SPRING 200B

VOLUME 1 B

NO.1

co-The Reat-World Advantage That Defi Drexel

UNIVERSITY

INSIDE: Five Life-Changing Co-Ops and One Amazing Career

CO-OP FEATURE

Stephen L. Squires was not a typical little boy. For one

thing, there were the trains. His father, Harvey, a

mechanical engineer, used to buy his son all kinds of

technical equipment, just for the joy of watching the young

boy figure out how it worked. When Harvey brought home an

electric train set, within hours Stephen had not only set it up,

he'd reconfigured the switching circuits and tracks so that two

different trains could operate automatically.

"It was a simple form of switching and computation, completely

obvious to me after some experiments;' Stephen remembers.

And then there was the reading issue. The first day of first

grade, when he was asked to join the reading circle and read

aloud the classic Fun with Dick and Jane, Stephen refused to

do it. "I wasn't going to waste one minute reading that stuff;' he

states emphatically. The teachers figured Stephen couldn't read

and sat him in the corner until his attitude changed. His attitude

didn't change. The other children soon realized Stephen's mind

didn't work quite like theirs, and a few bullied the serious little

boy. They grabbed the college textbooks Stephen's father had

given him to read and threw them down

pretending to be able to read the textbook. Stephen's mother,

Sarann, an elementary teacher herself, asked them to give him

a problem from the book to see if he was able to understand the

advanced text. Of course, he immediately knew the answers to

every question they asked.

"My parents worked out something with the school so I

didn't have to attend normal classes;' Stephen says. "I just hung

out in the library and science lab, reading and doing problems

and experiments. Then in 10th grade, my chemistry teacher,

Joseph Schmuckler, discovered that I could be of some real use:'

In the early '60s, a special project was being undertaken to

rewrite the national high school science curriculum and teach

chemistry using the latest concepts. Hundreds oflaboratory

experiments and research projects were required to prepare the

new course, and Mr. Schmuckler needed help completing the

grant work. For the next three years, Stephen joined a small

group of students working on this project and spent most of

his time in the chemistry lab and working outside of school in

real research labs at the Franklin Institute and throughout the

Philadelphia area during summers. The

the hallway when the teachers weren't

looking. So Stephen began to carry a

briefcase - to elementary school -

although he still refused to read in class.

I just hung out in the library

and science lab, reading and

doing experiments.

budding scientist even provided some

assistance in developing physical and

mathematical models for Schmuckler's

doctoral thesis.

"I just wanted to be left alone to read

my technical books;' he admits. "My

parents realized I didn't fit into a normal

academic environment, so they made

sure to challenge me with advanced reading, made room for me to

set up a laboratory in the basement, and let me learn on my own:'

In the fifth grade, Stephen was caught in the cloakroom

reading one of his father's engineering textbooks. The teachers

called in his parents for a conference and told them the boy was

26 DREXEL UNIVERSITY

By the time he graduated from high

school in 1965, Stephen Squires was one

of the brightest kids in America who

hadn't taken the SATs. "I went to the

testing site, but I took one look at the test and knew I wasn't

going to waste my time filling in all the circles;' he remembers.

"So I left:'

Standardized tests had about as much appeal to Squires as

the Dick and Jane books. Still, he wanted desperately to go to

a college close to his home in Havertown that would challenge

him with science and mathematics courses and allow him to

continue to work in the laboratory. His father figured Drexel

was the one school where his gifted, precocious son might thrive.

Dr. Schmuckler wrote a glowing letter of recommendation and

in 1965, Stephen Squires was admitted early decision to the only

college to which he applied.

"When you think about it, it's sort of amazing that Drexel

admitted me:' Squires says, remembering that guidance counselors

had once told his parents to place him in a vocational-technical

school. "I was this very curious kid who did not seem to fit into

a normal academic environment, with no SATs and just one

letter of recommendation. But they took a risk and let me in.

The admissions people were open-minded enough to see

possibilities where others might be threatened or judgmental.

I think that says a lot about the kind of place Drexel is:'

Instead of moving onto campus, Squires moved into his

parents' basement, where he had a large bedroom, a study and his

beloved laboratory. In the summer before his freshman year, his

parents realized their son was completely unprepared to cope with

traditional school, so they urged him to take speed reading and

study skills courses that Drexel offered over the summer.

