President & Founder
Dr. George Davis
Dr. George Davis is the President and founder of Emergent Space Technologies, Inc. He received a Ph.D. in Aerospace Engineering from the University of Texas at Austin for his research into the precise orbit determination of low altitude satellites using the Global Positioning System. His M.S. in Aerospace Engineering, also from the University of Texas, was on on-orbit assembly operations for lunar and Mars spacecraft. His interests include GPS applications, autonomous spacecraft navigation, and orbit determination.
Prior to starting Emergent, he worked for the Technical Services Division of the Orbital Sciences Corporation as a support contractor at the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center. He worked in GSFC's spaceborne GPS technology group, providing systems engineering, algorithm development, receiver testing and data analysis support to a variety of missions, including the International Space Station, EO-1, and VCL. At the peak of the Internet bubble, he joined Appnet Systems, which became Commerce One e-Government Solutions, to break into the Information Technology industry. He supported the development of web portals and e-commerce exchanges for the federal government. It was there that he saw the opportunity to apply modern information technologies to the aerospace industry, and subsequently started Emergent.
When not working, he enjoys coaching his kids in youth sports and playing softball in the NASA Goddard Softball League. With what little time he has left, he enjoys fishing and playing golf, and probably watching too much college football and basketball.
Executive Vice President & Chief Technology Officer
Brendan O'Connor
Mr. O’Connor is the Executive Vice President and Chief Technology Officer of Emergent Space Technologies, Inc, having joined the company in 2008. He earned a B.A. in Chemistry from New College of Florida and both an M.A. in Chemistry and an M.S.E. in Aerospace Engineering from The University of Texas at Austin. His areas of interest include spacecraft mission design, complex systems development, and autonomous flight software for spacecraft.
He is the system architect for the F6 Cluster Flight software and has extensive experience developing high availability software systems in distributed environments. He specializes in leading software teams that successfully deliver working software under extreme circumstances using agile, customer-centric methods. Mr. O’Connor has led many successful mission critical software development projects. Prior to joining Emergent, he was a software architect and Senior Principal Engineer at McDonnell Douglas and The Boeing Company and the Chief Technology Officer for Multimedia Games, a publicly traded producer of high-availability, high-volume transaction processing software for the casino industry. He is a co-inventor on nine US patents and in his spare time he is an avid runner, bicyclist and pilot.
Vice President OF ENGINEERING
Frank H. Bauer
Frank H. Bauer received his Bachelor's and Master's degree in Aeronautics and Astronautics from Purdue University. His aerospace career spans 36 years within NASA and private industry, including his current position as the Vice President of Strategic Programs at Emergent Space Technologies where he provides leadership and guidance on all aspects of the company’s performance. Previously, he was NASA’s Chief Engineer for the Exploration Systems Mission Directorate (ESMD) where he provided engineering and technical leadership to NASA’s initiative to develop and operate a sustained human space exploration presence beyond low Earth Orbit. He also served (simultaneously) as Chief Systems Engineer for Exploration Systems, leading a multi-center systems engineering team focused on integrating the 3 human exploration programs--the heavy lift vehicle, multi-purpose crew vehicle (Orion) and 21st Century Ground Systems. Mr. Bauer has led several Systems Engineering, Guidance, Navigation and Control (GN&C), and Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) efforts for NASA, including roles at NASA HQ, at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center and at NASA’s Johnson Space Center. He was the Chief of the GN&C Division at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center’s Greenbelt and Wallops Flight Facilities, a 300 person Division with responsibilities of over $6 Billion of on-orbit assets. Responsibilities spanned the design, development, qualification and operations of advanced GN&C systems for space systems, experiments, sub-orbital and launch vehicles. Mr. Bauer represented NASA HQ as part of a US Government team working Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) Strategy and Policy. He was an interagency transition team member that implemented the President’s 2004 National Space-Based Positioning, Navigation and Timing (PNT) policy. He was NASA’s representative on State Department US delegations to Europe and Russia to negotiate joint GNSS interoperability strategies and he was on the US delegation sent to Geneva to protect US interests in radio navigation frequencies.
Mr. Bauer's primary research interests include spaceborne applications of the Global Positioning System (GPS), space vehicle formation flying, and dynamic (control-structure) interaction. He was the principal investigator of 4 spaceflight GPS and formation flying experiments including an investigation in the use of GPS above the constellation. He is the recipient of the 2011 Presidential Rank Award, NASA’s Outstanding Leadership Medal, the NASA Exceptional Achievement Medal (for Pioneering Efforts in Spaceborne GPS) and NASA’s Exceptional Service Medal. He was also a recipient of the Silver Snoopy Award, NASA’s highest human spaceflight award.
