2014 Symposium

2014 Keynote - Kobie Boykins, NASA Engineer

Exploring the Red Planet: Engineering, Innovation, and Perseverance

Few events in the last decade of space exploration have captured the world's imagination like NASA's ongoing Mars Exploration Program. In 2004, the successful deployment of the Mars Exploration Rovers, Spirit and Opportunity, launched a new era of scientific investigation of our nearest planetary neighbor. For Kobie Boykins, a mechanical engineer at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, the rovers' success was also a personal triumph: he helped design and build the solar arrays that enabled the rovers to keep going long after their planned 90-day life (indeed Opportunity is still roaming Mars today and sending back images, more than nine years later).

Now, Boykins is also intimately involved with our latest venture to Mars, as supervisor of the mobility and remote sensing mast teams for the Mars Science Laboratory, better known as Curiosity. Curiosity landed on Mars in August 2012 and has already made headlines with evidence that conditions on Mars, including the presence of water, once could have supported life. For work on this and other compelling projects, Boykins last year received a NASA Exceptional Service Medal, one of the highest honors given to NASA employees and contractors.

Boykins' boundless enthusiasm for unraveling the mysteries of outer space, and Mars in particular, is infectious. In this keynote presentation, Boykins will share his passion for space exploration by recounting the design and construction of the rovers and the story of their successful missions. He will also describe how he overcame the challenges and failures that inevitably arose during the development of the Mars Rovers.

Boykins hails from a family of educators, and has a real passion for STEM education. He was a featured scientist for Dr. Robert Ballard's JASON project educating youth in STEM, and has spent many hours talking and working with students. Kobie will discuss how engineering and exploration can help teachers infuse excitement and innovation into their teaching, while showing students how to persevere through difficulty and failure.

2014 Program (pdf)