People
George Angeli
Head of Systems Engineering
George Angeli, head of systems engineering for the TMT project, has been involved in the design of Extremely Large Telescopes since 2001. Before joining the TMT project he worked on the Giant Segmented Mirror Telescope (GSMT) project at NOAO/AURA. Earlier in his career, he built various optical and electronics instruments, ranging from lasers and optical interferometers to analytical spectrometers, high performance analog electronics, and automated assembly and test equipment. George has a PhD in electrical engineering and optical science from the University of Arizona and is the author of numerous technical papers in peer-reviewed journals and conference proceedings.
Fred Asiri
Facilities Project Manager
Fred B. Asiri has a bachelor's and master's degree in civil/structural engineering from the Abadan Institute of Technology (Iran) and the University of Southern California, respectively. He also received certification from the UCLA, Extension in earthquake engineering and advanced concrete design. He is certified Professional Engineer in civil engineering in California. Fred has more than 42 years of technical management experience in design and construction of major civil/structural engineering projects. He worked for the International Linear Collider (ILC), the Laser-Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO), and has more than 22 years of experience in the design and construction industrial facilities. At LIGO, he successfully directed the efforts of staff and contractors in the site selection, characterization, Environmental Impact Studies, and the design and construction of this scientific facility, while adhering to a stringent vibration, noise, and alignment requirements.
Jenny Atwood
Optical Designer, Adaptive Optics
Jenny has a master’s of science degree in optics from the University of Rochester in New York. She also has a bachelor’s degree in physics from Colorado College. She has been at the Hertzberg Institute for Astrophysics of the National Research Council of Canada since 2006. Previously she spent 6 years working in the Wafer Inspection Division of KLA-Tencor designing dark-field inspection equipment and supporting the manufacturing facility. She also spent one year working at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California on the National Ignition Facility’s small optics design. Her skills include optical design and analysis, optical metrology, vendor management for manufacturing, and clean-room practices.
Elizabeth (Betsy) Barton
Science Advisory Committee Member
Betsy Barton has a bachelorʼs degree in physics and mathematics from Caltech and a masterʼs and Ph.D. degree from Harvard University in Astronomy. She has been a faculty member at the University of California at Irvine since 2004. Betsy's research focuses on many aspects of galaxy evolution, including studies of interacting galaxies in the nearby Universe and a search for star formation at very early times, just 700 million years after the Big Bang. She started working on the science case for extremely large telescopes as a Post-doc at the Herzberg Institute of Astrophysics in 2000, and continued as a Hubble Fellow at the University of Arizona. As a member of the TMT Science Advisory Committee, she chaired the organizing committee for its first scientific workshop, "Science in the Era of TMT," held in 2007. Betsy was a member of the NSF's Giant Segmented Meter Telescope Science Working Group; she was recently appointed to the board of the Gemini Observatory.
Mike Bartsch
Senior Cost/Schedule Analyst
Mike Bartsch has a bachelor of Science degree in management from Texas Wesleyan University. He has over 18 years of project controls experience. Mike has expertise in developing and maintaining large integrated master project schedules, cost control systems, change control systems, and contract management.
Robert Bernier
Senior Opto-Mechanical Engineer
Max Berry
IT Specialist
Max Berry has 10 years of experience providing software and hardware support for PCs, Mac and Windows Servers. He is a Microsoft certified professional and Dell certified technician. He is pursuing his BS in telecommunications from Mt. Sierra College.
Bruce Bigelow
Research Scientist
Bruce Bigelow has been involved in the design and fabrication of spectrographs and imagers for large telescopes for more than 20 years. As an optomechanical engineer, Bruce has contributed to instruments for the Magellan telescopes (IMACS, MagE, and FIRE), the Keck telescopes (HIRES, ESI), the South Africa Large Telescope (SALTICAM), and the CTIO Blanco 4m (DECam). He was the project manager for Keck-ESI from 1995-1997, and for Magellan-IMACS from inception in 1997 through commissioning in 2003. Most recently, Bruce led the infrared detector packaging development efforts for the SNAP telescope, a candidate for the NASA-DOE Joint Dark Energy Mission (JDEM). He has authored more than two dozen conference proceedings and journal articles in the areas of astronomical telescopes and instrumentation, and has chaired or served on design reviews for many U.S. and international astronomical instrumentation projects. Bruce joined UCSC and the UC Observatories in 2007, where he is now the project manager and systems engineer for the Multi-Object Broadband Imaging Echellette (MOBIE), the wide field optical spectrograph (WFOS) for the TMT. His education includes degrees in mechanical engineering (BSME, UCSB, 1985), and optical physics (PhD, UCL, University of London, 1996).
