• butler

     

    Dr. Gary Butler, Class of 1989

    Mr. Pearl High School, Most Likely to Succeed, PHS Hall of Fame

    Favorite Pearl Memory: “Beating Brandon my sophomore and senior years in football.  Eat Dirt Brandon!”

    Dr. Gary Butler, Pearl High School Class of 1989, is the founder, chairman, and CEO of Camgian Microsystems Corporation, headquartered in Starkville, Mississippi.  He has spent the last two decades working in advanced technology with a specific focus in the area of intelligent systems for the US Department of Defense. Butler attributes his drive to not quit from his teachers and coaches that pushed him to set high expectations both academically and athletically.

    After high school Butler earned a B.S. in mechanical engineering from Tulane University, where he was a scholarship athlete and 4-time letter winner for the varsity football team; a M.S. in mechanical engineering from Vanderbilt University; and a Ph.D. from the University of Cambridge in engineering where he was a member of Churchill College. Additionally, he received the executive certificate in strategy and innovation from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Sloan School of Management.

    Butler says Pearl prepared him for success “by teaching a strong work ethic and setting high expectations. I have carried these principles with me in all phases of my life and career.” Prior to founding Camgian in 2006, he was a division engineer in the Washington, DC office of Internet pioneer BBN Technologies. Dr. Butler was appointed to membership in the Science Development Program, a technical rank reserved for the company’s most exceptional scientists and engineers. 

    During his career, he has led numerous DARPA and other government-funded programs to build next-generation intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance capabilities for the US military. His work in the field includes the invention of Genetically Adaptive Neural Network Classification Systems and Methods, one of five patents that he has been awarded.

    While he could have built his multi-million dollar company anywhere, he chose to build at home in Mississippi. He said Camgian’s objective is to recruit Mississippi’s best and brightest engineers to tackle some of the world’s most challenging problems in national security, on Wall Street and for the industrial sector.

    Since founding Camgian as a contract R&D firm, he has led its evolution into an award-winning technology company that services some of the world’s leading government and commercial organizations.

    Dr. Butler has been a speaker and panelist at numerous global technology conferences and testified on US competitiveness in the field of artificial intelligence before the US Senate Commerce, Science, and Transportation Committee.  He currently serves as a member of the board of directors of Renasant Corporation (NASDAQ: RNST), the Vanderbilt University School of Engineering Board of Visitors (previously as chair), the Young Presidents’ Organization, the Tulane Physics and Engineering Physics Advisory Board, and the Oxford and Cambridge Club of London.

    In his free time, Butler enjoys traveling with his wife Kristen and their four children. They recently traveled to Europe and Alaska. Dr. Butler’s advice to current Pearl students? “Set your expectations and goals high, work super hard to achieve them, don’t quit and you will be surprised at what amazing things you can accomplish.  The sky is not the limit.”

     

     

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