    Do you have any message for the simulation community?

Be honest.   There are too many who continue to oversell our technology, and that is irresponsible.   I am proud to have led organizations that have remained technically astute, first and foremost.