Patrick Woida

For over 3 decades Patrick Woida has been in the development, integration and testing of innovative Space Optical and Aerospace Systems. Primarily creating new optical technology for Airborne and Extraterrestrial Telescopes. He has held research positions at the University of Arizona's Steward Observatory, U of A Optical Science Center, and most recently at the Lunar and Planetary Lab. He has been part of the Herschel and Spitzer Space Telescopes and is currently working in a leadership role doing satellite work at Raytheon.

His most recent achievement at U of A was completed in serving in many interdisciplinary roles the Phoenix Mars Mission. Originally the Test Director of mission’s camera systems: the Optical Microscope, Robotic Arm Camera and Stereo Surface Imager. He progressed to hardware integration and software test engineering team at the projects Payload Interoperability Testbed. Over his long career Patrick has published a number of Engineering and Scientific papers.

He will discuss the accomplishments of the Phoenix Robot as a member of her Surface Operations Team on Mars.