Biography

LAWRENCE E. TANNAS, JR., CONSULTANT

Mr. Tannas has been a consultant in the electronics industry for over 25 years. His consulting area of expertise has been electronic displays. His work spans every aspect of electronics information displays from research and development, manufacturing, test and measurement, applications, human factors, marketing, etc. to advanced planning and concepts. Most of his activity of late has been in the application of electronic displays to aviation and avionics.

Mr. Tannas is presently president of Tannas Electronics, a sole proprietorship devoted to consulting, lecturing and research. He is also President of Tannas Electronic Displays, Incorporated, specializing in research and development and licensing intellectual property for preparing liquid crystal displays for avionics.

He received his BSEE (1959) and MSEE (1960) degrees from UCLA. His thesis was entitled "Optimum Synthesis of Inertial-Doppler Navigation." He started his career in the aerospace industry working on advanced concepts in guidance, control and navigation.

For the past 25 years, he has consulted and given seminars for numerous Fortune 500 companies, FAA, NASA, U.S. Air Force, U.S. Navy, National Science Foundation, DARPA and universities. In 1989 he served on a special committee for the National Science Foundation to study the HDTV industry evolving in Japan. He led a group of 11 scientists for the National Science Foundation JTEC committee to study the Japanese displays industry in 1991. He was an expert witness on electronic displays before the U.S. International Trade Commission in a display dumping petition hearing.

Prior to beginning his consulting business, he worked as an individual contributor and engineering manager at the GE Research Laboratories, Honeywell, Martin Marietta, Rockwell International, and Aerojet ElectroSystems. At GE he did research and development in automatic landing systems using Kalman filtering and optimization criteria.

While at Honeywell he invented the backup reentry guidance display for the Apollo Reentry Vehicle. He gave a technical paper on his concept at the AIAA Second Manned Space Flight Conference on "Manual Reentry Guidance", in Houston, 1964. His concept was used during the Apollo 13 reentry. While at Martin Marietta he developed a cockpit for the Martin SV5 Manned Space Vehicle and gave several papers on the subject. The SV5 is a predecessor to the Space Shuttle. At Rockwell International he developed the engineering prototype liquid-crystal display for the world's first full-scale production. At Aerojet Electro Systems he perfected a manufacturing process for electroluminescent displays.

Mr. Tannas has been awarded eight patents. In addition to the publication of over 50 technical papers in various proceedings, digests and journals, he is the author/editor of the book Flat-Panel Displays and CRTs, published in 1985 by Van Nostrand Reinhold, NY, and an author/editor of the book Flat-Panel Display Technologies, Japan, Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus, Noyes Publications, NJ, 1995. He has written articles in two technical encyclopedias, one by McGraw Hill and the other by Wiley and several technical books.

Since 1980, he has been a class coordinator and lecturer for over a 100 advanced 30-hour classes at UCLA and other institutions with the titles: Electronic Displays, Flat-Panel Displays, Photometry and Colorimetry, Human Factors, and Advanced Cockpit Displays. He is a frequently invited lecturer at UCLA, UCI, SID, SPIE Airforce Conferences, etc. Internationally, he has given invited seminars in Finland, The Netherlands, Japan, Korea, China and Canada. He was an invited lecturer at the Japanese National Science Foundation and at the Chinese National Academy of Physics lecturing on electroluminescence.

Mr. Tannas has been a reference for the electronics industry and is considered one of the foremost experts on electronic displays. For his pro bono consultant services to the U. S. Government including DARPA, National Science Foundation, CIA, etc. for a prolonged period of time, his coordinators awarded him a Certificate of Appreciation with Medallion. He is frequently asked for information and quoted in national and international publications including the Wall Street Journal, Business Week, EE Times, Los Angeles Times, Business Tokyo, Semiconductor International, and others.

He is a Fellow and past-president of the Society for Information Display (SID). Additionally, he is a Senior Member of IEEE, AIAA and a member of numerous professional societies and aviation organizations. Mr. Tannas' primary avocation is flying from which he has gained hands-on experience in display applications and human factors and holds commercial and flight instructor ratings.

Offices are at: 1426 Dana Pl., Orange, CA 92866; TEL 714-633-7874, FAX 633-4174 .