"I took speed reading and dramatically increased my reading

rate and learned a lot of study skills, which I painstakingly applied

when I started college. I was determined to succeed in my first

real school experience, so I worked up schedules for every hour of

the day, slept very little, and on my first college report card I got a

3.9091. Unfortunately, I got a B in ROTC:' he adds with a grin.

1965 was the first year of Drexel's new curriculum for

engineering students. President Hagerty had decided that if

Drexel was going to produce world-class engineers and become

a true university, it needed to be teaching real math and real

science as the basis of all engineering. Therefore, advanced

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chemistry, advanced calculus and advanced physics were now

required of all engineering majors. Squires was thrilled.

"From day one at Drexel, I was taking real science and math­

ematics courses. Amazingly good courses; and I liked it. I was

nervous about how I'd deal with the faculty and if they'd resent all

the questions I'd ask, but they didn't mind being challenged. And

the co-op advisors were just as good at dealing with unconven­

tional students like me. They listened to what we were interested in,

and knew how to place us in situations where we would do well:'

In his second term at Drexel, Squires got a call from his co-op

coordinator asking about his summer job plans. He showed the

freshman a recruiting brochure from the National Security Agen­

cy (NSA) and told Stephen that he'd been nominated for the job by

his professors and NSA-experienced upperclassmen. Squires was

intrigued. Recalling what he'd learned about chance favoring the

prepared mind (a favorite saying of Dr. Schmuckler's), he readied

himself for the interview by asking students who had interned at

NSA what was the worst place to be assigned in the agency, the

best place, and where you wish you could be stationed but weren't

allowed. Then he set his sites on the advanced research labs, a

seemingly impossible dream.

The interviews for interns were held at NSA at Ft. Meade,

Maryland, where 100 students from Drexel and other schools

landed for three days of interviews. The first thing the prospec­

tive interns were asked was to take a full battery of intelligence,

personality and aptitude tests. Not surprisingly, Squires objected,

saying that he hadn't come to NSA to take tests and that he'd been

promised a tour of the advanced research labs.

"They were a little surprised when I left the room to talk

about what I wanted to do and why, and I reminded them of the

discussion I'd had at Drexel with their recruiter:'

The NSA recruiter was called in, confirmed the conversation,

and arranged for Squires to visit the advanced research group.

SPRING 2008 27

CO-OP FEATURE

Squires spent several hours touring the labs and talking to NSA

scientists, mathematicians and engineers, then interviewed with

the head of research, who quickly informed the NSA co-op

coordinator that the Drexel student should be working in the

advanced research labs. Sure enough, by the end of his freshman

year, while he was still only 18, Squires was sworn in to work at

the National Security Agency. Thus began the trajectory

of his career.

"I called NSA the Time Machine;' he recounts, "because

working in a super-advanced research environment like that is

like leaping ahead by two decades. Imagine you are in a place with

the most advanced communications and computing technology

on earth, with access to the most advanced sensors that can

collect data anywhere on earth, and networks,

servers and storage that are decades ahead of

anything that exists in the present. And you are

at the vortex of solving the most challenging

problems in technology within NSA and all the

intelligence agencies: trying to predict and shape

the future, protect the country and push our

capabilities as far as they can go. That was how

I spent all my co-op tours at NSA. It was

2 B DREXEL UNIVERSITY

there was because of Drexel's co-op program:'

Incredibly, during his first challenging co-op tour at NSA,

Squires also decided to work ahead in his next term's courses. He

bought all the books, taught himself the math, including Fourier

analysis and Laplace transform theory, and completed the course­

work. When he returned to Drexel, he anticipated some resistance

from his professors.

"But at Drexel they didn't mind if you leaped ahead; they

tolerated students with different ideas like mine. My teachers were

real engineers who were teaching real engineering as it's actually

practiced. They'd worked in the field and weren't threatened by

serious students bringing in tough questions. They liked it. They

expected co-op students to come back, share their experience

and enlighten the class, and that proved mutually enriching.

With overachievers - and I wasn't the only one - they'd never try

to discourage you. They just said isn't that interesting, you're two

years ahead:'

The encouraging atmosphere at Drexel suited Squires. In

his five college years, he found a mentor in Professor Bruce

Eisenstein (who later became chair of Drexel's Engineering

Department), spent four co-op tours at NSA, and was able to

take his research in rewarding directions. He was even able to

work on the first real personal computer, an 8' x 8' monster of

a machine designed by two great scientists: Gordon Bell, the

leading computer architect at the Digital Equipment Corporation,

and Ivan Sutherland, an army private at NSA who had graduated

from MIT. In the '60s, the best science minds in the country were

being applied to solve the country's most difficult technology

problems, and Squires was right there in the thick of it. The basic

lessons the young Drexel intern was learning in his co-op tours at

NSA would inform the rest of his career and dramatically

"Our goal was to enable the U.S.

