88212 Ravensburg
Germany
I’m a remote sensing engineer with almost 18 years collaborating with NASA – building, testing, and flying with remote sensors all around the world in various aircraft. I was part of a team that has done continuous measurements of ice sheets, glaciers, and sea ice in both the Arctic and Antarctic since 2001 – as well as other LIDAR mapping projects around the world. I’ve done many other programming / engineering jobs simultaneously, just have a read!
I consider myself a person that has a wide field of experience in different areas, and I am constantly adapting to new challenges and ideas.
Completed a Masters degree in Mechatronics
Credits Earned: 90 Semester hours
Relevant Coursework, Licenses and Certifications:
Advanced Control Theory, Robotics, Automation, Engineering Mechanics, Process Interface Equipment, Electric Drives, Microsystems, Modern Materials, and Space Systems Technology. Master’s thesis entitled “Synthetic Scenario Generation for the Military Obstacle Warning System”, which was performed at EADS Deutschland, now owned by AirBus.
Completed a Bachelors Degree
Credits Earned: 141 Semester hours
Major: (Triple Majors) : Physics (Microelectronics track), Computer Science, Mathematics
Relevant Coursework, Licenses and Certifications:
Microcomputer Organization, Mathematical Physics, Electric Circuits and Electronics, Astrophysics and Stellar Astronomy, Differential Equations, Mechanics, Electricity and Magnetism, Digital Electronics, Software Engineering, Quantum Mechanics, Analog Electronics, Microprocessor Architecture, Operating Systems, Linear Algebra, Data Base Management Systems, Semiconductor Physics, Advanced Data Structures and Algorithm Analysis, Systems Software, Microcomputer Interfacing, Dynamics and Chaos Theory, Object Oriented Software, Discrete Math, Math Foundations of Computer Science, Geometric Structures.
Graduated with triple Majors, two officially recognized by the university due to policy.
Worwic Community College, Salisbury, MD United States
Credits Earned: 34 Semester hours
Responsible for developing, testing, and deploying of aircraft integrated scientific instruments
- Served on many missions in remote locations for various earth science and environmental research projects
- Continued development, design and implementation of an airborne LIDAR data acquisition system (ATM-4,5,6) at the Goddard Space Flight Center in Wallops Island, VA
- Traveled to and measured glaciers and ice sheets annually in various Arctic and Antarctica locations for NASA recently under “Operation Ice Bridge” from the NASA DC8, NASA P3B, and NASA Falcon aerial platforms
- Acted as team leader during various deployments
- Continued the development of processing software for the waveform based ATM LIDAR data
- Responsible for in-field data processing and processed product presentation for NASA scientists and NASA media officials during deployments
- Responsible for the development and implementation of a UAV (unmanned aerial vehicle) version of the existing ATM-4 transceiver and datasystem (uATM), which supersedes original ATM
- Flew several hundreds of hours during missions consisting primarily of collecting data for environmental science in extremely remote locations
- Was involved in mission logistics, flight planning, and instrument installation and de-installation both on base and in the field
- Responsible for instrument and Laser repair and maintenance during deployments
Founded an Online Music Distribution Company
- Met with and arranged contracts with most music labels in a Caribbean country for distribution in an array of online media
- Designed and implemented a commercial website for direct sale and distribution of thousands of music tracks to individual customers worldwide in four languages (English, German, Spanish, and French)
- Responsible for marketing in Europe and North America
- Responsible for all website design, implementation, maintenance, and catalog updates
- Coded all back-end for converting thousands of music tracks to different formats for download
- Obtained rights to hundreds of artists for public access, many of them never published online before
Founded the non-profit organization RUDEC (Rural Development Centre) Germany
- Organized the creation of the administrative panel of the nonprofit organization
- Registered the organization as a legal entity within Germany
- Created a financial support network to pay for education, medical costs, daily necessities, and renewable farming for orphan children in the Belo region of Cameroon
- Cooperated with the head of RUDEC Cameroon to organize future projects, attract volunteers, locate financial sponsors, and raise awareness of the organization’s activities
- Successfully made a real impact on the lives of very impoverished children in Belo, Cameroon
Responsible for developing and implementing a simulator of an advanced flight instrument developed by EADS for military helicopter installations using previous LIDAR experience from working at NASA
- Developed a software simulator of the ‘Military Obstacle Warning System’ (MilOWS) LADAR for system testing preceding production. This simulator provided a modeled output of the hardware system to be used for algorithm testing and instrument qualification prior to production
- Modeled low level sensor operation and statistical behavior when interacting with synthetic models of objects such as hanging wires and poles