Corinne Boyer
Group Leader -- Adaptive Optics
Corinne Boyer obtained her engineering degree in servo control and her master's degree in instrumentation and control system from the Ecole Nationale Superieure d’Ingenieurs de Caen, France, in 1986. Corinne has 20 years of experience in managing, designing, developing, and testing adaptive optics control systems. In 1998, she moved to the United States to join the Gemini Observatory in Hilo, where she participated in the integration, testing, and commissioning of the Gemini telescopes. Since 2005, Corinne has been working for the TMT and is now the AO systems engineer.
Ray Carlberg
Board Member, Science Advisory Committee Member
Ray Carlberg has been a professor in the department of astronomy and astrophysics at the University of Toronto since 1987. His research interests are mainly in galaxies and cosmology. He led the CNOC cluster and field galaxy surveys and was the Canadian Principal Investigator of the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope Legacy Survey, of which the SNLS supernova cosmology project is the major component. He is a Fellow of the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research (CIFAR) and the Royal Society of Canada. Ray is the Project Director for TMT work in Canada.
Chris Carter
Telescope Controls Engineer
Chris Carter has a bachelor's degree in electrical and electronic engineering from the University of Plymouth, UK, and a master's degree in control systems from Imperial College, London. Prior to joining TMT, he worked for the Royal Greenwich Observatory in Cambridge as an engineer on the Gemini telescope project. He subsequently transferred to Hawaii with Gemini, where he worked on the commissioning and the subsequent operations of both Gemini North and South. He has considerable experience with the secondary mirror systems. Chris' areas of expertise are in electronics and control systems.
Myung Cho
Principal Engineer, Opto-mechanics
Myung Cho has a bachelor's degree in civil engineering from the Pusan National University, South Korea, a master's degree in civil engineering from the Florida Institute of Technology, and a PhD in engineering mechanics from University of Arizona. Myung has more than 20 years of experience in performing opto-mechanical systems design and development, including the SIRTF primary mirror, the WIYN primary mirror, the Gemini mirrors, and the concept for the AURA GSMT Optics. He has expertise in finite element modeling, optical performance evaluations, thermal performance of optics assemblies, mirror support optimizations, active optics, and structural dynamics.
Judith Cohen
Science Advisory Committee Member
Judith Cohen has a bachelor's degree from Radcliffe College, a master's and PhD in astronomy from Caltech, and a bachelor's degree in civil engineering from the University of Arizona. She has been on the faculty at Caltech since 1979 and is the Kate Van Nuys Page Professor of Astronomy. She has worked in many fields of stellar astronomy, globular clusters, and nearby galaxies. She, with the late Bev Oke, led the team that designed and built the Low Resolution Imaging Spectrograph, a first light instrument at the Keck Observatory. At present she is the project scientist for the MAGIQ guider replacement/update project at Keck.
David Crampton
Instruments Group Leader
David Crampton has a PhD in astrophysics from the University of Toronto. David has been a user of forefront optical telescopes since 1965 and has been involved in the planning of such facilities since 1974 (CFHT). As PI of several instruments (primarily for CFHT and Gemini) David has overseen the development of astronomical instrumentation for over 30 years, and led the instrumentation team at Victoria for 20 years. David has also established a strong reputation in astrophysical research, publishing more than 400 articles.
Tim Davidge
Science Advisory Committee Member
Tim Davidge earned a PhD in physics and astronomy from the University of Victoria, British Columbia. Tim is an astronomer at the Herzberg Institute of Astrophysics, and his primary research interest is the evolution of nearby galaxies. Tim is a member of the TMT Science Advisory Committee and the IRIS science team.
Sandra Dawson
Manager -- Hawaii Community Affairs
Sandra has a bachelor of arts degree in political science and a master's in international studies from Claremont Graduate University. Sandra worked at JPL for 20 years on some of JPLs largest projects, and received numerous group and individual awards. Sandra has expertise in environmental policy and legal compliance for science projects and in the communication of technical and legal risks. She is the environmental policy and communication lead at TMT.
Pratheep Eamranond
Senior Contracts Specialist
Pratheep has a bachelor's degree in liberal arts from Clark University, a JD from the Illinois Institute of Technology, Chicago-Kent College of Law, and is pursuing an MBA from Claremont Graduate University's Peter F. Drucker and Masatoshi Ito School of Business. Pratheep has 8 years of experience in contract negotiation and management, is a member of the California Bar Association, and has passed the Illinois State Bar.
Christopher Echols
Mechanical Engineer
Christopher Echols is a mechanical design engineer with 12 years of experience in mechanical engineering and design in aerospace, robotics, optics, and astronomy. At TMT he employs computer-aided design software to create three-dimensional engineering models of the telescope structure and related mechanical systems. He earned a bachelor's degree in engineering and applied sciences from Caltech in 1996.
Brent Ellerbroek
Department Head -- Instrumentation
Brent Ellerbroek has a bachelor of science in mathematics from the University of California at Los Angeles, and received his PhD in mathematics from the California Institute of Technology. He has over 25 years of experience in modeling, designing, and testing adaptive optical systems for atmospheric turbulence compensation. Brent has expertise in the application of control theory and computational mathematics to adaptive optics, adaptive optics component technologies, adaptive optics modeling and systems engineering, and project/contract management. He is a Fellow and a journal editor for the Optical Society of America and a frequent chair of conferences on adaptive optics.
Virginia Ford
Senior Opto-Mechanical Engineer
Virginia Ford has a bachelor's degree in mechanical engineering from the University of Florida and a bachelors degree in physical sciences from Harvard University. Virginia has 30 years of experience as a mechanical engineer and manager, working primarily in the field of opto-mechanical engineering for aerospace instruments and telescopes. She also has received numerous awards, authored many publications, and received a patent for a flexure ring for centering optical elements.
Luc Gilles
Adaptive Optics Analyst
Luc Gilles has received a PhD in physics from Imperial College, London, UK, in 1993. Luc has extensive experience in the analysis, modeling, and simulation of optical components and systems, including astronomical adaptive optics. Luc joined TMT in 2005 as AO analyst. Luc has authored more than 20 peer reviewed journal papers on a wide range of problems in quantum and nonlinear optics, photonics, imaging, and adaptive optics.
Paul Gillett
Facilities Department Head
Paul Gillett obtained bachelor’s and master’s degrees in civil engineering and began his career working on the design and construction of offshore oil installations. Later, after obtaining his PhD, he did early design work on the Next Generation Telescope project, which eventually led to the Gemini Project. For several years in the interim, he worked for architectural-engineering companies and then returned to the astronomy field to work on the Gemini telescopes. Paul designed the telescope mount and pier, and was heavily involved in the design of the summit facilities. He then was the site manager for construction of the Gemini South facilities, and was later the project manager for the Gemini southern headquarters building. Gillett now manages the TMT site-testing effort and has become responsible for the TMT facilities, which include buildings, general equipment, and other site infrastructure.
Kim Gillies
Software Architect
David Goodman
Business Manager
David Goodman has over 30 years of business experience in global engineering and manufacturing organizations. He has effectively shaped and led teams responsible for finance, budgeting, accounting, contracts, pricing, estimating, project controls, human resources, supplier management, procurement, and property management. David has a degree in economics from the University of Missouri, Columbia.
Peter Gray
Assistant Project Manager
Peter Gray has a bachelor of science degree in physics and a bachelor of engineering degree in mechanical engineering from the University of Sydney. He has over 26 years of experience of engineering design and operations support for many of the world's major observatories and large telescope projects. His early career at the Anglo-Australian Observatory was in the design and construction of astronomical instrumentation, particularly multi-object fiber spectrographs, where he helped pioneer this technology. Gray moved to the University of Arizona where he was involved in many projects at the Mirror Lab, MMT, and LBT telescopes. He later led the assembly and integration phase for ESO's four VLT telescopes at Paranal Observatory in Chile, where, as head of engineering, he established engineering operations support. He has worked on system engineering for the ALMA project, and most recently served as Associate Director of Engineering at the Gemini Observatory, where he successfully led the engineering team during the transition from commissioning to science operations.
Glen Herriot
NFIRAOS Project Manager
Glen Herriot earned a bachelor's degree in systems design engineering from the University of Waterloo, Ontario, in 1975. Before coming to Herzberg Institute of Astrophysics in 1993, where he managed the development of Altair, the Gemini North Adaptive Optics system, he worked at firms designing precision instruments for electrical metrology, oceanography and electron microscopy. Glen is currently the TMT NFIRAOS Project Manager / Systems Engineer. His research interests include system level design and analysis of adaptive optics (AO) systems, as well as design of advanced AO control algorithms. He devised innovative measurement techniques for supervisory real-time control functions in adaptive optics: for pupil alignment, invisible mode suppression, and centroid gain compensation for both natural and laser guide stars. These techniques have become standard features on adaptive optics systems throughout the world. He was awarded in 1991 "Product of the Year" by Semiconductor International magazine for a fully automated scanning electron microscope for unattended measurement of integrated circuit sizes in chip factories. In industry he obtained three patents: for the world's most accurate wattmeter, for magnification calibration, and for auto-focus control of electron microscopes.
Paul Hickson
Science Advisory Committee Member Project Science Group Co-Chair Project Scientist, NFIRAOS Adaptive Optics System
Paul Hickson has a BSc in Physics from the University of Alberta and a PhD in Astrophysics from Caltech. He is a professor in the department of physics and astronomy at the University of British Columbia. He has more than thirty years experience at designing, building, and using astronomical instruments and has developed liquid-mirror telescopes with apertures as large as six meters. He has served on advisory and review committees for several ground-based and space telescopes and is currently Canada's co-chair on the TMT Science Advisory Committee and project scientist for the TMT NFIRAOS adaptive optics system. He has published more than 120 scientific papers and a book, and has received several honors, including a Killam Senior Science Research Prize and NASA Group Achievement Award. Paul is a member of the International Astronomical Union, the American Institute of Physics, and is a Fellow of the Royal Astronomical Society. He is the current president of the Canadian Astronomical Society.
Florence Kaufman
Controller
Florence Kaufman has a bachelor's degree in accounting and an MBA from California State University at Los Angeles. She qualified as a CPA in 1970 and has experience in private, public, and governmental accounting. She worked as a financial analyst for the LIGO project for 9 years.
Olivier Lardiere
Adaptive Optics Scientist
Olivier Lardiere completed his Ph.D. thesis in stellar interferometry at the Haute-Provence Observatory, France, in 2000. In France, Olivier worked on the design of hypertelescope projects and on the direct imaging instrument project for the VLTI. Olivier has ten years of postdoctoral experience in active and adaptive optics, and high dynamic range imaging. In 2002, he joined the Arcetri Observatory in Florence, Italy, to test an adaptive secondary mirror for the LBT and to study the ultimate performance of ELTs for direct imaging of Earth-like planets. Since 2007, Olivier has been an adaptive optics scientist at the University of Victoria, Canada, and has developed a laser-guide-star wavefront sensing test bed for the Thirty Meter Telescope Project.
Phil Lindquist
Project Controls Analyst
Phil Lindquist has been an engineer, proposal manager and project controls specialist since 1966. Phil earned his bachelor’s of science and master’s of science in engineering physics from Cornell University in 1965 and 1966, and an EEE degree in Electrical Engineering from the University of Southern California in 1971. Phil has completed proposals and management systems validations for large government contracts and several large projects. At the Jefferson Lab, Phil worked as the project controls manager and the deputy project manager on a $500 million project to build the continuous electron beam accelerator facility (CEBAF) that is used for nuclear physics research. After moving to Caltech in 1994, Phil served as the project controls manager for the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO). In 2010, Phil joined TMT to assist with proposals and cost estimates.
Douglas MacMynowski
Modeling and Controls System Engineer
Douglas MacMynowski is a senior research fellow in the Department of Control and Dynamical Systems at the California Institute of Technology. MacMynowski received his bachelor of applied science degree from the University of Toronto in 1987, and SM and PhD in aeronautics and astronautics from MIT in 1990 and 1992. Prior to joining Caltech in 2000, he led the active control research and development program at United Technologies Research Center. His expertise includes controls, structural dynamics, acoustics, and fluid dynamics, and he is an author or co-author on five patents and over 60 papers. Home page
Bill McVeigh
Project Management Control System Lead
Bill McVeigh is a project management professional with over 20 years of experience in scheduling, earned value management, and implementing project control systems on some of the world's biggest science and Department of Defense projects. Before joining TMT, Bill made key contributions to the establishment of a project control system on the Atacama Large Millimeter Array (ALMA), Advanced Technological Solar Telescope (ATST), National Synchrotron Light Source II (NSLS-II), Joint Strike Fighter (JSF), and the Superconducting Super Collider. Bill has a degree in finance from Sam Houston State University.
Jerry Nelson
Project Scientist
Jerry Nelson has a bachelor of science in physics from Caltech, and a PhD in elementary particle physics from the University of California in Berkeley. He is the appointed Project Scientist of TMT and currently a professor of astronomy and astrophysics in the University of California in Santa Cruz. He has earned numerous honors for his work on the Keck Telescope, and has experience in experimental high energy physics, observational astronomy, astronomical instrumentation, and telescope design. He has extensive knowledge of optics, optical support systems, kinematic design, and structural engineering. Jerry has received various awards and is a member of the National Academy of Sciences. He has authored numerous publications in physics, astronomy, instrumentation, and telescope design.
Carl Nissly
Optical Modeling Engineer
Carl Nissly received bachelor’s degree in optical science and engineering from the College of Optical Sciences at the University of Arizona. He currently works in the active optical systems group at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, modeling optical systems and wavefront sensing and control systems.
Holly Novack
Office Administrator
Holly Novack is responsible for providing and coordinating administrative support to the project management office of the Thirty Meter Telescope project.
Jeff Oram
Project Controls Manager
Jeff Oram has bachelor's and master's degrees in mathematics from Eastern Washington University and an MBA degree in finance from Loyola Marymount University. Jeff has 10 years of experience in financial and operations cost modeling, and 5 years of experience as a mathematics instructor. Jeff has expertise in developing parametric cost models, project proposal pricing, and database development.
Angel Otárola
Senior Scientist
Angel Otárola has a bachelor's degree in civil engineering in geography from the Universidad de Santiago de Chile (USACH), a master's degree in atmospheric sciences from the University of Arizona, and a Ph.D. in atmospheric sciences with a minor in planetary sciences awarded by the University of Arizona. Angel has worked since 1990 in site testing studies in collaboration with several radio astronomy institutes in the United States, Europe, and Japan. These studies identified the Llano de Chajnantor (Chile) as the best place for the deployment of the Atacama Large Millimeter Array (ALMA). He also participated in the technical evaluation of prototype radio antennas for the ALMA project. He currently holds a scientist position with the TMT project. His main interests are the study of the distribution and variability of water vapor in the Earth's atmosphere as well as atmospheric turbulence and their effects in the propagation of electromagnetic waves through the atmosphere. Angel holds a research associate position with the University of Arizona and is a member of the American Meteorological Society, American Geophysical Union, and the IEEE.
John Padzer
Optical Systems Engineer
John Pazder has a bachelor's degree in physics and a master's degree specializing in optical design from University of Victoria, Canada. John has more than 15 years experience in optics and has worked on various ground and space based instruments, including the MOST space telescope, the James Webb Space Telescope fine guidance sensor, the Gemini's Altar A/O and the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope MegaPrime. He is the team leader of the optics group at the Herzberg Institute of Astrophysics and the TMT optical systems engineer.
