SmallSats Crew
Don V Black, PhD, Software Architect, CTO, Founder (Physics, Visualization, Aerospace)
Dr. Don V Black is Founder and Director of Digital ChoreoGraphics, a software design and development firm that has been serving Fortune 500 companies in the Aerospace, Educational, Medical and Industrial sectors since 1976. He has a Masters in Visual Computing from the UCI School of Information and Computer Sciences, a Ph.D. in Computer Graphics and Visualization from the UCI School of Engineering, and over 30 years of experience as a professional Engineer, Entrepreneur, Educator, Scientist and Visionary in Aerospace Engineering.
Dr. Black is the Founding Chair of the Orange County Association for Computing Machinery (ACM), IEEE-OC Game Engineers SIG, the Annual IEEE Intercollegiate Computer Game Showcase, and has served as Chair of both the Orange County IEEE, and the Computer Society. In addition to his membership in four IEEE Technical Societies, he is a member of SIGGRAPH, AOPA, AAAS, AIAA, APS, Sigma Xi, Southern California Philosophy of Physics Group, and the IEEE California Public Policy & Government Activities committee. Don also holds an FAA Airmen [private pilot] Certificate and serves as a student club advisor in the School of Information and Computer Sciences at UCI.
His current research interests include General Relativity, Quantum Computing, Theoretical Physics, Spacetime Ontologies, Penultimate Origins, Advanced Propulsion Systems, Computer Games & Simulations, Artificial Intelligence, Interplanetary Transfer Orbits, Continuous Thrust Trajectories, and CubeSats, as well as Aerospace and Astronautics.
Jonathan Nacionales, Chief Product Strategist (BS Math)
Jonathan Nacionales graduated from California State University at Long Beach with a BS in mathematics and has 15 years of experience in software development. His career has spanned defense, marketing, finance, and retail. He specializes in ontology engineering, data engineering, and test engineering.
John Wright, Chief of Software Development (BS (ChemE), MS (CompSci))
Mr. John Wright has been one of the rover planners for the Mars Exploration Rover missions since landing in January 2004 and the Mars Science Laboratory rover Curiosity since it landed in August 2012. In this role, his duties include planning all articulated operations of the rover, including mobility and arm operations, on a daily basis. In addition, he is a developer of the Rover Sequencing and Visualization Program used for building command sequences for the rovers and for simulating and visualizing rover activities.
Prior to the MER mission, he worked on a variety of tasks involving visualization technology for other missions and non-NASA tasks.
Prior to joining JPL in 1994, John worked for over 9 years at Hughes Aircraft Co. on computer graphics algorithms for flight simulator
applications. He holds a B.S. in Chemical Engineering from Purdue University and an M.S. in Computer Science from Wright State University.