Dr. Robert Braun


robert.braun@aerospace.gatech.edu
Knight
321-3
US
Office: (404) 385-6171
Fax: (404) 894-2760

Instructor information

Associate Professor Dr. Braun has recently joined the faculty in the School of Aerospace Engineering at Georgia Tech. He is building a research group focusing on the design of advanced flight systems and technologies for planetary exploration. Prior to joining the Georgia Tech faculty, Dr. Braun worked for sixteen years at the NASA Langley Research Center. While at NASA, Dr. Braun contributed to the design and flight operations of the Mars Pathfinder and Mars Microprobe flight projects, performing analyses pertaining to Mars entry, descent and landing. Dr. Braun was responsible for Earth Entry Vehicle technology and flight system development efforts for the Mars Sample Return project from 1999-2000. From 2001-2003, Dr. Braun served as the Mission Architect and NASA Langley Proposal Manager for the Aerial Regional-scale Environmental Survey (ARES) Mars Scout mission. In this capacity, he was responsible for balancing science, implementation risk and cost across the mission architecture and managing ARES Mars airplane technology development, including the successful ground-based and high-altitude flight test program. Dr. Braun was a member of the Aircraft Design Group at Stanford University from 1991-1996, where he developed the collaborative optimization architecture. This architecture was shown to have significant computational and operational benefits in the optimization of large, loosely coupled design problems. Since completing his initial research in this area, several university and industry groups have applied this technique in the solution of diverse set of engineering design problems. From 2000-2001, Dr. Braun served as Chief Engineer of NASA’s Intelligent Synthesis Environment Program, where he led and integrated NASA’s advanced engineering environment technology development activities across 9 participating NASA Centers, the aerospace industry, and numerous information technology vendors. Dr. Braun has provided independent assessment and served as a consultant for the Mars Global Surveyor, Mars Polar Lander, Mars Odyssey and Mars Exploration Rover projects. He is the author or co-author of more than more than 100 technical publications in the fields of atmospheric flight dynamics, planetary exploration systems, multidisciplinary design optimization and systems engineering.