 |
|
 |
Master of Ceremony
Matt Sorgenfrei is a junior
at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo, majoring in Mechanical Engineering.
This is Matt's second year working with the Robotics Education Project,
in which time he has built a remote controlled Mars simulation rover,
assisted the development of numerous telecommunications technologies,
and traveled as far as Spain, all in the name of educating students
in the ways of the robot.
Matt's own robot education began in high school, where he participated
in the FIRST robotics competition at Gunn High School in Palo Alto,
California. This incredible program not only exposed him to intense
team-based project environments, but also taught him how to use
a mill and a lathe and why gear ratios are totally awesome. He has
continued pursuing these interests in college, mentoring a FIRST
robotics team in Atascadero, California as well as participating
on Cal Poly's Formula 1 car team.
Matt was officially declared a geek in 2002, at which time he was
given a bronze bust of Leonardo De Vinci, the original geek, and
a lifetime subscription to Geek-o-Matic magazine. It is his hope
that he can inspire a new generation of scientists and explorers
to follow his lead, because, hey, robots are where it's at!
|
| Brett Kennedy got into
robotics because he liked the fact that it requires a very broad
knowledge of many areas of engineering. He especially loves identifying
and tackling problems that haven’t been tried before. To do
what he loves, he pursued engineering in school. He received a B.S.
in mechanical engineering from the University of California, Berkeley,
and an M.S. in the same area from Stanford University. His current
work at JPL includes lots of robots—everything from the Legged
Excursion Mechanical Utility Robot (LEMUR) to the Mars Exploration
Rovers, twin rovers that will be sent to Mars in May and June 2003.
In his free time, he likes to play soccer, practice photography,
and even train for triathlons! He’d like to advise students
interested in engineering that, "while being good at science
and math is important, a good imagination and good communication
skills are at least as important" to being a successful engineer. |
|
Silvano Colombano
|
 |
| Dr. Silvano Colombano works in the Computational
Sciences Division at NASA's Ames Research Center, where he leads
a group in "Evolutionary Biotronics." Projects cover Evolutionary
Hardware, Modular Cooperative Robotics, and Artificial Life. Dr.
Colombano has spent most of his career working at Ames, first, as
a researcher in Closed Ecological Life Support Systems (CELSS),
and later, in Artificial Intelligence. He received an M.A. in physics
and a Ph.D. in Biophysical Sciences from the State University of
New York at Buffalo. He has always enjoyed math but not always homework! |
|
|
 |
