Description

Joel Bowers has taught Vacuum Vessel Engineering for 11 years. He has 30 years of experience in design, fabrication, welding, machining, inspection, and rigging operations both as a hands-on design engineer and project manager. He's been responsible for deployment of over 40 vacuum vessels ranging in size from hand-held scale to 45 tons, primarily for major experimental physics facilities. He has BS in mechanical engineering and an MS in computer science from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, is a California Professional Engineer and PMI Project Management Professional. Major projects have supported isotope separation, laser guide star, accelerator detector systems, EUV lithography, airborne spectrometers, and large laser systems. In addition to vacuum vessels, he has led the design and deployment of 500-ton magnets and record-scale optical bench structures. He is the developer of VacTran, commercial vacuum system design software used by engineers worldwide. He currently leads an ISO9001 certified engineering design and manufacturing organization at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory.