Andrew Higgins is a professor of Mechanical Engineering, with Masters and PhD degrees in Aeronautics and Astronautics from the University of Washington, Seattle. At McGill University, he has taught courses on compressible flow, thermodynamics, combustion, space propulsion, and statistical mechanics. He has worked for 30 years on research in high-speed flow and shock waves for applications to aerospace propulsion and fusion energy and is now setting his sights higher by considering the engineering problems associated with interstellar flight. He is a surviving urban cyclist, an aspiring longboard surfer, and now learning to endure the Quebec winters with cross-country skiing.

Jay L. Nadeau is a Professor of Physics at Portland State University (2017-present) after 10 years at McGill University in Montreal, Canada, whose research interests include nanoparticles, fluorescence imaging, and development of instrumentation for detection of life elsewhere in the Solar System. Her group was the first to label bacteria with quantum dots, and to explore the possibility of using fluorescent labels as tools for detection of traces of extraterrestrial life. She has published over seventy papers on topics ranging from theoretical condensed matter physics to experimental neurobiology to development of anti-cancer drugs. A believer in bringing biology to the physicists as well as physics to the biologists, she has created seven graduate level courses and written a textbook, Introduction to Molecular Biophysics (Taylor &Francis). She received her PhD in physics from the University of Minnesota in 1996.

Barrett S. Caldwell, PhD is Professor of Industrial Engineering, and Aeronautics & Astronautics,

at Purdue. He has a PhD (Univ. of California, Davis, 1990) in Social Psychology, and BS degrees

in Aeronautics and Astronautics, and Humanities (MIT, 1985). His research team is the Group

Performance Environments Research (GROUPER) Laboratory. GROUPER examines and

improves how people get, share, and use information in settings including aviation, critical

incident response, healthcare, and spaceflight operations. Prof. Caldwell has been Director

and Principal Investigator of the NASA-funded Indiana Space Grant Consortium (INSGC) since

2002. From January 1 – May 31, 2022, Prof. Caldwell provided stewardship to the School of Industrial Engineering at Purdue as the Interim Head. He currently serves as the chair of the Board of Advisors for the national Students for Exploration and Development of Space organization

(SEDS-USA), and a member of the Board of Advisors for STEM for Development. In non-work

moments, he is a creative writer and poet, sports aficionado, and avid music listener.

Michael Pham is the Director of Technology for the Bronco Space Lab at Cal Poly Pomona, where he also happened to earn his BS in Aerospace Engineering. Since 2019, his team at Bronco Space has directly supported the launch or impending launch of 14 satellites across 10 universities nationwide. Michael's specialty lies in rapid full stack technology development with particular talents in convoluted acronym creation. He is a proponent of open and accessible space exploration and oversees projects such as PROVES, a complete and very low-cost open source 1U CubeSat kit.  Recently, he has also been noted for publications attempting to draw a connection between video game speed running and how projects big and small succeed or fail. 

Andrew Greenberg is senior instructor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Portland State University, and is the faculty advisor for the Portland State Aerospace Society, an interdisciplinary student aerospace project.

Join Andrew to hear the latest on PSAS, including our four strategic open source projects: amateur rockets, liquid fuel motors, the OreSat CubeSat system, and satellite ground stations.