A Google Lunar X Prize Team |
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May 23, 2008
Team Phoenicia Announces Intent to Compete for the Google Lunar X Prize
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March 30, 2008
Ansoft becomes Team Phoenicia's Second Sponsor
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March 12, 2008
Wind River becomes Team Phoenicia's First Sponsor
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Meet the Team
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William P. Baird
Team Leader
William Baird is noted for being something of a computing and science generalist with a knack for finding fascinating projects, assembling the necessary resources,
and bringing them to a successful fruition. He has worked at Los Alamos National Laboratory, White Sands Missile Range's High Energy Laser System Test Facility,
and currently with Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory's National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center. He has run Crays, managed data acquisition for
megawatt class lasers, seamlessly tied together HPC assets over thousands of miles apart, programmed simulations on HPC monsters to real-time DAQ systems with everything between, and sought out numerous very challenging computing projects. Over the
years he has recieved multiple awards and most recently he was noted for his work in participating in the StorCloud Challenge at Supercomputing 2005 in Seattle
leading a team to win the "Best Prototype in Support of a Scientific Application" for NERSC. When faced with the great and fascinating opportunity of the
Google Lunar X Prize, William couldn't resist.
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Wesley Pickens
MS NMSU (Electrical Engineering)
Telemetry Specialist
Wesley Pickens is an electrical engineer currently working in the Special
Radars and Communications Systems group at Sandia National Laboratories in
Albuquerque, New Mexico. He received his Master of Science in Electrical
Engineering from New Mexico State University in 2002. Mr. Pickens
professional career began as a student with Raytheon Electronic Systems at
White Sands Missile Range in 1998. It was at Raytheon WSMR where he found
his calling in radar systems and electromagnetics. Immediately following
graduate school Mr. Pickens worked at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in
Pasadena, California. During his time at JPL Mr. Pickens worked in both the
Ground and Spacecraft Antenna groups designing, developing and measuring
antennas for deep space communications systems. Family necessity and the
opportunity to work in defense again brought Mr. Pickens back to New Mexico
to work for 3 years in the Directed Energy Special Applications group at
Sandia. Outside of the office Mr. Pickens enjoys the outdoors and spending
time with his wife and two sons. The prospect of developing and deploying a
space craft communications system is an exciting undertaking in any event
and an irresistible challenge that Mr. Pickens eagerly awaits taking on.
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Nikolas Rakoff
BS NMSU (Computer Science)
Real Time Programming
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Dr Brandon Rohrer
PhD MIT (Mechanical Engineering)
Rover Lead
Machines that think and move as if alive have fascinated Brandon since
the advent of the Transformers. He has pursued this interest through
mechanical engineering degrees at BYU (BS '97) and MIT (MS '99, PhD
'02) and through his research in the Cybernetic Systems Integration
Group at Sandia National Laboratories in Albuquerque, NM. Current
research topics include high-performance prosthetic sockets,
biomimetic machine learning, and automated exploratory robots.
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Shane Thomas
BS NMSU (Computer Science)
Imaging Specialist
Shane's first passion has always been coding. He has engineered
systems fielded by the US Army and has built simulations for UAV
tests. He has also run a computer gaming company that
successfully published. In addition to using his left side of his
brain, he has an intense enthusiasm for the artistic side. He is a successful
professional photographer and videographer. After engaging in challenging
projects while at White Sands Missile Range and elsewhere, it is only
natural that he has now set his sights on the stars. He is very excited to
bring two of his talents, coding and photo/videography, together in
pursuit of the Google Lunar X Prize.
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Meet the Team's Advisory Committee
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Jason Lowery
MS NMSU (Mechanical Engineering)
Chief of Flight Safety Analysis, White Sand Missile Range
Jason has nearly ten years experience in missile flight safety and is
currently the Chief of the Flight Safety Analysis Section, White Sands
Missile Range.
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Micheal Deliman
Wind River Systems
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