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Steve Beck: Alumnus turns engineering into entertainment art
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Steve
Beck received the 2003 EECS Alumni of the Year Award.
ANGELA PRIVIN PHOTO |
Steve C. Beck (B.S.'71 EECS) has never done things the conventional
way. He transferred to Berkeley as a senior, received a grant
from the National Endowment for the Arts for an engineering project,
and personally redefined the "EE" in EECS.
While he holds his degree in electrical engineering, he prefers
to think of himself as an "entertainment engineer" who
uses electronics as his mode for inventing.
"Entertainment engineering encompasses the multibillion dollar
categories of movies, cartoons, video games, and toys," Beck
says. "To entertain means to engage the mind, and I use engineering
to create products that engage the minds of children."
The recipient of this year’s EECS Alumni of the Year Award,
Beck has more than 500 inventions under his belt. His Berkeley-based
company, Beck-Tech, has relied heavily on a network of talent
that includes Berkeley engineering professors and students to
develop games, products, and technology for corporate clients.
He is also director of research and development at 4Kids Entertainment,
where he is working on a software compressing system that allows
children to watch cartoons on a Nintendo Game Boy.
Beck blends art and creativity with crack technical skills. The
secret to his success, he says, has been passion, playfulness,
persistence, and thinking way outside the box. He knew he wanted
to be an electrical engineer from the age of eight, when he made
$50 a week fixing neighborhood radios in Illinois. He transferred
from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign to be in Berkeley,
which he saw as the epicenter of technology and innovation. Thirty-two
years after graduation he still lives up the hill from the College.
by Angela Privin, Engineering Public Affairs
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FOREFRONT takes you into the
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