The Mars Science Laboratory "Curiosity" is the third in a succession of rovers to be sent to Mars. It will conduct experiments remotely both en route and on the surface of Mars to characterize both locations' suitability for human life in the long term, and to explore Mars and learn more about its composition in the short term. Mr. Patrikalakis will talk about critical design decisions such as the entry, descent, and landing mechanisms, give an overview of the science payload of the rover.
Alexander Patrikalakis is a Senior Software Engineer at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, managed on behalf of NASA by the California Institute of Technology. He currently is employed by the Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) mission to develop and validate ground sequencing models of the MSL spacecraft. In the past, he worked on ground model development of the JUNO and GRAIL spacecraft, and also worked on e-commerce applications while he was a consultant at IBM. Alex attended MIT, obtaining an S.B. in Computer Science in 2007 and an M.Eng. in Computer Science in 2010.