Piotr Piatrou
Active Optics Engineer
Piotr Piatrou has a bachelor’s of science degree in optical engineering from the Belarussian State Polytechnic Academy in Minsk, Belarus, and a Ph.D. in electrical engineering from the Michigan Technological University in Houghton, Michigan. His areas of expertise include diffraction by small particles, light propagation through turbid and disperse media, active and adaptive optics, and mathematical modeling of optical systems. Piotr has authored and co-authored more than 10 peer-reviewed publications on diffraction theory and adaptive optics. He currently is the project scientist at the University of California, Irvine, for TMT active optics’ alignment and phasing system.
Scott Roberts
Deputy Systems Engineer
Scott Roberts has a bachelor's and master's degree in mechanical engineering from the University of British Columbia. He has twenty years experience in opto-mechanical engineering, including design and development of astronomical instrumentation and optical metrology equipment. Scott received an Outstanding Acheivement Award from the National Research Council Canada in 2005 for his leadership in developing a Canadian concept for the next generation of optical telescopes. Scott is a registered Professional Engineer in the province of British Columbia.
John Rogers
Systems Engineer
John Rogers has a bachelor's degree in mechanical engineering from the University of Manchester, UK. Prior to joining TMT, John worked as the lead engineer on structural, hydro-mechanical and avionic systems for the Airbus A380 project. He also worked on the design and development of mechanical components and sub-systems for use on satellite propulsion systems and payloads. John joined TMT in 2008 and works within the System Engineering group.
Amir Sadjadpour
Senior Structural Engineer
Amir received his doctoral and master's degrees in applied mechanics and mechanical engineering from Caltech. He also has two certificates in management of technology and engineering management from Caltech’s Industrial Relations Center. Prior to joining TMT, Amir was a member of the civil/structural engineering team of the Bechtel Power Corporation, responsible for the design, analysis, and construction of nuclear, gas fired, and coal fired power plants around the globe. Before his doctoral studies on constitutive modeling of shape memory alloys, Amir earned a master’s and a bachelor’s degree from University of Tehran’s civil and structural engineering department, where his focus was on applications of fuzzy logic in finite element modeling and analysis of structural systems. Amir has been a recipient of numerous awards and his profile has been selected for Marquis Who's Who in America 2009 and 2010 editions.
Gary Sanders
Project Manager
Gary Sanders spent 25 years performing high-energy physics experiments at laboratories in the United States and Europe. He earned an AB degree in physics from Columbia University and a PhD in high-energy physics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He has been a faculty member in physics at Princeton University and a scientist at Los Alamos National Laboratory. In 1994, Gary came to Caltech to serve as the Project Manager and Deputy Director for the Laser Interferometer Gravitational Wave Observatory (LIGO) project. Gary joined TMT as its Project Manager in 2004. He is the author or a co-author of more than 175 peer-reviewed publications and he has been elected a Fellow of the American Physical Society.
Matthias Schoeck
System Scientist
Matthias Schoeck started his studies in physics at the University in Karlsruhe, Germany and received his PhD in astrophysics from the University of Wyoming in 1998. He has been working on site testing issues for TMT, and previously for CELT/GSMT, since 2001. His previous experience, gained during postdoctoral positions in Lyon, France and Irvine, California, is in adaptive optics and methods of atmospheric turbulence analysis. Matthias currently leads the TMT Site Testing Group.
Byoung-Joon Seo
System Engineering Group
Byoung-Joon Seo joined the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., where he has worked for the System Engineering Group of TMT since 2007. He received a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering from Seoul National University in 1998 and a master’s and Ph.D. degree in electrical engineering from the University of California, Los Angeles in 2001 and 2007, respectively. Byoung-Joon has authored and co-authored more than 30 conference proceedings and journal articles in the areas of photonics, optics, and astronomical telescopes.
Luc Simard
Group Leader -- Instrumentation
Luc Simard is an astronomer at the National Research Council of Canada's Herzberg Institute of Astrophysics. He obtained his B.Sc. from Queen's University in 1990 and his Ph.D. from the University of Victoria in 1996. From 1996 to 2002, he held postdoctoral fellowships at the University of California, Santa Cruz and the University of Arizona, Steward Observatory. He joined NRC-HIA in 2002. His research interests include galaxy formation and evolution, image processing and astronomical instrumentation. He is currently working on developing instruments for the Thirty Meter Telescope.
