Biography:

Majoring in physics (minoring in history and psychology), my undergraduate degree was at Michigan State University, starting Fall 1962.  I designed part of the cyclotron the summer of my freshman year and continued to work on software for the cyclotron group (my adviser, Henry Blosser, was the head of it) for the rest of my time there.  I wrote the second video game in the world; someone did the other at MIT at about the same time in 1963.  I also worked as a computer operator at night to pay for flying lessons in the MSU flying club, where I obtained my private pilot's license in 1964.  After graduation (June 1966), I started grad school in physics but started working for IBM Components Division in Fishkill, NY, in January 1967.

At IBM, I designed their first memory chip with two other people.  It was probably the first completely computer design and manufacturing project of any kind in the world.  I obtained my instrument rating, commercial pilot's license, seaplane rating, and glider license during that time.  In January 1969, I left IBM to go back to grad school and went to UMass, Amherst, in physics.  I obtained my airplane, instrument, and glider flight instructor ratings in 1969 while at UMass.  I worked part-time as an airplane flight instructor while in school and spent the summer of 1970 as a full-time glider flight instructor at Sugarbush Airport in Vermont.  I switched to Zoology after a year and did an M.S. on seagull soaring flight aerodynamics.  My PhD., from the Zoology Department, awarded in 1979, was on bat flight aerodynamics and functional anatomy.

I started teaching at Vermont Technical College, Randolph Center, VT, in August 1977, teaching physics and zoology.  I initiated and taught Spacecraft Software (for our Software Engineering MS degree, with Peter Chapin), Spacecraft Technology I & II, Intro. Zoology, Anatomy and Physiology, Ada, Advanced Ada, Operating Systems and Pascal; and taught Calculus and non-calculus based Physics, Modern Physics, Introductory Chemistry, and BASIC computer programming.  Starting 2004, I have applied for 25 NASA grants and have received 35 resulting in the construction of a CubeSat launched in an Air Force Minotaur 1 rocket on November 19, 2013, the first by any college in the Northeast U.S. It was in orbit and operational for two years and two days before reentering the Earth's atmosphere on November 21, 2015. It was the only successful satellite of any kind launched by a college in the Northeast of the U.S. until 2018.  I have just started on a grant to work on a spacecraft software system with Dr. Peter Chapin and our students.  We will develop a satellite version of the JT65 weak signal protocol to allow a university satellite to communicate with a university ground station from Jupiter, avoiding the very expensive and hard to get time on NASA's Deep Space Network.  I gave conference talks in York, UK; Venice, Italy; Porto Venere, Italy; Stockholm, Sweden; Berlin, Germany; Paris, France; Madrid, Spain; Pisa, Italy; Vienna, Austria; and Jerusalem, Israel.  I have also given talks in San Luis Obispo (Cal Poly) multiple times, Washington, DC, Cambridge, MA, Ithaca, NY, and Ottawa, Canada.  I was a keynote speaker at Ada Europe, Lisbon in 2018, and an invited speaker (along with John Glenn, Scott Carpenter, and Buzz Aldrin) at Space Operations, Washington, DC, in 2012 and an invited speaker at the Amateur Radio Satellite Corporation 50th Anniversary conference in 2019.

I have been working on CubeSat projects for more than 16 years, with Dr. Peter Chapin and several VTC students. While I constructed the satellite's hardware, our students worked on the software with the assistance and supervision of Professor Peter Chapin.

In July 2014, I was named a "top innovator" by Embedded Computer Design magazine. Additionally, our CubeSat was featured in Air & Space Magazine, Fox News, The Chronicle of Higher Education, and WCAX. Learn more by visiting the CubeSat website, cubesatlab.org .