NASA Software Expert to Speak at Space Conference
LOS ALAMITOS, Calif., 8 July, 2009 – What does driving robots have in common with Pac-Man? What can we learn about mission operations from a videogame? Jeff Norris, supervisor of the Planning Software Systems Group at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, will address those and other questions when he delivers a keynote speech at
the Third IEEE International Space Mission Challenges for Information Technology Conference (SMC-IT 2009) being held in Pasadena, California 17-23 July.
The conference, sponsored by the IEEE Computer Society and the IEEE, will feature daylong workshops on artificial intelligence in space on Friday, 17 July, and Saturday 18, July, followed by a tour of the Palomar Observatory. Workshops on Sunday, 19 July will cover multicore and parallel programming and OPERA and Maestro. The keynotes and conference panels run from Monday, 20 July through Thursday, 23 July, followed by a tour of JPL. To register, visit http://www.smc-it.org/
Norris’s group develops operations systems for a variety of space missions including the Phoenix Mars Scout, Cassini Saturn Orbiter, Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, and the Spirit and Opportunity Mars Exploration Rovers-- for which his team was co-winner of the 2004 NASA Software of the Year Award. He is currently leading the development of the uplink system for the 2009 Mars Science Laboratory Rover mission and operations software development within NASA’s multi-center lunar Human Robotic Systems technology development project.
Norris founded the JPL OPS Lab, an advanced agile development facility for the design, development, and deployment of mission operations software and human-robot interaction technologies. He helped operate the Spirit and Opportunity Mars rovers as a Tactical Activity Planner during the prime mission.
Mike Hinchey, co-director of the University of Limerick’s Irish Software Engineering Research Centre and chair of the IEEE Technical Council on Complexity in Computing, will deliver opening remarks. Among the other keynotes are:
• Anant Agarwal, professor of electrical engineering and computer science at MIT
• Rupak Biswas, division chief (acting) of NASA Advanced Supercomputing at NASA Ames Research Center
• Peter Hughes, chief technologist at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center
• Hans Koenigsmann, vice president of Guidance, Navigation, and Control at SpaceX
• Robert Manning, chief engineer at JPL’s Mars Science Laboratory
• Kanna Rajan, principal researcher at the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute
• Rami R. Razouk, senior vice president of Aerospace Corp.’s Engineering and Technology Group.
SMC-IT is the first forum to gather system designers, engineers, scientists, practitioners, and space explorers for the objective of advancing information technology for space missions. The forum will provide an excellent opportunity for fostering technical interchange on all hardware and software aspects of IT applications in space missions.
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With nearly 85,000 members, the IEEE Computer Society is the world’s leading organization of computing professionals. Founded in 1946, and the largest of the 39 societies of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), the Computer Society is dedicated to advancing the theory and application of computer and information-processing technology, and is known globally for its computing standards activities.
The Computer Society serves the information and career-development needs of today’s computing researchers and practitioners with technical journals, magazines, conferences, books, conference publications, and online courses. Its Certified Software Development Professional (CSDP) program for mid-career professionals and Certified Software Development Associate (CSDA) credential for recent college graduates confirm the skill and knowledge of those working in the field. The CS Digital Library (CSDL) is an excellent research tool, containing more than 310,000 articles from 3,300 conference proceedings, 250 conference publications, and 26 CS periodicals going back to 1988.