Mark Sirota
Telescope Controls Group Leader
Mark Sirota has bachelor's and master's degrees in electrical engineering from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and California State University at Fullerton, respectively. Prior to joining TMT, Mark spent nearly 15 years at the W.M. Keck Observatory as part of the Senior Management Team and was the Project Manager for the Magdalena Ridge Observatory Interferometer. Mark’s background is in dynamics and control and he has authored a number of papers on the subject; in addition, Mark has experience in technical and project management. Mark is responsible for TMT's telescope control systems, including precision control of the 492 primary mirror segments.
Warren Skidmore
Research Scientist
Warren Skidmore has a bachelor of science degree (honors) in physics and astrophysics from Leicester University, master of science degree in astrophysics from QMWC, University of London, and a PhD in astrophysics from Keele University. He has published many research articles within the field of cataclysmic variables, is an experienced and active observational astronomer, and often acts as a referee for astronomical journals. Warren has worked extensively within the TMT site testing group and has developed new methods for assessing the quality of sites for astronomical observations. He continues to work within the TMT systems engineering group as an experimental scientist, assisting the design and development of TMT by investigating the behavior of the telescope subsystems. Home page
Larry Stepp
Telescope Department Head
Larry Stepp has a bachelor's degree in interdisciplinary science and a master's degree in engineering mechanics from the University of Nebraska - Lincoln. He has more than 20 years of experience in the mechanical design, fabrication, and testing of large optics, including management responsibility for the WIYN primary mirror assembly and the Gemini Optics group. Larry led the AURA New Initiatives Office team that developed the concept for the Giant Segmented Mirror Telescope (GSMT), one of the precursors to TMT. He has been active in the SPIE symposiums on telescopes and instruments for astronomy and has chaired several conference
Ryuji Suzuki
Postdoctoral Scholar
Ryuji Suzuki obtained a Ph.D. in astronomy from Tohoku University in Japan in 2006. Ryuji is a Caltech postdoctoral research scholar and was deeply involved in two infrared instrument projects for the Subaru Telescope. Now with the Adaptive Optics Group, Ryuji is using his expertise in optical design, experiment and data reduction for the Thirty Meter Telescope Project.
Kei Szeto
Enclosure Group Leader
Kei Szeto has a bachelor of engineering degree in mechanical engineering from McGill University and a master's degree in ocean engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Kei has over 20 years of mechanical engineering design experience, including more than 10 years of direct experience in the development of astronomical instruments. Kei has led teams of astronomers, engineers, and technicians in various instrumentation projects. Kei's expertise is in optomechanical design, structural and dynamic analyses, and scientific project management by providing technical and organizational leadership to the design team. Kei is a Professional Engineer in the province of British Columbia, Canada.
Feronika Tanti
Financial Analyst
Feronika Tanti has a bachelor's degree in business administration/finance from California State University of Long Beach. She has more than 10 years of finance experience. She is responsible for the administration of financial activities across the functions within business operations, including finance, human resource, procurement, and administrative functions.
Hugh Thompson
Systems Engineer
Hugh Thompson has a degree in engineering physics from the University of British Columbia. Hugh has more than 10 years of engineering experience, primarily working as a systems engineer in the space industry. He was responsible for the thermal system of the RADARSAT-2 satellite, which was launched in 2007 and is fully operational. Hugh was also the payload systems engineer for the RapidEye constellation of five optical Earth observation satellites. He was responsible at the system level for the subcontract to build the push-broom scanning telescopes and their associated electronics. All five satellites were successfully delivered to orbit in 2008. Hugh joined the systems engineering group at TMT in 2008 and works at the Herzberg Institute of Astrophysics in Victoria, Canada.
