Thoughtventions Senior Personnel

Dr. Stephen Cuyler Bates, President and Chief Scientist of Thoughtventions, has B.S., M.S., and Sc.D. degrees in Aeronautical and Astronautical Engineering from MIT. Prior to founding Thoughtventions he was: a Staff Scientist at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) (5 years) working on a major national project in magnetic confinement nuclear fusion, a Senior Scientist at the General Motors Research Laboratories (6 years) working on internal combustion engine research, and a Senior Scientist (3 years) performing a wide variety of other small business research. He has 29 journal publications in a variety of fields, 76 other publications, 3 patents (2 sole author), and has been included in a variety of national and international Who's Who publications.

Dr. Stephen Cuyler Bates - President: CV

Thoughtventions: Dr. S. C. Bates - President

Dr. Stephen Cuyler Bates, President of Thoughtventions, is a Senior Scientist pursuing a career in multidisciplinary applied physical sciences. Dr. Bates founded Thoughtventions early in 1993 as a research and development company keying on the commercial development of multidisciplinary research advances. He has direct work experience in many different fields, and has worked in 4 different major fields in his technical career. At Thoughtventions he has managed research contracts totaling over $4,700,000, primary through the US Government Small Business Innovative Research (SBIR) program January 2012. Dr. Bates is sole author of 9 and coauthor of 27 refereed journal papers (30 total), as well as 76 other publications in many different fields. He is the primary author of articles in such diverse journals as Review of Scientific Instruments, Experiments in Fluids, Journal of Fire Science, Cryogenics, Combustion and Flame, Journal of Crystal Growth, Progress in Aeronautics and Astronautics, and SAE Transactions. He has been included in a variety of Who's Who publications since 1992, and he is currently a member of the Materials Research Society (MRS), American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA-Associate Fellow), Combustion Inst., Soc. of Photo-optical Instr. Eng. (SPIE), and the Cryogenics Society of America.

Dr. Bates has a broad scientific educational background based on 11 years of undergraduate (BS 1970, MS 1971) and graduate course work and research at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the department of Aeronautics and Astronautics. He accumulated twice the course credits needed for a BS equally divided between engineering, physics, and mathematics. His Master's thesis centered on controlling the chamber pressure of a transparent hybrid rocket (still in use) using a vortex valve exhaust nozzle. His doctoral program (ScD 1977) was a fundamental flow visualization study of the structure of turbulent mixing in a plane shear layer using planar excited phosphorescence when this technique was new.

Diverging from his fluid mechanics and combustion work at MIT, Dr. Bates used his educational background and references to become a full staff member of a physics team working on a major national project in the area of magnetic confinement nuclear fusion at the Oak Ridge National Laboratories. Over a 5 year tenure (1978-82) his major role in the ISX Group in the Fusion Energy Division was the operation of high power (2 MW) neutral beams and their associated systems and diagnostics. He also contributed to a wide variety of plasma diagnostic projects and overall Tokamak machine operation.

Dr. Bates next moved to internal combustion engine work at the General Motors Research Laboratories. Over 6 years (1984-90) his project was the design, construction, and successful operation of a unique (in the world at the time and currently much copied) single cylinder engine with full compression and combustion in a single-crystal sapphire cylinder. Together with a quartz piston top this engine gives complete optical access to the flow and combustion processes in the cylinder. Instantaneous image-intensified videography of engine flames together with image processing and analysis led to extensive research and publications concerning the fundamental processes of flow and flame propagation inside of the cylinder. As a tool for studying in-cylinder flows he developed a velocity diagnostic based on seeding micron-sized phosphorescing particles into the flow. He continues automotive consulting.

Continuing his diversification at a small R&D business, Dr. Bates was involved in a wide variety of contract research that included cryogenics, materials, combustion and fluid mechanics, chemistry, and optical diagnostics. Projects on which he was PI involved Sapphire, Fourier Transform Infrared Spectroscopy, Coal pyrolysis, Particulate clean-up of coal combustion gas, Materials fire characteristics, Solid oxygen, Soot measurement, and Acoustic fine particle agglomeration.

Since founding Thoughtventions, Dr. Bates has pursued a variety of Research and Development Programs.  He has successfully initiated SBIR programs funded by the Air Force, DOE, DOT/FAA, NASA, NSF, as well as a wide variety of commercial programs. These programs include work in the areas of Furnace Development, Crystal Growth, Sapphire Fiber Optics, Sapphire Microwave Windows, Solid Cryogenic Propulsion Systems, Materials, and Airport Lighting.  These programs have been almost all successful, building a foundation for ongoing research and commercial products.

To e-mail comments or questions to Stephen Cuyler Bates, click this address: thought@Thoughtventions.com

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Last updated: April 2017