- Utilized existing recorded navigation data to simulate aircraft flight and sensor operation in user defined scenarios
- Wrote Masters Thesis based on the theory and implementation of the simulator, which resulted in a new set of qualifications for the instrument before manufacturing
Responsible for developing, testing, and deploying of aircraft integrated scientific instruments
- Served on many missions in remote locations for various earth science and environmental research projects
- Continued development, design and implementation of an airborne LIDAR data acquisition system (ATM-4) at the Goddard Space Flight Center in Wallops Island, VA
- Traveled to and measured glaciers and ice sheets annually in various Arctic locations as well as Antarctica and the Americas for NASA, USGS, Army Corps of Engineers, and other domestic and foreign government agencies
- Continued the development of extendable large-scale data processing software which combined GPS, aircraft attitude, and ATM-4 instrument sensor data for the creation of scientific topographic maps
- Wrote software for steering an entire aircraft via pseudo ILS signals coupled to an autopilot, which is used extensively in the NASA P3B N426NA and NASA DC8 N817NA during scientific missions
- Developed instrument software for detecting submerged oil slicks using an ultraviolet LIDAR system for the US Coast Guard
- Developed GPS and spectrometer data acquisition software for a UAV platform using miniaturized hardware
- Flew many hundreds of hours during missions consisting primarily of collecting data for environmental science in often extremely remote locations
- Was involved in mission logistics, flight planning, and instrument installation and de-installation both on base and in the field
- Responsible for instrument repair and maintenance during deployments
Administrated the company network, developed manufacturing and inventory database software, CAD drafting of products, creation of marketing materials, and general software development
- Promoted from product manufacturing and field installation of products to final position of network administrator, draftsman, and hardware trouble-shooter during the course of employment
- Developed company-wide database software encompassing product sales, product fabrication, raw materials inventory, order flow control, job planning and costing, web integration, and customer information
- CAD modelling, created 2D and 3D models of manufactured parts and assemblies for product specification and marketing materials
- Designed all marketing publications
- Served as a company representative across the USA and in Germany at a very young age
W.B. Krabill, E. Frederick, S. Manizade, C. Martin, R. Mitchell, R. Russell, J. Sonntag, R. Swift and J. Yungel; page 93; REVEAL: Remote Views and Exploration of Antarctic Lithosphere Workshop: The future of Antarctic Airborne Geophysical Capabilities – Workshop Report; 2003
Acuna, C., G. Casassa, H. Couyoumdjian, A. Rivera, R. Sinclair, C. Teitelboim, W. Abdalati, W. Krabill,
E. Frederick, S. Manizade, R. Russell, J. Sonntag, R. Swift, R. Thomas, J. Yungel, T. Akins, S. Gogineni, P. Kanagaratnam and E. Rignot. 2003.Boletin Antartico Chileno, V. 22, N. 1, p. 33-35.
E. Rignot, R. Thomas, P. Kanagaratnam, G. Casassa, E. Frederick, S. Gogineni, W. Krabill, A. Rivera, R. Russell, J. Sonntag, R. Swift and J. Yungel; Annals of Glaciology; 2004.
R. Thomas, E. Rignot, G. Casassa, P. Kanagaratnam, C. Acuna, T. Akins, H. Brecher, E. Frederick, P. Gogineni, W. Krabill, S. Manizade, H. Ramamoorthy, A. Rivera, R. Russell, J. Sonntag, R. Swift, J. Yungel, and J. Zwally; Science; 8 October 2004; 206: 255-258
Chreston F. Martin, WIlliam B. Krabill, Serdar S. Manizade, Rob L. Russell, John G. Sonntag, Robert N. Swift, and James K. Yungel; NASA Technical Memorandum; 28 February 2012
Group Achievement Award” for “12 Years of Outstanding Polar Ice Sheet Mapping”
Antarctic Service Medal of the United States of America
Wallops Flight Facility 2010 Peer Award for Science (ATM Team)
NASA Wallops Robert L. Krieger Award
“Group Achievement Award” for “Exceptional achievement in support of NASA’s Icebridge Campaign”
NASA Wallops Robert L. Krieger Award
NASA Wallops Robert L. Krieger Award
If you’ve made it this far, then you must be interested! Here are some of my hobbies.
I enjoy retro games, and old hardware that runs them. I have always been a computer enthusiast, and generally video games as well.
I love fixing hard problems (not the easy ones), so my natural tendency is to gravitate to the more difficult things to fix instead. Like fixing a broken laser, or a Commodore 64 that won’t boot, or finding that one line of code that will make everything work.
I am an avid reader – I enjoy anything ranging from fantasy to historical non-fiction. I have built two telescopes from scratch (including the primary mirror) – needless to say I am a fan of astronomy. I enjoy the outdoors – camping, hiking, kayaking, and crabbing.
I enjoy taking on projects just for fun – some examples include SDR (software defined radio), 3D printing, beer making, Tesla coils, potato guns, Beowulf clusters, FPGA’s, AI training for currency trading, designing and implementing websites, building radiation counters, building computers, and programming for personal enjoyment.
I’ve also enjoyed going on motorcycle tours, wine tours, skiing and snowboarding, diving (I’m a certified diver), photography, acting (in an amateur theater group and TV commercials), blogging, and traveling as often as possible.