bizz corp

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.

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.

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.

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.

Melquiades Olivares

BS Stanford

Team Promotion

Earl Powell

MS University of San Francisco

machinist

Earl started his professional career on the Physics staff at Southern Illinois University. He then joined the project teams for the Magnetic Fusion Test Facility (MFTF) and the Advanced Test Accelerator at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. He later accepted a position on the research staff at the Space Sciences Laboratory at the University of California Berkeley. He managed and directed the members of the extreme ultraviolet space telescope projects: FAUST (flown on Space Shuttle STS 45 Mar 25 1992), ORFEUS (flown on STS 51 12 September 1993). He was the fabrication manager for The Extreme-Ultraviolet Explorer (EUVE), flown June 7, 1992 through January 30, 2002, part of NASA's Explorer spacecraft series. He later became involved in new product development in the semiconductor manufacturing equipment industry at Applied Materials. He was also the founder or Co-founder of Solar Factor Research Center, Cost Reduction Inc. and Tigo Energy Inc. Earl is currently working on entrepreneurial activities at the TechShop in Menlo Park, Ca.

Carter Stockum

Machinist

James Erd

Machinist

Steve Berl

MS UC San Diego (computer science)

real time programmer