I was born in New Jersey and moved to Southern California when I was 3, so I’m basically a Californian. While in college, I had internships at Edwards Air Force Base and NASA Goddard Space Flight Center. After I finished my undergraduate degree in Aerospace Engineering, I went to work for Northrop on the B-2 Stealth Bomber. My true calling was space, so my wife and I moved to Maryland and I went to work at NASA Goddard in the Advanced Applications Section. We spent many years there and really enjoyed it. While at Goddard I worked on numerous studies and proposals and pursued my Master’s Degree from the University of Maryland, College Park. I worked on the Far Ultraviolet Spectroscopic Explorer (FUSE) as the Mechanical Systems Manager and on Wide Field Camera – 3 (for the Hubble Space Telescope) as a Lead Systems Engineer. As opportunities arose, my family and I moved to Phoenix, Arizona, so that we could be closer to our family in California and so I could work as the Chief Engineer/Deputy Program Manager for the Gamma Ray Large Area Space Telescope (GLAST) at Spectrum Astro, Inc. While at Spectrum, I met several people from JPL and knew that the type of work that is done here is the type of work that I want to do! My wife, two daughters, and I moved to the Pasadena area in early 2004 and we have thoroughly enjoyed the Caltech/JPL culture and the exciting missions that I have the priviledge to work on.
On a project as large as Mars Science Lab, where the development lasts several years, a person can have multiple jobs on the project over time. I started out as the Deputy Flight System Engineer before moving into Assembly, Test, and Launch Operations as the Deputy Manager.
In first grade, I wanted to be an architect. By second grade, my thoughts had moved to Astronomy. In third grade, I learned that I could combine the two and become an Aerospace Engineer and work on airplanes and spacecraft.
