Education & Early Work

HIGH SCHOOL
At 6 feet 5 inches, Scott Jones played center on the basketball team at Atherton High School in Louisville, Ky, with a game high of six hard-earned points. In 1976, in the summer before his junior year, his family moved to Indianapolis, Indiana. He attended North Central High School (in the "X" program, which was geared toward excelling on Advanced Placement exams for college). At NCHS, he became very active in academics and student government. Scott graduated from North Central High School in Indianapolis in 1978 with nearly two years worth of college credits.

HANDS-ON LEARNING AT HOME
"It was always more interesting to learn how something worked rather than use it as it was intended," Scott said. Here's one example: At home one morning, Scott took a non-working IBM Selectric typewriter apart. He spread every single piece out on the kitchen table. By that afternoon, Scott had re-assembled the typewriter, and it WORKED, although he didn't exactly know what he had done to make it work. On several other occasions, Scott discovered "the hard way" that he should have respect for 110 volt circuits.

COLLEGE
Growing up, Scott had planned to become a doctor. When Scott first entered Indiana University in 1978, he majored in "pre med" (chemistry and biology). Later, after taking the normal chemistry and biology curriculum, he decided to change majors and focus on math and physics to understand the underpinnings of his initial studies. In his (first) senior year, when he took his Medical College Admissions Test, he seemed to have a particularly high aptitude in the analytical section, revealing a natural inclination toward computers and solving problems. He subsequently shifted his focus toward computer technologies and continued his undergraduate studies for a couple of extra years majoring in computer science with a focus on neurochemistry in his undergraduate honors thesis.

EE ON THE SIDE
Because IU did not offer classes in electrical engineering on the Bloomington campus, Scott basically taught himself "enough to get by." He placed an advertisement in the back of BYTE, a computer hobbyist magazine: "Poor starving student seeking handouts..." He began experimenting with the equipment he soon received. While he had the equipment, he learned how to build an oscilloscope, a stereo, and a television set. Also, he built a computer CPU and memory system "from scratch."

EXTRACURRICULAR ACTIVITIES
During Scott’s time at IU, he was actively involved in several student government and honorary organizations where he often served as the leader of the group. Later, this would serve him well when he started his first company at the age of 25.

GRADUATION FROM IU
Scott graduated with honors from Indiana University in 1984, receiving a Bachelor of Science degree with a major in computer science.

WORK AT INDIANA UNIVERSITY
From 1982 to 1984, while a student at IU, Scott also was a senior systems specialist at the Indiana University Computer Science Laboratory. During this time, he also worked as a systems applications programmer at the Indiana University Phonetical Laboratory. Scott worked extensively as a consultant to the neurochemistry laboratory at Indiana University. He designed and implemented a computerized data acquisition and analysis system for real-time monitoring of various electro-chemical activities in the brain. Several developments in the field were a direct result of the system he designed.

THE DOUGLAS HOFSTADTER CONNECTION
While working in the Computer Science Department at IU, Scott was able to assist Dr. Douglas Hofstadter with basic infrastructure support of his research. Now a professor of cognitive science and computer science at Indiana University, Dr. Hofstader received a Pulitzer Prize and an American Book Award in 1980 for Godel, Escher, Back: an Eternal Golden Braid.

In the early 1980s, while Dr. Hofstadter took a sabbatical at MIT working with Marvin Minsky, known by many as a founding father of the field of artificial intelligence, Scott "house sat" for Dr. Hofstadter with the fringe benefit of having a "high speed" (9600 baud!) link from home into the computer science department's VAX computer system.

WORK AT THE MASSACHUSETTS INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY (MIT)
While checking out employment opportunities during his senior year, Scott fell in love with the world-renowned Artificial Intelligence Laboratory at MIT. He worked there as a research scientist from 1984 to 1986. Scott said, "I got to hang out with many of the people who had written the books I had been studying."

Among the projects that he worked on were an Internet-based weather station atop the building, a high-resolution printer network, vision applications, an optical storage archival system, the Utah/MIT dexterous hand, and Rod Brooks' mobile robots.