Since I can remember, I've been fascinated by what physics and astronomy have shown us of the universe. As a 6th grader I mailed JPL asking for information about the Voyager project, and to my great glee I received a thick package of images of Jupiter and Saturn. Many years later, also to my great glee, JPL hired me. In between I studied Physics, Philosophy and German in college courtesy of an Air Force ROTC scholarship. Afterward I served as an officer at Los Angeles Air Force Station working on a space defense project. When my commitment was up I came to JPL and have been there ever since (15 years now). My jobs there have all been in one kind of systems engineering or another: boost vehicle integration with the Mars Observer Spacecraft, ground software for the Cassini Mission, flight operations for Deep Space 1, and now spacecraft system engineering for Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter.
My partner, Alex, also works at JPL. He's developing next-generation integrated flight and ground software for the Mars Science Laboratory, so I guess we're really a Mars family. Our two dogs, Java and Zoom, haven't yet done anything to further Mars exploration, but we think they'll come around eventually.
