Profile:
Thirty-seven years experience as a teacher in astronomy and science. Experience as a software designer and manager of people/programs for multinational companies and startups. Life science payload developer for the International Space Station. FAA Certificated Flight Instructor. Speaks French and some German.
Education:
University of Cape Town, South Africa
GRADUATE SCHOOL OF SCIENCE (2012–present)
Research Area: Science Education Research
University of California, Davis, California
GRADUATE SCHOOL OF EDUCATION (2008–2009)
Stanford University, Stanford, California
MASTER OF SCIENCE IN AERONAUTICAL AND ASTRONAUTICAL ENGINEERING (GRANTED 1992)
Santa Clara University, Santa Clara, California
GRADUATE SCHOOL OF MECHANICAL ENGINEERING (1989–1990)
University of California, Berkeley, California
BACHELOR OF SCIENCE IN ELECTRICAL ENGINEERING AND COMPUTER SCIENCE (GRANTED 1981)
San Francisco State University, San Francisco, California
MAJOR: PHYSICS AND ASTRONOMY (1976–1977)
City College of San Francisco, De Anza Community College, Foothill Community College, Mission College, West Valley College
COURSES IN ASTRONOMY, COOKING, LANGUAGE, MATH, MUSIC, & PARK MANAGEMENT.
LA SORBONNE & PARIS LANGUES, PARIS, FRANCE
CURRICULUM: FRENCH CIVILIZATION AND LANGUAGE (1992-1993)
Employment:
1978—present Member of the Faculty, Instructor
West Valley College, De Anza College, San Francisco
State University, Lawrence Hall of Science & Vista College
Saratoga, Cupertino, San Francisco & Berkeley, CA
Developing curriculum and exhibits, evaluating effectiveness of teaching methods, teaching & presenting workshops in the physical sciences. Teaching courses in general, solar system and stellar astronomy and conducting laboratory experimentation.
1997—present Flight Instructor, Ground Instructor Hayward, Palo Alto, & San Carlos CA
FAA certificated ground instructor (advanced) and airplane flight instructor (instrument).
1996—present Consultant Menlo Park, CA
Internet and multimedia related technical and business development including strategy development and marketing research.
1975—2003 Instructor, Lecturer, Manager, Technician, Laserist
Morrison Planetarium and the California Academy of Sciences, San Francisco, CA
Laser Images Incorporated, Van Nuys, CA
Giving live multi-media planetarium presentations (over 3000) about the night sky and various astronomical topics. Maintaining and operating the planetarium star projector, projection and sound equipment. Performed LASER light shows. Gave instruction in observational astronomy equipment and techniques.
1995—1996 Hardware Engineering Manager Digidesign, Palo Alto, CA
Assigned resources to seven projects (audio, video and electronic music hardware development for the Macintosh and PC). Coordinating schedules, leading meetings, writing status reports and performance reviews. Budgeted $2 million for personnel, CAE tools, and prototype development. Program manager for company’s transition to PCI bus; scheduled the program, decided where to take on risk to accelerate first customer ship date (saved 4 months), direction of and conflict resolution between company resources.
1993—1995 Senior Systems Engineer NASA Ames Research Center-Lockheed Martin, Moffett Field, CA
Developed facility class, life science payloads (Gravitational Biology Facility, Centrifuge Facility), for the International Space Station. Conceptualized with integrated product teams in science, engineering and operations to create modular experiments and supporting systems. Baselined Science Technical Requirements complete with traceability. Completed feasibility study phase. Fashioned specifications and led System Requirements Review. Established interface standards with Human Research Facility and Express Rack programs. Architected control and data systems interface. Devised, implemented and operated testbeds. Recruited science investigators. Spearheaded a new project information system.
1983—1991 Integration Consultant, Researcher, Systems Analyst Tandem Computers, Cupertino, CA
Fostered relationships with data communications hardware vendors and created heterogeneous environments (DOS, Guardian, Macintosh, UNIX) and analyzed performance over WANs and LANs.
Examined emerging and enabling technologies including parallel distributed processing, CASE tools, expert systems, and object-oriented technology. Made strategic recommendations to executive staff and board of directors on advanced manufacturing, leading to research projects with the Department of Defense and Northrop. Integrated workstations (Apollo, Macintosh, NeXT, Sun) with Tandem mainframes and demonstrated advanced capability in the areas of imaging, communications, and cooperative processing.
Made technical presentations, and demonstrated software and hardware products leading to sales that exceeded quotas. Aided marketing on RFPs, quotes, system sizing, etc. Post-sales technical support in the areas of operating systems, fault tolerant programming, on-line transaction processing, performance and tuning, and data base management. Designed and implemented a message-based, timed delivery system, updating a corporate database to track remote system configurations that led to a system for auditing customer systems.
1981—1983 Development Engineer TAK Automation, Burlingame, CA
Wrote software in assembly and FORTH and developed hardware for 6800 and 68000 microprocessor-based controllers used in real-time process control. Automation enabled our customers to stay in business and better compete against competition by increasing quality, reducing cost and time to market.
1973—1975 Shop personnel, Lecturer The Exploratorium, San Francisco, CA
Developed and repaired exhibits demonstrating principles of electricity and magnetism, light, color, perception, etc. Explained science exhibits to museum public and lectured during period of record museum attendance for the spacecraft flybys of Jupiter and Saturn.