Tony Travouillon
System Scientist
Tony Travouillon has a doctorate in astronomy from the University of New South Wales in Sydney, Australia. After spending a few years site testing the Antarctic continent with Australian and European teams, Tony joined TMT to study the candidate sites for this project. He is specialized in astroclimatology, or developing and applying instrumentation to measure the different atmospheric parameters that affect the performance of an observatory. Home page
Mitchell Troy
Telescope Controls Engineer
Mitchell Troy is a employee of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory who has more than 18 years of experience with the Keck telescopes, including building and developing the phasing camera system to align the segmented primary mirrors. He has 10 years of experience with adaptive optics (AO) and led the JPL development of the Palomar AO system. Mitchell is a group supervisor of the adaptive optics and astronomical instrumentation group at JPL and is the subject matter expert at JPL for active and adaptive optics. Mitchell is involved in many aspects of the TMT, including co-investigator on the alignment and phasing system, which will be responsible for the optical alignment of the ~10,000 degrees of freedom of TMT.
William Tyler
ES&H/QA Officer
After receiving his bachelor's of science degree in mechanical engineering from the California Polytechnic State University at San Luis Obispo, William started his career in chemical rocket propulsion with the U.S. Navy. During this time, he also obtained a graduate certificate in rocket propulsion from the University of California, Los Angeles. He then spent 38 years in both R&D and flight systems development and as technical group supervisor for propulsion systems at Caltech's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. During the next 16 years, William was the JPL Quality Assurance engineering group supervisor for flight propulsion and mechanical hardware systems. He then left JPL to become the LIGO QA Officer. After retiring from JPL, he continued to work with LIGO and more recently was the LIGO Safety Officer before joining TMT as Safety Officer. William has received numerous NASA awards, including the NASA Exceptional Service award for his leadership role for the successful Galileo mission propulsion system.
Konstantinos Vogiatzis
Senior Aero-thermal Engineer
Konstantinos Vogiatzis has a bachelor's degree in mechanical engineering from the National Technical University of Athens, Greece, a PhD in engineering science from Louisiana State University at Baton Rouge with minors in astrophysics and oceanography, and has done postdoctoral studies in computational fluid dynamics at the University of Kentucky in Lexington. Konstantinos has more than 14 years of experience in performing flow simulations of aerospace and mechanical systems configurations. He has expertise in the modeling and analysis of telescope performance, computational fluid dynamics simulations of wind flow above topography, inside enclosures, around telescopes, and inside combustion chambers of turbines engines and power plants. Konstantinos is a member of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics and a registered professional mechanical engineer with the Technical Chambers of Greece
Lianqi Wang
Adaptive Optics Analyst
Lianqi Wang earned a bachelor of science in space physics from the University of Science and Technology of China in 2003. After receiving his PhD in physics from the University of California at Irvine in June 2007, he joined TMT as assistant AO systems analyst. He has been evolved in AO systems modeling and data analysis since the beginning of his doctoral research in 2005.
Eric Williams
Telescope Optics Group Leader
Eric Williams has a bachelor's degree in engineering (mechanical) from San Francisco State University. Eric has over 20 years of mechanical design and analysis experience, much gained in the aerospace industry, where he contributed to the development of composite spacecraft structures, submarine propulsion systems, and solid rocket development programs prior to specializing in optomechanics in recent years. Eric has extensive experience designing and optimizing structural components and systems, including flexure-based support systems, kinematic mounts, and precision mechanisms.
Magnolia Ycasas
Human Resources Specialist
Magnolia Ycasas has a bachelor of arts degree in business management with a major in human resources administration from De La Salle University, Manila, Philippines. Magnolia has 12 years of experience in performing skilled, confidential functions utilizing her expertise in human resources, in areas such as employment, benefits administration, payroll, staff development/training, employee relations, compensation, employee services, employer-sponsored visa services, and leave and disability administration. She is also involved in creating programs critical to TMT's workplace environment consistent with the project's organizational goals.
Joelle Zavzavadjian
Senior Financial Analyst
Joelle Zavzavadjian has a bachelor's degree in biology from East Central University, a master’s degree in physiology from the University of Oklahoma, and an MBA with a concentration in finance from the University of Redlands. Joelle has 7 years of experience in performing data management, organization, and analysis. She is responsible for the analysis of past and present financial operations to determine trends, generate budget forecasts, and optimize resources. She also establishes guidelines and procedures to ensure adequacy, quality, and reliability of financial information.