Aaron Silver - Staff Assistant

Hi Everyone!~~

My name is Aaron Silver, and I will be one of your LPSA staff assistants for Summer 2012.  I hope you all are pumped for a most excellent summer, I know I am for sure!

So a little educational background on me: I am currently a 4th year (yikes!) graduate student in the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department at The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.  My primary research focus area is robotics and control systems, as well as machine learning/artificial intelligence.  I will be completely done with my graduate studies come this August, so that has me excited to no end!   I completed my B.S. in Engineering at a small but great little place called Hope College in Holland, MI.

Believe it or not, but this will be my 4th summer returning to Goddard!  In my first 2 summers (in 2006 and 2007), I worked on a fantastic robotics project that NASA had developed to create wheel-less rovers out of expanding/contracting tetrahedral cells.  My 3rd summer was so far the best, as I was an intern when the LPSA was brand new in 2009!  There, i worked on a team to develop free space laser ranging and communication technology.  The project was extremely interesting, and the entire LPSA experience was still one of the greatest summers I've ever had!  I got to know all of my fellow LPSA'ers extremely well, and still regularly keep in touch with quite a few of them, even though it's 3 years later! I know that this summer can be even better, so I hope you are looking forward to something really special!

I'm originally from Grandville, Michigan (a suburb of Grand Rapids, Michigan).  Outside of NASA and school, some of my other interests include traveling and camping, as I have done a ton of camping in 40-some states and most of the provinces in Canada. I’m also into sports, a fan of all the Michigan teams (Pistons, Tigers, Lions, Red Wings), and above all else, a huge New York Yankees fan (I get this from my Dad's side of the family, who all are from the NYC area). Lastly, music is a passion of mine. I have played various brass instruments in orchestras, wind symphonies, jazz ensembles, brass quintets, etc. I have been playing piano since I was about 4 years old, and have never stopped.