I am a NASA contractor through Planners Collaborative. I work at NASA's Ames Research Center in the Education Office where I serve as technical lead for the Ames Educational Technology Team. This team produces a wide range of educational products and programs highlighting NASA research, and targeting audiences in grades K through graduate school. Learn more about some of these programs at http://quest.nasa.gov.

I have degrees in psychology, information systems, and astronomy. As an undergrad astronomy student, I worked as a research assistant to Bruce Margon at the UCLA Observatory, studying BL Lacertae objects. My graduate research in astronomy investigated relationships between orbital periods and absolute magnitudes in cataclysmic binary systems. Before coming to work at NASA in 2000, I worked as a software engineer in and around the Silicon Valley since 1982, taught programming courses at San Jose State, and served as chairman of the observatory at Foothill College for 16 years.

My wife Pam and I spend many of our vacations chasing solar eclipses around the world. This endeavor has taken us to exotic locations such as the heights of the Bolivian Andes, the border of Northern Mongolia and Siberia in the wintertime, remote stretches of the Australian outback, the wilds of Africa, and the beer gardens of Germany.