By Michael Watkins

Dr. Frank Miller is the kind of competitor who has never met a challenge he has considered too difficult. At least that's how Curt Moore views his Rockwell Collins co-worker, and it's one of the reasons he nominated his colleague for our company's 2007 Corporate Engineer of the Year Award.

"Innovation plays a significant role in how Frank conducts business," said Moore, a technical project manager for Government Systems Communication Systems Engineering in Cedar Rapids. "He is truly one of those rare people capable of accomplishing about anything he puts his mind to. There isn't anything he finds to be 'too hard.'"

Building the future

A principal systems engineer who has been with our company since April 2004, Miller's role as the software and systems architect for ARC-210 Gen 5 radio design and development is one example of how his leadership and technical expertise can help our company reap positive results.

His Software Communication Architecture (SCA) work also is what resulted in him being named one of 10 finalists for our company's highest engineering honor.

"Frank's innovative approach to providing SCA compatibility in Gen 5 provides our company with several business benefits," explained Moore. "It enables further ARC-210 radio product spins capable of transitioning into and meeting the requirements of a Joint Tactical Radio System (JTRS) Airborne Maritime Fixed (AMF) Small Airborne terminal.

"And because of Frank's efforts, we now have viable hardware/software architecture for hosting SCA waveforms on tactical radios that are small enough to fit in one hand," Moore continued.

While previous generations of ARC-210 radios already have a lot of code written, the new SCA JTRS radios are being designed to meld existing software with new JTRS software. According to Miller, one of the biggest challenges was making these new tools work with existing infrastructure.

"The requirements are tight - even tighter than JTRS - so it's been challenging to squeeze all the information in," said Miller, whose role has evolved during the past year. "I was originally asked to comment on design elements, but then my role grew, and I became lead software architect responsible for design and software."

Learning young

Although his tenure at Rockwell Collins began just four short years ago, his path to an engineering career is rooted in his adolescence.

His first computer, which did not have a keyboard and was programmed with switches and lights, was an IMSAI. One of the earliest models of the personal computer, the IMSAI caught Miller's attention and sparked his interest in engineering, despite the fact that it was extremely primitive compared to today's computers.

At 14, the Rock Island, Ill., native stumbled upon a PDP-11 based computer center at nearby Augustana College and managed to hack into one of their computers.

"I was just playing around," recalled Miller, who earned a bachelor's degree in electrical engineering and a master's degree in computer science from The University of Iowa. "But hacking into that computer resulted in my dad buying me a computer, and I was hooked."

Upon completion of his studies at Iowa, Miller spent three years working in Space Station flight controls at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) in Houston, Texas. He then moved to the East Coast and earned his Ph.D. in computer science from the University of Maryland.

After earning his degree, he worked with two Voice-over-IP (VoIP) startup companies in Maryland - founding the second and also acting as chief technical officer. Both were eventually acquired by other companies.

In 2003, Miller and his family began considering ways to return to their Iowa roots. But instead of joining his new colleagues at Rockwell Collins in Cedar Rapids, Miller eventually moved with his family to Denver, Colo., for his wife's work in orthopedic surgery at the University of Colorado at Denver. He then began telecommuting between the Rocky Mountain State and Cedar Rapids.

"Working separately from my team in Cedar Rapids makes what we do even more challenging, but we collaborate and talk every day," said Miller.

- Michael Watkins is a freelance writer.