Frank’s hobbies include astronomy, photography, amateur radio and flying. His passions for amateur radio, space systems development and educational outreach led him to serve as program manager and international chairman of Amateur Radio on the International Space Station (ARISS)--an educational outreach program that allows students to communicate and interact directly with astronauts on-board the International Space Station.
Vice President of Aerospace Systems & Technology
Dr. David Gaylor
Dave Gaylor is Vice President of Aerospace Systems & Technology. He has over 20 years of experience in astronautical engineering, including system engineering for satellite constellations, navigation systems testing and analysis and space operations. He holds a Ph.D. in Aerospace Engineering from the University of Texas at Austin, M.S. in Astronautical Engineering from the Air Force Institute of Technology and B.S. in Astronautical Engineering from the U.S. Air Force Academy.
He is currently leading our support to NASA's Orion CEV program from our recently opened Denver office. Before joining Emergent, he was a systems engineer and lead orbit analyst for the Teledesic and Iridium constellations at Motorola. He was a mission analyst for Globalstar at Space Systems/Loral and a GPS navigation systems analyst at the Central Inertial Guidance Test Facility (CIGTF), Holloman AFB, NM. He served on active duty in the U.S. Air Force for eight years. He was the Chief of Engineering for a mission control complex and the lead Operation Director for three Strategic Defense Initiative satellite programs while stationed at the Consolidated Space Test Center, Onizuka AFB, CA. He also served as an inertial navigation systems analyst at CIGTF.
Vice President
Dr. Sun Hur-Diaz
Dr. Sun Hur-Diaz is a Vice President of Emergent Space Technologies, Inc. She received an M.S. and a Ph.D. in Aeronautics and Astronautics from Stanford University for her research on optimal control of solar sails. She received a B.S. in Aerospace Engineering from the University of Texas at Austin. Her areas of interest include optimal control, flight dynamics, orbit determination and control, attitude determination and control, and systems engineering.
As a pointing control system engineer on the Hubble Space Telescope, she was awarded the Goddard Individual Engineering Excellence Award for developing new filters and controllers for reduced-sensor/actuator modes that extend the life of the telescope. Prior to coming to Emergent, she was a flight dynamics engineer at Intelsat where she developed ground software, performed on-orbit operations, and participated in numerous orbit raising campaigns. Prior to Intelsat, she was a mission and orbit analyst at Space Systems/Loral, where she developed star tracker attitude estimation algorithms for GOES image navigation improvement, developed the navigation filter for the Tensor GPS receiver flown on Globalstar, and devised low-thrust orbit raising and station keeping algorithms for geostationary satellites. She is a co-inventor on four US patents.
When not working, she is busy shuttling her children to numerous sports and music activities and volunteering at their schools. Occasionally, she finds time to try out new recipes to surprise her family and friends.
Vice President of TECHNICAL SERVICES
Mr. Everett Cary
Everett Cary joined Emergent in 2002 as the Vice President of Information Systems and Technology. He has over twelve years of experience in developing, deploying, and managing software solutions across a variety of domains, from desktop to enterprise applications. He now applies this experience to the aerospace domain. He holds a B.S. in Computer Science from the University of Maryland. His professional interests include software architecture and software process.
While at Emergent, he has been the Principal Investigator for a government-funded program and has been active in applying modern information technologies towards automation of satellite ground systems. Prior to joining Emergent, he designed, developed, and supported a variety of software applications, including web and e-commerce portals, desktop, and enterprise business application. He was also a certified Rational Unified Process trainer and a Sun Certified Java Programmer.
LEAD GNSS TECHNOLOGIST
Dr. Kenn L. Gold
Kenn L. Gold is a Vice President and director of R&D at Emergent Space Technologies. His current efforts include Software Defined Radio implementations of NAVCOM with small satellites for science and navigation applications, GPS Navigation for high Earth Orbits, RF/GNSS signal simulation for space applications, Space Situational Awareness and Active Debris Removal. Previously Dr. Gold was the VP of Engineering at Loctronix Corporation, where he led the engineering efforts to develop a Unified Positioning system which allowed simultaneous positioning with both GNSS satellites and signals of opportunity. Prior to that, he was Chief Technology Officer at NAVSYS Corporation, working with advanced GPS concepts applied to DOD applications, including integrity monitoring for the Joint Precision Approach and Landing System, and GPS wavefront simulation for testing and validation of multi-element CRPA antenna arrays. He was previously the VP of Engineering at CyberLocator, looking at the uses of Global Positioning for location authentication, and was a Professional Research Associate at the Colorado Center for Astrodynamics Research from 1994 to 2003. He received his PhD in Aerospace Engineering Sciences at CU Boulder in 1994, under a NASA Graduate Student Fellowship from Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
While not working, he is a cub scout leader and enjoys spending time camping, hiking and fishing in the Colorado mountains with his wife and two sons.