MDRS Crew 16
March 30 to April 12, 2003

The crew of the Mars Desert Research Station rotates every 2 weeks. These are the scientists and engineers who live and work on site within the MDRS. They explore all of the facets of human exploration in a simulated Mars environment. The MDRS will be active for a 7 month period.

Name	Speciality
Bill Clancey	NASA-Ames, CDR, Mobile Agents Principal Investigator
Maarten Sierhuis	Ames-RIACS, Computer Scientist; Mobile Agents Proj. Coordr.
Brent Garry	Geologist, SUNY-Buffalo
Abby Semple	Geologist, SUNY-Buffalo, Health & Safety Officer
Rick Alena	NASA-Ames, Systems Engineer
John Dowding	Ames-RIACS, Computer Scientist, Voice Commanding Specialist
Boris Brodsky	Ames-QSS contractor; Brahms modeler & data collection assistant to the Commander

Bill Clancey	Crew 16 Mission Commander Bill Clancey is a cognitive scientist with a Mathematical Sciences BA from Rice University and a Computer Science PhD from Stanford University. He has been responsible for some of the earliest computer programs to model expert reasoning, with applications in medical diagnosis and teaching. Bill works at NASA-Ames Research Center in Silicon Valley, as Chief Scientist for Human-Centered Computing, on leave from the Institute for Human and Machine Cognition (University of West Florida, Pensacola). At Ames, Bill manages the Work Systems Design and Evaluation Group, a multidisiplinary team that integrates social science, psychology, and software engineering. He is principal investigator of the Mobile Agents Project, the focus of MDRS Rotation 16. Bill is a founding member of the Mars Society and on the Steering Committee. He has lived and worked at Haughton Crater on Devon Island for over 10 weeks since 1998. He was an inaugural FMARS crew member in 2001 and led MDRS Rotation 5 in 2002. He has presented invited talks in 18 countries and often speaks in schools and museums. His interests include photography, adventure travel, hiking, video, and writing.
Maarten Sierhuis	Maarten Sierhuis is a computer scientist, with a Ph.D. in social science and informatics from the University of Amsterdam in The Netherlands. Early on in his career he specialized in designing expert systems, with a particular focus on the role of such systems in the larger context of the total work process. Today he believes that technology designers need a deep understanding of how people work in practice, before they even attempt to develop technology for people. His research in the last ten years has focused on computational modeling and simulation techniques for understanding how people work in practice. In technical terms we call this work practice modeling and simulation. He beliefs that through modeling the practice and context in which work occurs, software designers will have a better understanding of people and software systems might become better equipped in assisting people, while enhancing people's work life. Our field test in this mission is applying some of this research and testing it in the harsh reality, of yet ill-defined practices, of planetary EVAs.
Brent Garry	Brent Garry is a graduate student at the University at Buffalo, New York where he is working on a Ph.D. in volcanology, with a focus on the emplacement and internal morphology of lava flows at mid-ocean ridges. He received a B.S. (1999) in geology from the College of William and Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia and an M.S. (2001) in geology from the University of Kentucky. A native of Virginia, Brent became hooked on the space program as a youngster when he lived in Jacksonville, Florida during the early 1980's and would watch shuttle launches their front yard. Brent also loves to teach science to elementary and middle school kids and is near completion of his K-6 teaching certification. So far, his favorite education opportunity has been as a counselor at Space Camp teaching the future generation of astronauts, scientists, and engineers. In his spare time, he likes to play volleyball, SCUBA dive, draw, and watch 80's movies.
Abby Semple	Abby Semple got her BSc from the University of Leeds, UK in 1998. As an undergraduate she completed fieldwork in Scotland, Wales, Ireland, the Isle of Portland and Cyprus. After graduating she spent five months in Delaware for summer work and the following two years as a fees clerk for lawyers in Leeds, UK. Working in an office gave her the incentive to get back into geology and fieldwork. She found a Masters program at the University of Buffalo and in December 2002 gained her degree specializing in Volcanology. Her field area was Lanzarote in the Canary Islands. Abigail worked as a Teaching Assistant for a 100-level geology class throughout her Masters degree and also helped with the four-week field camp that is compulsory for senior geology majors. The field camp took her to Utah, Wyoming, New Mexico and Colorado. She also spent 10 days studying the active volcano, Colima, in Mexico as a graduate course and feels it is the best class she ever got the chance to take. Currently, Abby, is in the first semester of her PhD, staying at the University of Buffalo and is studying evolved lava flows.
Rick Alena	Rick Alena is a computer engineer and group lead for Intelligent Mobile Technologies at NASA Ames Research Center. He received his Masters degree in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at the University of California at Berkeley and has worked on complex real-time computer systems and instrumentation during his career in industrial product development and computer research. Previous endeavors include Computed Tomography scanners for medical and industrial use, implantable biosensors, multiprocessor computer systems and digital musical instruments. His current work with NASA is in two primary areas: distributed mobile computing systems supporting field science and human exploration simulations for planetary missions; advanced diagnostic systems for the International Space Station (ISS). As part of his Space Station work, he was the principal investigator for three flight experiments aboard Shuttle and Mir during STS-74, STS-76, Mir-20, and STS-91. These experiments allowed adoption of wireless networks and portable diagnostic tools for ISS. For MDRS Rotation 16, Rick is the project manager for the Mobile Exploration System(MEX), the host infrastructure for the Mobile Agents software. The MEX consists of wearable high-performance computers providing voice recognition (via RIALIST), medical sensing (via Biovest), and All-Terrain Vehicles with computing and wireless networking communications. His research interests are designing robust adaptable wireless computing and communication systems for use aboard ISS and for future planetary missions to Mars. He coordinates the National Research and Education Network (NREN) satellite communication team from Ames working with communication and computer engineers from NASA Glenn Research Center in Cleveland. Together they provide the infrastructure for phone, high-quality video teleconferencing, Internet access and distributed mobile exploration, leading to higher-fidelity simulations with each field season. He has worked on the Haughton Mars Project on Devon Island in the Arctic for the 1998, 1999, 2000 and 2002 field seasons and with the Mobile Agents project in the American southwest in 2002 and 2003.
John Dowding	John Dowding is a member of the RIALIST group at NASA Ames Research Center, working on building spoken dialogue systems. His interest at MDRS will be letting astronauts interact with their robots by talking with them. John has been active in the area of spoken dialogue for the last fifteen years, at Unisys and SRI International, before joining RIACS in August 2000. John will be using the speech data collected at MDRS to train statistical language models for improving the speech recognition accuracy in noisy environments. In his spare time, John will nuture his interest in astronomy on at the observatory.
Boris Brodsky	Boris Brodsky is a Brahms modeler (Ames-SAIC contractor), working on automating some of the CapCom ("HabCom") functions. He has a Masters degree in Cognitive Psychology from the University of Chicago (with the focus on human learning, reasoning, and decision making), and background in applied AI (in particular, representing uncertainty in expert systems). Prior to joining the Ames team, Boris worked on several projects at JSC, including prototyping a diagnostic system for the ISS, and performing systems engineering / human factors analysis for the Shuttle Avionics Upgrade.