The "Bridge" of Eta Kappa Nu that Stephen Squires

constructed and measured as part of his induction into

the Electrical Engineering Honor Society.

CO-OP FEATURE

information technology base to become the single most

advanced in the world. To that end, we kept adapting and

scaling the approach from one challenging problem to the next,

over and over again, to look at the fundamental limits of what

we were facing and figure out how to overcome those barriers.

At that time, computing was so expensive only a few industries

like nuclear, defense and intelligence could afford to apply it.

The American government invested in that mission of research

and discovery, and it paid off in ways that could never have

been anticipated:'

Upon graduation from Drexel in 1970, Squires was awarded a

National Science Foundation Graduate Fellowship that provided

full tuition and a stipend for graduate studies. He decided to

attend Princeton because it was small and close to home. Squires

earned a master's at Princeton (and several years later earned a

PhD from Harvard on a National Security Agency Graduate

Fellowship). At Princeton he also met Ann Marmor, one ofPrinc­

eton's first women graduate students in Computer Science; they

were to marry three years later. Although Squires had been the

only Drexel intern not to accept a job at

of high-performance information technology.

"Once I again, I was in the time machine, working decades

into the future, jumping from theory to building, trying to an­

ticipate limitations so by the time they become a problem, you've

already figured out potential solutions. We were searching for

more and more advanced ways to use less expensive technology.

We began to understand the need for high-performance comput­

ers that were built using multiple computers working in parallel.

This was years before microprocessors came into use and led to

significant advances in computing, networking and interactive

personal computing:'

By 1983, after 10 years at NSA, Squires knew he was ready

for a new challenge. He was hired as a program manager at the

Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), while

Ann Marmor-Squires moved to TRW Defense Systems Group

and became one of the first women TRW Technical Fellows.

When DARPA learned about Squires' background at NSA, he was

assigned responsibility for the high-performance computing part

of DARPA's vital new program in strategic computing. Once again,

Squires found himself on the front lines of

a revolution. Undaunted, he established a NSA after graduation, he had promised he

would come back. In 1972, he was ready to

return but the agency was facing a hiring

freeze. So Squires moved back into his

parents' basement and found a job with

the Burroughs Advanced Development

Organization (near Philadelphia) that was

doing work for NSA and DARPA.

Once again, computing performance goal of a trillion

operations per second for large problems. I was in the time machine, working

decades into the future.

"That goal was thought to be com­

pletely unachievable, but I believed it could

be done by approaching the problem in

Within a year, a position at NSA opened in the Computer

Science Research Group, and Ann Marmor-Squires also inter­

viewed and was hired into the new Computer Security Research

Group. Squires moved back to his dream job in the advanced labs

and spent the next 10 years at NSA working to push the frontiers

30 DREXEL UNIVERSITY

a completely different way. If you look at

technology trends over time, the rate at

which things change slows down when you keep doing the

same thing. Therefore, we decided to focus on systematically

combining advances from multiple areas to develop what I

called 'scalable parallel high-performance computing systems: "

With the introduction of scalable parallel systems, scientists

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The goal was to create an American "information 1 "I,

superhighway~!) inlyvhich computing sYtltems o 101' J 1

capable of sustaining trillions-of-op8t1Cltions-per-o ' I 11

second could interact through billion-bit-per-

second networks with easy-to-use, high-definition

interfaces by the end of the 20th century.

were able to make dramatic improvements in the performance and

architecture of computers. By 1992 a historic collaboration had

formed between DARPA, NSA, the National Science Foundation,

Department of Energy, NASA and National Institutes of Health,

among others. These agencies were instrumental in implementing

the Federal High-Performance Computing and Communication

Act of 1991 and building the National Information Infrastructure.

The goal was to create an American "information superhighway"

in which billion-bit-per-second networks could interact effortlessly

and endlessly among computing systems. These systems would

be capable of sustaining trillions of operations per second and

interact with high-performance workstations in real time. Senator

Al Gore provided critical Congressional leadership, Presidential

Science Advisor Alan Bromley was an advocate, and Dr. Squires

was named director of DARPA's part of the federal program.

