Alumni Magazine - Summer 2008 - (Page 38) Chip Wade HGTV Carpenter Photo: Donna Abbott Vlahos, The Business Review C hip Wade, ME 06, joined the Atlanta crew of the HGTV hit show “Designed to Sell” in 2007. This spring he added the title of spokesman for Mohawk Industries to his resume. On “Designed to Sell,” a designer and carpenters ready a home for market in three days on a $2,000 budget. “I love working with power tools and woodworking. The part I love the most is being intimately involved in the design process and seeing intricate, custom pieces come to life,” Wade told Atlanta Homes & Lifestyles magazine. Wade became certified in residential construction while working as a structural engineer in a home building firm after graduating from Tech. He continues to manage Wade Built LLC. HGTV publicity says Wade “comes from a line of experienced carpenters and woodcraftsmen. His interests in home renovation and carpentry began from an early age working closely with his father.” On the Mohawk Web site, Wade gives interactive presentations on flooring products, including SmartStrand carpet. In explaining why the company selected Wade as its spokesman, David Duncan, vice president of marketing for Mohawk, told the media, “Chip combines real-world experience with extraordinary communications and craftsmanship.” Shawn Allan Ceramics Expert S hawn Allan holds two patents and has applied for two more. Allan, 28, got the first before he had even reached the legal drinking age. Allan, MS MSE 05, was awarded his first patent as a junior at Alfred University in western New York. Working at Sandia National Laboratories in California, he was part of a team that created “tiny mechanical components like gears from powder metals and ceramics,” he says, for use in safety devices on missiles. Allan was one of just two ceramics specialists in the department. “It was strange to have just completed my sophomore year and then be told that I was the ceramic expert at a national lab,” he said in a recent interview with The Business Review of Albany, N.Y. While at Tech in 2005, Allan received the Best Paper Award at the American Ceramic Society’s international conference concerning research performed with professor Ken Sandhage. The group had found a way to convert the glass shells of diatoms, or microscopic algae, into ceramics. “We were performing relatively simple chemical reactions to convert the glass to other ceramics, while keeping the same shape. By doing that, we were making 3-D microscopic structures in large quantities that are impossible to make by any advanced fabrication method,” Allan says. Allan now is a senior materials engineer at Ceralink, a developer of materials processing technologies in Troy, N.Y. One of the company’s current projects, which may earn Allan another patent, involves developing a speedier and more cost-effective way for manufacturing the laminated glass used in such items as windshields and transparent armor. “The way it’s done now is to use large pressure vessels called autoclaves to heat and press the vinyl between sheets of glass. That method can take several hours,” he says. “The method we developed uses a radio-frequency press to do the lamination in about one minute.” When he’s not in the lab, Allan may be found on the slopes skiing or snowboarding, in the mountains hiking or in his yard tending to his garden. “I used to garden a lot — and worked on a farm — through middle and high school, but my years in college prevented much of that. This summer I have only my second garden in the last 10 years, but it’s doing great.” — LO 38 Georgia Tech Alumni Magazine • Summer 2008
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