Dave Lavery (born May 28, 1959) is an American scientist and roboticist who is the program executive for

Solar System Exploration Discovery and exploration of the Solar System is observation, visitation, and increase in knowledge and understanding of Earth's "cosmic neighborhood". This includes the Sun, Earth and the Moon, the major planets Mercury (planet), Mercury, Venus, ...

NASA The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA ) is an independent agencies of the United States government, independent agency of the federal government of the United States, US federal government responsible for the United States ...

Headquarters. He also is a member of the ''FIRST'' executive advisory board, and is well known among participants of the

FIRST Robotics Competition FIRST Robotics Competition (FRC) is an international high school robotics competition operated by ''FIRST''®. Each year, teams of high school students, coaches, and mentors work to build robots capable of competing in that year's game. Robots c ...

as a mentor of Team 116.

Early life and education

From an early age, Lavery was obsessed with space exploration. With his eyesight being too poor to become an astronaut, he set about to use machines as his proxy for exploring the

Solar System The Solar SystemCapitalization of the name varies. The International Astronomical Union, the authoritative body regarding astronomical nomenclature, specifies capitalizing the names of all individual astronomical objects but uses mixed "Sola ...

. He attended

Virginia Tech The Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, commonly referred to as Virginia Tech (VT), is a Public university, public Land-grant college, land-grant research university with its main campus in Blacksburg, Virginia, United States ...

, where he obtained a bachelor's degree in Computer Science.

Career

Lavery led NASA's Telerobotics Technology Development Program, responsible for the direction and oversight of robotics and planetary exploration within the organization. He and the program was responsible for the likes of the Mars

Sojourner rover The robotic ''Sojourner'' rover reached Mars on July 4, 1997 as part of the ''Mars Pathfinder'' mission. ''Sojourner'' was operational on Mars for 92 sols (95 Earth days), and was the first wheeled vehicle to operate on an astronomical object ...

, which was the first rover he worked on, and the National Robotics Engineering Consortium. Lavery currently works at the NASA Headquarters in

Washington, D.C. Washington, D.C., formally the District of Columbia and commonly known as Washington or D.C., is the capital city and federal district of the United States. The city is on the Potomac River, across from Virginia, and shares land borders with ...

, as the program executive for solar system explorations. He oversees and is heavily involved with the

Mars Exploration Rovers NASA's Mars Exploration Rover (MER) mission was a robotic space mission involving two Mars rovers, '' Spirit'' and '' Opportunity'', exploring the planet Mars. It began in 2003 with the launch of the two rovers to explore the Martian surface ...

. Notably, he oversaw the mission of the

Curiosity rover ''Curiosity'' is a car-sized Mars rover Space exploration, exploring Gale (crater), Gale crater and Mount Sharp on Mars as part of NASA's Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) mission. ''Curiosity'' was launched from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station ...

in 2012. Lavery is also the project manager for NASAs' Robotics Alliance Project, a position he shared with fellow NASA scientist and ''FIRST'' Robotics participant Mark Leon.

''FIRST'' Robotics

Lavery is very active within the

, and currently sits on the Executive Advisory Board of ''FIRST''. He is responsible for NASA's vast involvement in the competitions, having brought the organization to the attention of NASA in 1995. NASA now sponsors over 300 teams, and hosts teams at each of its research centers in the United States. He is a mentor for FRC Team 116 (Epsilon Delta (εΔ) "From small changes come big differences", from Herndon High School in Herndon. He was also a member of the FRC Game Design Committee until January 2011. Lavery is also known for his work in creating the original game animations for the FIRST Robotics Competition. The Competition's Dave Lavery Animation Award for Excellence in Animation is named in honor of him.

References

External links

Dave Lavery at NASA.gov
NASA people Living people For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology 1959 births American roboticists Mars Exploration Rover mission {{US-scientist-stub