HEPL Seminar

Thursday, 7 April, 2005 4.15 pm
Location AP200
Refreshments at 4pm

Rex Geveden
NASA Chief Engineer
Independent Technical Authority

Rex Geveden is the NASA Chief Engineer and Independent Technical Authority. In this position he holds agency responsibility for engineering policy, assessment, and training; project management policy, assessment, and training, independent program assessment, and execution of the Independent Technical Authority.

Mr. Geveden is the former Deputy Director of NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, AL, where he was jointly responsible for managing one of NASA’s largest field installations, with more than 6,500 civil service and contract employees and an annual budget of $2.3 billion. The Marshall Center is responsible for the Space Shuttle propulsion systems, major component development and payload operations of the International Space Station, development of next generation launch technologies, and an array of science and technology programs including the Chandra X-ray Observatory, Gravity Probe B, and mirror development and testing for the James Webb Space Telescope.

Previously, he was Deputy Director of the Science Directorate at Marshall where he led a government-industry workforce of over 600 in scientifically diverse research and development projects in space science, materials science, biotechnology, earth science, and space optics.
As Program Manager for Gravity Probe B (GP-B), he led a government, industry and university team in developing a sophisticated payload designed to test two features of Einstein’s general relativity theory. GP-B launched in April 2004. He previously managed the Optical Transient Detector and Lightning Imaging Sensor flight projects, which were the first instruments to detect lightning on a global scale from space.

Geveden is the former manager of the Microgravity Science and Applications Department at Marshall. In this capacity, he led a government-industry team of 350 scientists, engineers, and project managers in a national space research program in materials science, radiation shielding, and biotechnology.

He joined NASA in 1990. He earned a bachelor’s degree in engineering physics and a master’s degree in physics from Murray State University in Kentucky, and is also a graduate of the Program Management Course at the Defense Systems Management College in Ft. Belvoir, VA.
Geveden has received many awards throughout his NASA career, including the NASA Outstanding Leadership Medal and the Silver Snoopy Award. He was the first NASA employee to achieve Level IV Program Management certification and was selected for the Accelerated Leadership Option. Mr. Geveden is also an Associate Fellow of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics and won the Holger Toftoy award for outstanding technical leadership in 2004.

Co-Sponsored with Stanford's Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics.

rev 28 March 2005 nc