Profiles Magazine - Nov. 1995 (page 34-37)

Taming

I arrive with the tape recorder and the notepad, but within moments it is Stephen Jacobsen, Ph.D., who is asking the questions. "What's engineering?", he asks rhetorically. "Is it a bunch of engineers, a bunch of designers, or about really doing business?"

We're sitting around a small, round table in the corner of his office, located in a small, nondescript modern building overlooking Salt Lake City. Behind Jacobsen's desk, I see a sculptured model of a dinosaur foot, what looks like a gyroscope and a collection of other mechanical devices that only an engineer could explain or appreciate. I can't let myself be distracted though. Jacobsen's mind has began to turn, and ge segues fast.

"Design is not just scheming but putting together a bunch of ingredients that solve your problem," continues Jacobsen, who looks younger than his 55 years. He speaks with rapid fire precision, and in a level tone that suggests both intellectual certainty and youthful discovery at the same time. "Before that you have to understand what your problem is...What our group does is struggle with how to take a problem that is important, difine it, and then solve it to a point that allows it to become usable by society."

"Our group" is not jus Sarcos, Inc., the Salt Lake City design and product engineering firm that Jacobsen heads as chairman, There's also the Center for Engineering Design at the University of Utah, of which Jacobsen is director. Add to that the resources he taps as a professor in the department of mechanical engineering at the U of U, plus the research and adjunct positions he holds there in chemical engineering, computer science, bioengineering and surgery. It quickly becomes clear that Jacobsen is more than just and engineer. Advances in computer technology have enabled his naturally eclectic mind to do eclectic things.

The descendant of Mormon settlers who tamed a wild land, Jacobsen has lived his life on the frontier of science. His diverse interests have earned him 69 U.S, patents and 30 foreign ones. He has gone far beyond the now famour Utah Artificial Arm that he created more than a decade ago. Today he makes robots that both entertain and work, virtual reality interfaces and medical monitoring systems for the military, revolutionary intravenous drug-delivery devices for home use and catheters no thicker than a human hair that surgeons can use to take X-rays or cut away cancerous tissue.