Steve Smith has over thirty years experience in all aspects of information technology in higher education. His educational background includes an undergraduate degree with an emphasis in broadcasting and filmmaking from the University of Iowa and a graduate degree in telecommunications from the University of Hawaii.

His professional experience includes campus computing, library systems, public broadcasting, distance delivery, and extensive experience in network operations and design including satellite systems to remote areas and high speed Internet2 optical networks. In his role as CITO for the University of Alaska he has worked on policy, regulation, IT investment strategy, and public-private partnerships. He was a founder of the Fairbanks Community Network and is one of three U.S. representatives on the Information Communications Technology Network for the Arctic Council, comprised of the eight arctic nations. He is on the executive board of the Northwest Academic Computing Consortium, past Chair of the Pacific Northwest Gigapop Advisory Council, a board member of ResearchChannel, and the executive liaison for the University of Alaska for Internet2. His most recent major accomplishment was leading the consolidation of the statewide IT departments with the University of Alaska Fairbanks IT departments, now known as the Office of Information Technology.

Title: Goddard Robotics for Exploration and Avionics Testing (GREAT)

This is an image taken by the LADAR scanning instrument onboard NASAbot-4,”Nanook of the North”.  The idea is to send a semi-autonomous robotic mothership into an area of interest on the Moon or Mars, to collect more detailed information than can be obtained from the orbiting satellites.  The mothership scans the area producing a point map as shown here.  Every dot in the image is actually colored according to its distance away from the Scanner.  The operator back on Earth can tell from the first image where the robot needs to go to see behind obstacles and he can direct the robot accordingly.  Successive images are stitched together to form a complete overhead view of the terrain, like a maze.  Now the operator can have the mothership direct specialized worker bots to specific locations to perform their tasks.
  

This lecture is about the overall strategy, the avionics NASA is developing to handle the complex tasks, and the approach for dealing with long delays and dropouts in the communication link to these distance places.  We have already tested the avionics and the networking protocols using this engineering model robot on the Ross Ice Shelf in Antarctica and then on the frozen Arctic Ocean outside Barrow, Alaska , in January, 2008.  The vehicle we are using here is not a flight vehicle.  Its purpose is to serve as a platform for testing the future flight avionics in environments on Earth, which in some ways simulate the conditions on the Moon or Mars. The robot is controlled locally and/or from the USA via satellite links.

Several Engineering Colleges are participating in these developments for academic credit.   Teams of Seniors at Michigan State and Maryland are working with PhD candidates at Johns Hopkins University each semester and summer.   Each group strives to make incremental improvements.   We have developed two Motherships and six worker bots at this point, and the bulk of the remaining work is in the Computer Science area.

“NASA Mike” Comberiate celebrated 40 years with NASA in March, 2008, but he is a familiar face in both Polar Regions as well.  He’s been dreaming up novel and exciting projects that apply NASA’s Space technologies to long-standing problems such as communications in these remote places.  Back in the early 1980s NSF and NASA Mike set up the first satellite ground station capabilities in Antarctica , enabling the first satellite phone calls, email, and DARPAnet to the South Pole.  Since then he’s used NASA’s unique satellites to do the first Live Webcasts and Internet from the exact 90N Pole, and then in 1999 the first Pole-to-Pole phone call.  It’s all pretty cool stuff.   Last January he led a team of 8 on his 99th and 100th COOL SPACE projects, which covered both High Polar Regions. When he’s not “NASA Mike”, Mike has a family with two sons, teaches Martial Arts, and remodels houses out in Maryland , USA .

Timothy J. Lorang is the Director for Membership and Production for ResearchChannel. From 1994 to 2004, he was the Production Manager for UWTV Production at the University of Washington. 
Before becoming Production Manager, Tim was a producer/director for the University of Washington. In addition Tim has worked as a freelance writer, producer, editor and director. His credits include writer and editor for the PBS series “Travels in Europe with Rick Steves,” and as a producer/director for the PBS series “Smart Travels with Rudy Maxa.” 

After graduating from California State University, Sacramento in 1976 with a BA in Communications Studies, Tim worked as a producer/director for KOBI-TV, then as the Media Coordinator for Providence Hospital in Medford, Oregon.

Timothy is an accredited member of the Communication Media Managers Association and their past Western Regional Director. He currently serves on the board for AHECTA, Association of Higher Education Campus Television Administrators. He has served on the board of the Seattle ITVA and on the Board for the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences, Northwest Chapter.

Tim enjoys curvy motorcycle rides in the mountains, long moonlit walks on the beach and dancing to any type of Americana roots music. He prefers his whisky neat and steaks medium rare.

Laura McGinnis is a project manager with the Systems and Operations group at Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center. Laura oversees the recruiting, orientation and mentoring of technical students for PSC, placing qualified students in systems, application, and computational science development teams. She is involved in education, outreach, and training activities in TeraGrid, and in the Pittsburgh region. Current projects include managing the Pathways to Broadening Participation in TeraGrid initiative, and coordinating activities that will support HPC University, an education and training program that will develop petascale-level computational scientists. Laura has a Bachelor of Science degree in Computer Science from the University of Pittsburgh and a Master of Science in Industrial Administration from the Tepper School of Business at Carnegie Mellon University.

Dr. Newby is a research faculty member in the Arctic Region Supercomputing Center (ARSC) at the University of Alaska Fairbanks (UAF), and part of the ARSC executive team. He has been ARSC's Chief Scientist since March 2005. Dr. Newby's research interests include information systems, information retrieval, information visualization, community information systems, grid computing, and electronic texts. For more information, see a brief academic biography.