While in school I started a company that distributed some of the worst movies ever made (e.g. Plan 9 From Outer Space, etc.) and fresh out of school started two more companies – a venture capital proposal development company for technical ventures and a company that produced a Children’s Theater program for cable.
I came to JPL in 1986 and joined the automated systems section where I worked on various robotics efforts and a shuttle flight experiment. Then I stumbled onto a research task that demonstrated an embryonic version of autonomous rover navigation, using a prototype rover resurrected from the 1960’s. I have been working on rovers ever since.
I was a member of the Sojourner rover team, participating in the design, development, and commanding of the Mars Pathfinder Sojourner rover. I recently wrote a book called Sojourner about the history of the rover and the team that created it.
I came to MER in April 2000 as the Mission Operations System Engineer, and am now the Sequence Team Chief focused on surface operations.
My wife Sharon (also a MER systems engineer) and I live in Altadena. My interests include hiking, writing, photography, movie history, sculpting in steel, neon and bronze, reading and travel.