The federal HPCC program was ultimately to enable the

modern Internet and make the U.S. technology information base

the most advanced in the world. It is difficult in this day of high

technology to think that just a few decades ago it existed only in

the minds of a few brilliant scientists. In fact, it is almost impos­

sible to grasp the complex ingenuity of what those people created.

However, one thing is certain: the economy of the United States

was profoundly shaped and impacted by the remarkable increases

in productivity and efficiency made possible by the Internet and

advanced interactive computer systems. By the mid-'90s, technol­

ogy was becoming an integral part of every sector of the economy.

SPRING 2008 3 1

CO-OP FEATURE

''A National Academy of Sciences report outlined the impact

of DARPA on information technology in a chart covering the mid-

1960s to the late '90s;' Squires says proudly. "On the horizontal

was time. On the vertical were the initiatives in which DARPA

had been involved. A pattern of thick black lines emerged on the

right side of the chart, across all technology areas, indicating a

cluster of billion -dollar industries that emerged as a result of the

advanced research started a decade or two before. It was clear the

DARPA investment model was working to foster both national

security and economic vitalitY:'

In philosophical terms, Squires explains, "It's been myexperi­

ence that high-performance technology empowers people to work

more effectively and make significant leaps

Squires spent the next few years dividing his time between

helping improve technology for U.S. national security, working

closely with DARPA, and developing approaches for Accelerating

Trustworthy Internetworking and related community building

activities at HP. He created a Trusted Systems Initiative that pro­

vided guidance to HP on advanced information systems security

programs, served on Defense Science Board Task Forces and was

a founding member of the Intelligence Science Board formed

after 9/1l.

In 2006, Dr. Squires left HP to spend more time on the East

Coast in Potomac, Maryland, and pursue independent consult­

ing. He and Ann also wanted to be closer to their two grown

daughters: Gayle, a Harvard undergrad

forward. What I learned in my Drexel co-op

years, again at NSA, and put into practice at

DARPA on a national scale, is that strategic

investments at the margin move technol­

ogy forward faster. So you have to focus on

trends, limits and alternative futures and

use all available information to stay on the

cutting edge. You can't be afraid of out-

You have to focus on trends, limits and

alternative futures and use all available information to stay on the cutti ng edge.

with a Penn MD and Wharton MBA, and

Robyn, who has a master's in architecture

from Tulane; both daughters now live and

work in New York City.

In the past few years, Dr. Squires

has happily resumed his connection to

Drexel. He served on the ECE Advisory

of-the-box thinking - it's the nonlinear, wildly improbable stuff

across multiple disciplines that enables fundamental advances.

And we must never lose that ability here in America:'

In 2000 Dr. Squires was finally lured from DARPA into the

private sector by an offer from Hewlett-Packard to become vice

president and chief science officer. He was immersed in technol­

ogy issues at HP and HP Labs when 9111 changed his focus.

"I was on the top floor at NSA in a two-day meeting discuss­

ing whether we were making the most effective use of advanced

technology for security. In the midst of that discussion, the meet­

ing was interrupted when someone turned on CNN and we saw

the plane hit the second tower:'

32 DREXEL UNIVERSITY

Council, met with his mentor, Dr. Bruce

Eisenstein, and was named Engineer of the Year in 2003. He also

made a special visit to the advisors in the co-op office, whom he

credits with helping an unusually precocious student get started

on what became an extraordinary career. When he reflects on

everything that has happened since his first days as a co-op

student in the NSA labs, it makes even a disciplined scientist

wax a bit sentimental.

"Most of today's modern information age came out of

projects NSA and DARPA started 10 to 20 years before any

normal person, business or venture capitalist believed it could

possibly be useful. Think about it. Timesharing, packet-switched

networking, internetworking, desktop interactive computing,

advanced programming languages and environments, very large­

scale integrated circuit designs, scalable parallel computing, and

so much more . .. Since the 1960s, the research community has

relentlessly reinvented the field over and over and over again. It

has been my privilege to operate at the frontier of that community

and contribute to its advancement:'

"Looking back, I realize that

I was able to pursue these

opportunities for exactly one

reason: Drexel University,

its faculty, and the co-op

program recognized my

potential and gave me the

chance to pursue my dreams,"

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Dr Stephen L. Squires with the Cray XMP-24 that was replaced by

the new generation of scalable parallel computing systems.

SPRING 2008 33