Houston, Texas, United States
I have 17 years of experience in the aerospace industry, during which I have worked closely with SpaceX, Lockheed Martin, JAXA, Northrop Grumman, NASA, Sierra Space, and multiple aerospace startups to design, implement, analyze, and verify flight software, GNC and fault detection, isolation, and recovery (FDIR) algorithms for multiple spacecraft, space vehicles, and launch vehicles. I have extensive experience in space and launch vehicle flight software design, implementation, and testing; modeling and simulation; spacecraft performance analysis; and flight software verification and validation. Over the years I have designed and analyzed GNC and FDIR algorithms; I've developed and tested flight software; I've written tools to test FSW with dynamics and environment simulations in software in the loop and hardware in the loop environments; I've written mission planning ground tools; and I've written post-processing tools that utilize parallel processing to quickly evaluate compliance with requirements and automatically generate human-readable reports of the results. I also have experience and interest in dynamical systems, including nonlinear dynamical systems, and metaheuristics, including evolutionary algorithms, particle swarms, and sequential Monte Carlo. I have significant real systems engineering experience - not requirements, but actual systems engineering, in which I have designed and architected vehicles, driven fault tolerance and redundancy design and implementation, performed hazard analysis, and worked through integrated vehicles problems on a host of vehicles. Over my career I have worked on everything from complex manned vehicles to simple satellites to launch vehicles of multiple sizes to lunar landers and rovers. Oh, and I should mention that I can pretty much learn anything really quickly. It's a very useful skill.
Director of software and IT activities. Responsible for management of the software team, from technical execution to schedule and budget to personnel management. Overseeing flight, ground, simulation, and test software for extraplanetary rovers. Managing the IT team and supporting definition and set up of Astrolab's IT infrastructure (on prem and cloud).
I am the technical lead for the Odyssey team supporting flight software and simulation development for a commercial lunar rover. In this role, I coordinate with the customer software lead to determine the scope of work assigned to the Odyssey team members and lead execution of the work. As the technical lead I: * work closely with the customer to set priorities and define the responsibilities for the members of the joint team * oversaw set up of all of the FSW development and testing infrastructure, including use of a Gazebo simulation * worked with the customer to define flight software architecture and support test infrastructure and design decisions * authored the flight software process documentation and ensured the automated tooling supports the process and ensures productivity - process should enhance productivity, not slow it down * supported simulation selection trade studies Since work began, the team has: * Set up a prototype integrated test environment with Encore FSW executing in the loop with the Gazebo simulation * Designed an initial FSW architecture * Integrated existing terrestrial rover prototype cFS software with the new Encore FSW * Developed ROS-Encore interfaces and bridges
Odyssey is part of a winning team for NASA's Lunar Terrain Vehicle Systems (LTVS) contract. As Odyssey's LTV chief engineer, I: * worked with the customer to write our winning LTV proposal. I authored multiple proposal sections spanning SMA, insight, and mission operations and planning, and supported writing of multiple other sections including FSW, verification/validation and certification, milestone planning, and more * supported contract negotiations after award * helped set up the Odyssey LTV team after award * support hazard analysis via creation of the draft SMA plan, creation of a hazard report template, and supported initial hazard analysis * lead development of the human in the loop training sim for LTVS and coordinate with the Odyssey training team to define requirements and expectations for the training simulation * authored alternate standards for NPR 7150.2D NASA Software Engineering Standards and NASA-STD-7009 Simulation and Modeling Standard * authored the Risk Management Plan and Risk Reports DRDs * authored the software development plan and software assurance plan * support flight software and simulation design and architecture * support negotiation of human systems interface (HSI) DRD ownership and content with other team members * support verification, validation, and certification plan development * do anything else that needs doing I am also responsible for teaching the Odyssey LTV team how to work, think,and execute like a commercial space outfit.
As a Human Landing System (HLS) systems engineer, I helped write our winning HLS proposal and I have been supporting standards tailoring and system safety/hazard analysis since project inception. I am the author of all propulsion system hazard reports and on hazard reports across a smattering of other subsystems, including ECLSS. I have also supported requirements tailoring and interoperability standards tailoring with NASA as well as various other short-term systems engineering tasks.
Development of mission planning tools for XSS-11, including rendezvous planner and maneuver planner