2007 National Conference Guest Speakers
The 2007 National Conference on Educational Robotics has an impressive line-up of guest speakers scheduled from such organizations as NASA, iRobot and SPAWAR. Attending a guest speaker session is a great opportunity for students to hear from professionals who are currently working in robotics and technology related fields.
NCER Guest Speaker Schedule:
Linda Lingle - Governor of Hawai`i
July 10, 2007 - Opening Session - 6:30 pm - 8:30 pm
Governor Linda Lingle first took office in December, 2002 and was so effective in her first term that she was re-elected with the largest margin of victory of any gubernatorial race in history. She has successfully brought about a new beginning in Hawai`i’ and along with the Lt. Governor, has worked hard to expand and diversify the economy. One of her administration’s key efforts is the Hawai`i Innovation Initiative, which focuses on human development, and innovation in education and the economy, with the goal of improving the skills of Hawai`i’s current and future workforce.
Estrellina Pacis - Project Manager for SPAWAR Systems Center’s Robotics Technology Transfer Project
July 10, 2007 - Opening Session - 6:30 pm - 8:30 pm
Ms. Pacis serves as the Project Manager for SPAWAR Systems Center’s Robotics Technology Transfer Project. Her main responsibility is to oversee the evaluation and advancement of robotic technologies from the R&D environment for transition to deployed military systems. The current near-term fielding objectives include autonomous capabilities for EOD missions, building/bunker exploration, and countermine operations. Ms. Pacis oversees numerous collaborations with various academic institutions, other government laboratories, and private industry partners. She has been a volunteer with First Lego League, recently a judge in the 2006 Championship Tournament at LEGOLAND.
John Billington - Sr. Product Manager, iRobot
July 11, 2007 - 7:00 pm - 8:00 pm
John Billington is a Sr. Product Manager at IRobot Corporation and is responsible for product definition, product marketing and business development for iRobot Create and other home robots. John has 10 years of consumer product marketing experience, a BS in mechanical engineering from the University of Virginia and an MBA from UC Berkeley.
Ben Finney - Professor of Anthropology at the University of Hawai`i
July 12, 2007 - 1:00 pm - 2:00 pm
Ben Finney earned an anthropology M.A. at the University of Hawai’i, a Ph.D. at Harvard, and has worked at the University of California at Santa Barbara, the Australian National University, the University of Hawai’i, the University of French Polynesia, the International Space University, and NASA. Although he has done research in such diverse fields as the impact of globalization on Pacific Islanders and the implications for humanity of becoming a space-faring species, he is best known for his efforts to revive and study Polynesian canoe voyaging. In the mid-1960s he began reconstructing and sailing deep-sea voyaging canoes to refute a then popular theory that Polynesians had been such poor sailors and navigators that they could only have spread across the Pacific as accidental castaways. He has chronicled this initiative and the renaissance in Pacific canoe voyaging that has followed in a series of books: Hokule’a, The Way to Tahiti, Voyage of Rediscovery: A Cultural Odyssey Through Polynesia, Sailing in the Wake of the Ancestors, and Vaka Moana, as well as journal articles.
David Lavery - Program Executive for Solar System Exploration, NASA
July 13, 2007 - 10:30 am - 11:30 am
Mr. Lavery is responsible for executive oversight of the design and development of the next generation in Mars exploration spacecraft, and the advanced technologies to enable them. He is currently responsible for the two Mars Exploration Rover missions, and NASA’s participation in the joint European-U.S. Mars Express mission, all of which arrived at Mars this past year. In addition, he leads the Mars Advanced Technology Program, which is creating new approaches to remote exploration by robotic systems. Prior to these assignments, Mr. Lavery directed the NASA Telerobotics Research Program for 12 years. He also founded and continues to direct the NASA Robotics Education Project, including the agency’s participation in robotics competition programs, like the Botball Educational Robotics Program.