Karen Bradford
Karen C. Bradford was born in Anniston, Alabama and is the Chief of Staff at NASA Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, CA. Karen’s assignment with NASA began as Executive Assistant to Nobel Laureate Dr. Baruch Blumberg, Director, NASA Astrobiology Institute (NAI) where she planned, implemented and served as project lead for the first NAI Minority Institution Faculty Research Sabbatical. Prior assignments with the civil service include Lead Accounting Technician and Director’s Secretary at the 12th District Marine Corps Recruitment Headquarters; Office Manager and Executive Assistant to the Deputy Regional Counsel for Headquarters, Region IX, of the Environmental Protection Agency in San Francisco, CA; Management Analyst and IG Lead for the Comptroller, Navy Public Works Center Pearl Harbor, HI.
In 2005, Karen was nominated and selected as a member of the National Coalition of 100 Black Women, Silicon Valley Chapter and has served in various offices including 2nd Vice President of Programs, Hospitality Chair and the Membership Committee Chair. Karen often speaks or guest teaches at local parish organizations during the year, is an accomplished singer, plays classical piano and cantors, most recently for St. Lucy Parish Church in Campbell, CA. She is a very proud mother of 5 and grandmother of 8. She is equally as proud of being a Navy Wife, retired.
Terence Pagaduan
Terence “Terry” Pagaduan is the international and intergovernmental relations chief at NASA Ames Research Center in Mountain View, Calif. Among his duties is to serve as the primary liaison between NASA and the State of Hawai’i. Terry has negotiated several Space Act Agreements between NASA Ames and the Hawai’i Department of Business, Economic Development and Tourism (DBEDT), and he has worked with Professor Dilmurat Azimov to help develop the Hawai’i Engaged STEM Pathways Program (HESTEMP). He is proud to be a Moanalua High School alumnus. Terry has a B.A. in political economy from Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island. He resides in the San Francisco Bay Area with his family and one and a half German Shepherds. Travel, cooking, and making wine from his own vineyard are among his hobbies.
Corey Ippolito
Dr. Corey A. Ippolito is an Aerospace Research Scientist at NASA Ames Research Center who heads the Exploration Aerial Vehicle Systems (EAV) Laboratory. Dr. Ippolito’s research interests includes autonomy for unmanned aerial systems (UAS) operating in low-altitude high-density urban environments, intelligent control of swarming UAS for monitoring of active volcanic systems, decentralized adaptive control of flight dynamics for flexible aerospace vehicle structures, intelligent UAS autonomy for autonomous subsurface mapping of active earthquake fault zones, and intelligent decentralized control of smart environments. Dr. Ippolito has led several projects at NASA, including the SAFE50 Safe Autonomous Flight Environment for the Notional First/Last 50 Feet (SAFE50) Project, the Decentralized Control research project, Payload Directed Flight research project, Polymorphic Control Systems project, and the Intelligent Integrated Control Systems (IICS) for Smart Environments project. He has lead development of several NASA UAS flight test platforms, including several experimental multicopter platforms, the Swift UAS, the swarming Dragon Eye UAS, the experimental Sensor Controlled Aerial Vehicle (XSCAV), the Bumble-Bee UAV, and the EAV experimental flight test vehicle. His software innovations include the Reflection Architecture for embedded autonomous systems, the Perception Engine for physics-based simulation, the Self-Assembling Brokering Object (SABO) Architecture, and the Component Graphics Library (CGL). Dr. Ippolito has garnered several awards in recognition of his work as NASA, including NASA Group Achievement Awards for the UTM project, the NASA SAFE50 project, the NASA Atacama Desert PCS Robotics expedition, the NASA Award of Excellence for the Lunar MicroRover project, Award for Superior Accomplishment for his work in polymorphic control and flight demonstrations of collaborative UAV/UGV emergency landing, and recognition awards for his contribution to NASA outreach. Dr. Ippolito has a Ph.D. from Carnegie Mellon University in Electrical and Computer Engineering and an M.S. and B.S. in Aerospace Engineering from the Georgia Institute of Technology.