Bio: George Batten

As a former UH professor, George knows a lot about trying to get students excited about science and engineering. An excitement he has had ever since the BT (Before Transistor) years of his youth growing up in Houston building a vacuum-tube-based analog computer in high school. His education was at Will Rice’s marsh (now Rice University) from which he holds a BA in Mathematics and Physics, a MA in Mathematics, and a PhD in Mathematics. After a year in a postdoctoral position at the University of Illinois Digital Computer Laboratory, he was a biomathematician at the UT M. D. Anderson Hospital and Tumor Institute, then 20 years at the University of Houston, about 15 years in the Department of Mathematics and about 15 years in the Department of Electrical Engineering (yes, he knows that 15 + 15 = 30). He started the company Advanced Image Measurement Systems which evolved to developing microcontroller-based electronic systems.

In an earlier century, he was a scoutmaster for 20 years, which led to his inadvertently spending one night in a Mexican cave. In this century he has been active in the Sierra Club, leading both adult and youth outings. He is Vice Chair of the Houston Regional Group of the Sierra Club, and editor of that group’s newsletter (the Bayou Banner).

He and his wife, Barbara, have two children, three grandsons (one adopted in Siberia in a January, and twins located too far away in Portland, Oregon), and over 50 years of happiness together.