Name

Christopher (Kit) Cischke

Department

Electrical and Computer Engineering

Position

Lecturer and Ph.D. student

The Short Story

I was born in Pontiac, Michigan on May 4th, 1979.  If you’re wondering, Kit is an old English nickname for Christopher, though I certainly cannot tell you how they came up with it.  It dates back at least to Shakespeare’s time.  In any case, my parents knew of Kit Carson, (whose given name was Christopher) and similarly gave me Christopher as a “more professional” name to fall back on should I find that Kit was insufficient.  To this day, I haven’t.  Further, I usually find Christopher to be a bit cumbersome and only use it for “official” documents.  I did most of my growing up in the Clarkston and Waterford areas of northern Oakland County.  After graduating as salutatorian of my high school class (of nearly 400), I went to Michigan Tech University, where I got my Bachelor’s Degree in Electrical Engineering, with a emphasis in Computer Engineering and an Engineering Enterprise concentration.

My wife and I headed to the Twin Cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul, Minnesota, where I spent four years working for Unisys as a Hardware Engineer, working as an ASIC designer.  In reality, I spent most of my days writing software in various languages to support the ASIC design process, though I was never totally immune to the responsibility to fire up a waveform viewer and debug hardware.  I was an inventor or co-inventor on three different patented applications during that time.  I don’t know what I think about these software patents, but it’s certainly neat to have them.

I worked on the side to acquire my Master’s Degree in Computer Engineering at the University of Minnesota - Twin Cities campus.  My graduate studies focused primarily on User Interface Design and Processor Architecture. 

Shortly after I completed this degree, I accepted a job teaching undergraduate Computer Engineering courses at my alma mater, Michigan Tech.  After solely teaching for a year, I enrolled in a Ph.D. program in the Computational Science and Engineering department at MTU, continuing to focus on the organization, architecture and programming of parallel computers, a theme that has been present in my job at Unisys and my Master’s studies.

On August 19th, 2000, I married Julie Lloyd, a remarkably good decision on both of our parts.  Since then, we have been blessed with three beautiful children.  Cameron was born in Minnesota in 2005, Olivia was born in Houghton in 2007 and Heidi was born late in 2008.

When I’m not working, I’m usually on my mountain bike.  In 2010, I joined the Red Jacket Cycling Team to race on the roads and trails.  I train 5 days a week following Chris Carmichael’s program in The Time Crunched Cyclist, after spending a year as a CTS Athlete.  I ride in about eight races a year around the U.P. and northern Wisconsin, and am slowly becoming more competitive.  I rode a Gary Fisher Cake 3 until the frame cracked, at which point Trek replaced it with a Fisher HiFi Deluxe full-suspension frame.  My “FrankenFisher” is composed of a bunch of upgrades and parts off of the Cake: a Bontrager Race X Lite carbon handlebar, Bontrager inForm RL saddle,  Shimano Deore LX crankset, XT cassette, crankbrothers Cobalt seatpost, Specialized Body Geometry grips and a basement full of tires for practically every riding condition imaginable.  The specs change quickly as I find new stuff to replace the broken stuff.  Crashing hurts the body and the wallet.  I’m a big fan of the Subaru-Trek Mountain Bike Team on the dirt, though I like seeing great results out of Specialized’s Todd Wells too.  I am a huge (and probably over-the-top) fan of the US-based Garmin-Cervélo Cycling Team, rocking the Argyle. I am a proud member of IMBA, the International Mountain Bike Association, an organization every mountain biker should support.  During the summer of 2008 I bought a Specialized Tricross Comp for road riding and cyclocross. While my road skills are weak, I had a great cyclocross season in 2010, wining two races and becoming the U.P. State Champ in Class B. I’ve got my sights set on Cyclocross Nationals in Madison in January 2012. 

When I’m not reading some research paper, I devour books about World War II, fiction or non-fiction alike.  I tend to enjoy the European Theatre more than the Pacific Theatre, but I have lot of respect for all the men and women who gave the “last full measure of devotion” during that conflict.

Finally, but above all, I am a born-again believer in Jesus Christ, the only son of God.  All I do is through Him and to His glory.  For more than 5 years now, I have worn a yellow Livestrong band on my wrist for two reasons.  One is to show my support for the awesome work done by the Lance Armstrong Foundation.  The second is to remind me of my life verse, Joshua 1:9: “Have I not commanded you? Be strong and courageous. Do not be terrified; do not be discouraged, for the LORD your God will be with you wherever you go.”