Presently Dr Al Akerman is Vice President of Diditco, Inc., a company he and his wife Margo formed in 2005 to develop sensors and electronic products. He is also a Vice President of Emerging Measurements. In addition to consulting, his interests include home repair, reading and running. He is also a single-engine, multiengine and instrument flight instructor.
He was elected to Sigma Pi Sigma, Phi Eta Sigma, and Sigma Xi honoraries. His PhD thesis was published as a volume in the Garland Press series ‘Outstanding Dissertations on Energy.’ From 1968 to 1972 he was a pilot in the US Navy, flying a variety of propeller and jet aircraft to test systems such as forward looking infrared and laser guided bombs. During 1984 and 1985 he was leader of a laser chemistry applications project in the Department of Physics, University of New South Wales,Australia. He is a Sr. Member of the IEEE and past chair of the 1000 member East Tennessee Section. For 28 years Akerman was at various times a research staff member,group leader, and senior program manager at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory where he worked on multilayer blast shielding, engineering applications of chaos, non-contact diagnostics, and communications. During his career he has done research inoptics,lasers, polymers, isotope separation, fusion, and military weapons systems. He has more than 150 publications and 10 patents.
Al Akerman graduated from the University of Illinois in 1976 with a PhD in Nuclear Engineering, specializing in plasma physics and from the University of Virginia in 1968, BS in Physics with Distinction.