• Number 294  |
• August 31, 2009

Lifelong tinkerer does his part for lab upgrade

Rick Nelson

Rick Nelson has always been a tinkerer. A staff engineer at DOE’s Jefferson Lab, Nelson’s tinkering is now helping the lab’s 12 GeV Upgrade project.

Nelson grew up in Buchanan, Mich., a classic 1950's small town of 5,000. His parents, both college educated, encouraged his interest in science. As a kid, he devoured hobby magazines, built electronic circuits, bought parts for things and put them together. He and a friend once experimented with cooking hot dogs on electrified metal skewers. In high school, he worked in a radio and television repair shop.

Nelson says he was a true "science geek" with one artistic bent: playing the organ. Joining a friend’s band in high school led to Nelson’s first career as an on-air personality.

When he went off to Michigan Technological University in Houghton, he became the voice of the dorm radio station, eventually working for two stations as an on-air personality, engineer and voice-over talent.

He met his wife, Ali Rogan, in the mid-1970's while seated in a dentist's chair as she took tooth impressions. She was so taken with him that she took an impression of the wrong teeth.

Along the way, Nelson and his brother (he also has two sisters) designed, made and sold a connector for an Osborne “portable” computer with a built-in five-inch screen to hook it to a regular-sized monitor.

He came to Jefferson Lab in June 1988 and is now working on the high-power radiofrequency system that will add 10 RF zones for the 12 GeV Upgrade. Key to that effort is a new, higher-power klystron (round blue device in picture that generates RF). He’s been working on creating the specs for additional components and will oversee the procurement, construction, installation, testing and commissioning.

Despite the intensity of his work, he also pursues photography and glass art.

Submitted by DOE's Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility