To: Edgar Castro

From: Jon Hagen

Date: 1-11-00

Subject: candidate Jaime Plá

Yesterday I spent one hour with Jaime Plá, questioning him directly and showing him some of our electronics systems to judge his reactions. His answers, as well as his reactions, were excellent. He immediately understood the design of the 430 collector and waveguide calibration kits. He knew that the traditional stability criterion for amplifiers, the "K factor", is a necessary but not a sufficient condition for stability and he knew why. His master's degree program at the University of Massachusetts in microwave engineering was the same as that taken by Gene Lauria and could hardly be better suited to our needs. In his jobs at Raytheon and Motorola, he has had considerable hands-on experience; he is comfortable with hardware and test equipment.

It seems remarkable that we would encounter a microwave engineer who originally came from Barrio Angeles, just south of the observatory. Plá would almost certainly enjoy working at the observatory and he and his wife should enjoy living in Arecibo.

Creativity is hard to judge. His resume lists many development projects. He came across to me as an imaginative person. I would bet in his favor.

His publication record shows that he has enjoyed close collaborations with his colleagues at Raytheon and Motorola. We would have to make every effort for him to continue advancing in his career. The effort could be a considerable but the payoff could be that Plá would become a key engineer within two or three years. I recommend that he be given a job offer as soon as possible and I hope he will accept it.