I was one of several students Dr. Mead Killion taught. As many of Mead’s accomplishments are mentioned by others, I want to share my personal experiences with him and what I saw during my PhD years and beyond.Photo courtsey of Gail Gudmundsen.Mead was a prolific inventor—he has over 90 patents that display bold and unconventional ways of thinking and innovation. K-AMP is likely Mead’s most famous and recognizable invention that was based on the loudness growth characteristics of the cochlea to provides wide dynamic range compression. The K-AMP circuit benefited millions of individuals with hearing loss. The insert earphones are another invention that has forever changed the landscape of audiology. They are also an example of the double-edged blade of our knowledge. On one hand, our knowledge helps us carry out our jobs effectively and, on the other hand, it forms the box that limits our thinking. Before the invention of the insert earphones, all hearing tests were conducted using headphones. These are the devices that deliver sounds into user’s ears by placing loudspeakers inside supra-aural or circum-aural cushions. These headphones are staples of audiology to this day. Seeing the shortcomings of the headphones, Mead invented and introduced the insert earphones in 1984. The insert earphones along with the foam tips provided a much smaller footprint for audiometric testing, greatly reduced the amount of background noise entering the ear canal during testing, eliminated the problems of collapsed ear canals associated with using headphones, increased the interaural attention, and reduced the need to mask while testing for hearing thresholds. Mead was an individual who valued and displayed high integrity. The NIH Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) and Small Business Technology Transfer grant mechanisms are designed to encourage innovation and help small businesses in their initial stage of product development. Mead received two SBIR grants to develop the K-AMP circuit. After the successful implementation and marketing of K-AMP, he returned the whole amount of the grants to NIH. Such a concept and action were unheard of! During the celebration of life luncheon organized by Mead’s wife, Gail Gudmundsen, one of his former employees, Patty Johnson (formerly known as Patty Niquette), described a similar incident: During a period of financial hardship, Mead asked his employees to take 10% pay cut and promised to repay them later. Some thought there was no way a company would do that. To their surprise, Mead repaid all of them after the product was launched successfully! Mead was a generous advisor who truly wanted his students to succeed. Most of my PhD project was conducted at his company, Etymotic Research (ER). I was allowed to roam free at ER, to chat with other engineers, and to learn what I could. My PhD project was to examine the effects of different types of hearing aid input-output functions on speech understanding and sound quality. To keep all other factors constant, we needed a special chip that could be programmed to different input-output functions. Mead hired two engineers to modify the EroScan chip to create a signal processor to provide the needed amplification. He also hired Larry Revitt, a recording engineer, to teach me how to make recordings and how to professionally edit the processed sounds. Mead was also very generous with his time. He was the President and the Chief of Technology Officer of ER. Most of the advising happened after long workdays. At the time, I was just an audiology student who did not think much beyond studies. Once Dr. Harvey Dillon came to visit and saw that I was hanging out after work hours to meet with Mead, and he would spend time to advise me. Harvey said Mead had a very understanding wife. The comment made me realize that both Mead and Gail have been very generous to me with his time and with their time together. Perhaps the best indication of Mead’s integrity, generosity, and care for others is reflected in how much others around him were willing to go the extra mile for him. Most employees at ER have been working there for many years. As a PhD student, I found a metaphorical parallel of Mead and Jesus: Once, a servant of a centurion was sick. So, the centurion went to seek help from Jesus. After learning of the story, Jesus said, “let’s go to your house.” The centurion said, “Oh, you don’t need to come. I’m a centurion. If I ask a soldier to carry out a task. It will be done. If you say my servant will be healed, he will be healed.” This is how other engineers at ER and I treated Mead’s “work orders.” Sometimes, he was curious and wanted to know the results of a project/a pilot study in a short time. No problem. It would be done, gladly!
King Chung (Sun,) studied this question.