Innovative and adaptable technical leader with management experience in space mission operations and intelligent systems for autonomy. Knowledgeable practitioner of evidence-driven design methods, testing methodology, CM practices, and agile software development.
" EXPERIENCE
SGT, NASA Ames Research Center Mountain View, CA
July 2007 Current Roles:
- Present
Technical Manager for the UTM/SAFE50 team; which is developing a completely new way to think about managing the airspace for Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS). In this effort, I serve as a senior team member, responsible for facilitating the adoption, implementation, and sustainability of Agile processes, principles, and practices. Work closely with stakeholders to provide status, iterative releases, and make design decision throughout the development to ensure high quality deliverables.
Conduct researches on autonomous navigation of small UAS through unknown environments using vision-based simultaneous localization and mapping (SLAM), object detection, and collision avoidance. The systems use 3D depth sensors to perform navigation fast, enabling autonomous drones to navigate through dense environments. Previous Roles:
Led the NASA Science Planning Interface for Exploration project, a mission control software suite (written primarily in Java) specially designed to serve the needs of the Science Directorate for five space missions and across three NASA centers. The project was striving to define and develop Software as a Service (SaaS) capabilities for planning applications utilizing AWS S3 as the persistence layer for object-based storage. IBM Silicon Valley Lab San Jose, CA
Mar 2003
- Jun 2007
Technical lead for the development and research group within IBM Rational lab services organization. This group focused on capturing best practices for software engineering through methods, training, and packaged consulting services. Chief Architect for Measured Improvement (MCIF), which provides a systematic approach to incrementally improve software delivery effectiveness to enable organizations to get more business value out of software delivery organizations. Responsible for designing developing the Process Accelerator for Business Intelligence (PA4BI) tool for modeling and generating data marts for the DB2 Data Warehouse Edition.
" EDUCATION
Instituto Universitario de Tecnología Industrial Valencia, Venezuela Aug 1996 Bachelor’s degree in Mechanical Engineering with a Minor in Computer Science
" SKILLS
Skilled developer: Java, C/C++, Python, Kotlin, JSON, UML, REST, R w/ggplot2, ROS Tools: Maven, Bamboo, Gradle, Jenkins, Jira, Confluence, Git, GovCloud, AWS S3 Inspiring leader: Effective manager of intricate technical projects, from technology incubation efforts to mission-critical products. Calm and confident negotiator, able to navigate legal and bureaucratic barriers to forge strategic partnerships and achieve goals. Skilled recruiter, mentor, builder, and director of teams and organizations.
" PUBLICATIONS
Autonomous UAS Operations in High-Density Low-Altitude Urban Environments. AIAA SciTech 2019. doi: 10.2514/6.2019-0689
Identification and Reconfigurable Control of Impaired Multi-Rotor Drones, AIAA SciTech 2016. doi: 10.2514/6.2016-1384
Scheduling and Planning Interface for Exploration (SPIFe). iCAPS’14 Planning as a Service: A Plan Repository Model Inspired by Cloud Computing. AIAA SpaceOps, 2012. doi: 10.2514/6.2012-1297513
" AWARDS
2017 NASA Honor Award for Group Achievement
For the Safe Autonomous Flight Environment (SAFE50) for the Notional Last 50 feet operations of small Unmanned Aerial System.
2016 Winner of the Android Experiments I/O Challenge 2014 NASA Software Release Award
For the open source release of the Rich Client Platform SPIFe (Scheduling and Planning Interface for Exploration).
2013 NASA Honor Award for Group Achievement
For the Score tool; which addresses the planning needs for both the International Space Station (ISS) and Mission Operations Directive (MOD). 2011 NASA Honor Group Achievement Award
For the Power Planning and Analysis Tool (PLATO) that helps to reduce the workload of International Space Station (ISS) flight controllers. 2009 NASA Honor Group Achievement Award
For the successful development of the Ensemble operations software to support the Mars missions.