From May 11, 2011

As the Juxtopia® Urban Robotics Brilliant Application Network (JURBAN) team reaches for the Moon, finding a place to land and explore was the first step. Finding people with the unwavering “guts”, discipline, perseverance, and talent to accomplish this mission was the second, and arguably the harder step.
The world has stopped looking up, and has lost its will to explore. The JURBAN Google Lunar X-Prize team, with the help of the X-Prize foundation and Google is about to change all that. This is our “Grand Opening” blog, and we hope you enjoy getting to know all the members of the JURBAN team. Blog Entry #2 will highlight the hardware and software we have been using, along with our awesome sponsors. Blog #3 is all about the youth and a chance to win some awesome prizes. And finally Blog #4 will describe our JURBAN worldwide PR campaign. It’s going to be huge and yummy! JURBAN is bring the “heat”.
The JURBAN team has 9 major student team members and 8 supporting schools and professionals. Who would have ever thought that 17 people, mostly students, could build and launch an autonomous lunar robot to the Moon? The following 9 people are confident that they will achieve this mission. So let’s get to know each individual member of the JURBAN team.

First, let’s introduce Mr. Blaze Sanders . He is the student Program Manager, and the communications link between the student and professional segments of the team. He has a Bachelor of Science in Electrical Engineering from The Johns Hopkins University (JHU) and stayed on to pursue his Master of Science and Engineering in Electrical & Computer Engineering. Blaze has a very strong Space System background and experience building embedded systems. As Blaze once said, “Finally my space trivia comes in handy. “ Blaze is going to be an astronaut, one way or another and already has his SCUBA diving certification, Amateur Radio license, and level 2 AFF skydiving certification. Blaze joined the JURBAN team to make space accessible to everyone, not just himself. And because the next 5 years is going to make or break time the Commercial Space sector, and he wants to be apart of the next silicon valley-like revolution. Outer space is the next natural challenge looking us in the face, we can either chose to expand or stagnant and decay.

JURBAN Robotics Advisor, Dr. Ayanna Howard, received her B.S. in Engineering from Brown University, her M.S.E.E. from the University of Southern California, and her Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering from the University of Southern California, Los Angeles in 1999. Her area of research is centered around the concept of humanized intelligence, the process of embedding human cognitive capability into the control path of autonomous systems, and has resulted in over 70 written publications focused on a number of projects – from autonomous rover navigation for planetary surface exploration to intelligent terrain assessment algorithms for landing on Mars. At NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, she led research efforts on various robotic projects utilizing vision, fuzzy logic, and neural network methodologies. Following this, she joined Georgia Tech's School of Electrical and Computer Engineering as an Associate Professor and founded the Human-Automation Systems (HumAnS) Laboratory. Dr Howard’s algorithms will enable JURBAN’s robotic system to determine the safest path between two points on the Moon and navigate that path autonomously.

JURBAN team member, Corrie Russell, is a system level programmer, as well as a simulation builder and analyzer on the team. She is currently a freshman at Johns Hopkins University and is working towards a Bachelor of Science in Electrical Engineering. Some of her interests include playing tennis and the oboe. She also enjoys flying and has just begun pursuing a recreational pilot’s license. Corrie has been interested in space and aviation since she was a young girl and hopes to one day become an astronaut. Her goal is to assist in the commercialization of space flight in order to expand the opportunities for aspiring astronauts. She also wants to help underrepresented groups explore their different career possibilities in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math fields.

JURBAN team member, Isha Kandaswamy is the lead programmer on the team. She is currently a graduate student at the Johns Hopkins University and is working towards a Master of Science in Computer Science. She has worked extensively on compilers and is presently diving into graphics, visualization and simulation in robotics. She is planning to pursue her phd on the same. Some of her interests include playing tennis and the veena. She has been interested in space as her father is an astrophysicist and he told her amazing stories about space when she was young.

JURBAN team members, Michael Lampart & Emmanuel Toch Anifowoshe, are Electrical Engineers, and team Software Engineers. They help with the team’s website design and blog creation.

JURBAN team members, Richard Bauer is an Amateur Astronomer, and a Los Angeles native who is currently studying Aerospace at AMU. He is a member of the Los Angeles Astronomical Society, International Dark-Sky Association, an Associate Member of Astronauts4Hire, and (SEAC) European Society For Astronomy In Culture.

Director of outreach, Allen Herbert is the Vice President at JAKA Consulting Group and President/CEO of Phezu Space, LLC. Allen is a graduate of University of Southern California in Los Angeles, CA, with a Bachelor of Science degree in Aero-space Engineering, and a Government Relations/Business Development executive with 20+ years’ experience in business development, strategic planning, international business and technology projects. Allen believes that commercial space is the way to go for the historically underrepresented people to get on the ground floor of something new..

Jayfus Doswell, Ph.D. is the director of the Google Lunar X PRIZE (GLXP) JURBAN team. In 2006, Dr. Doswell created the JURBAN program as a Juxtopia Group, Inc. program to challenge historically underrepresented youth in STEM to creatively apply critical thinking/problem solving skills in STEM to build autonomous service robots with capabilities of solving community and world problems. The JURBAN Program was inspired by a U.S. need to invest in STEM education and workforce opportunities. In 2008, Dr. Doswell submitted a proposal to enter the JURBAN team into the GLXP worldwide competition, and the team was accepted by the GLXP. See Dr. Doswell introducing the JURBAN team to the world in Strasbourg, France in the summer of 2008. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aAaFPZG8Ces. He delivered this introduction after loosing his entire script to a computer failure and was forced to rewrite his speak in the 20 minute taxi ride to the venue comprised of most of the GLXP team members. Dr. Doswell named the JURBAN Challenge craft, “JOLHT” where each letter of the acronym provides reference to underserved and disadvantaged individuals who made significant contribution to space exploration. The first letter, “J” was given for the first African American female astronaut, Dr. Mae Jemison. The second letter, “O”, was given for first Hispanic American female astronaut, Dr. Ellen Ocha. The third letter, “L”, was given for the first African American astronaut, Dr. Major Robert H. Lawrence, Jr. The forth letter, “H” was given for the first Native American astronaut, John Bennett Herrington. The fifth letter, “T” was given for the multi-planetary and multiple modes that the robot may navigate in. This Triphibian architecture may be expanded for applications on land, air, and underwater.Hence, the JOHLTriphibian or JOHLT for short. Dr. Doswell believes that a combination of discipline, perseverance, and innovation are three ingredients for JURBAN student engineers to achieve success and to accomplish the GLXPJURBAN mission.

The Juxtopia Group, Inc. www.juxtopia.org is a Baltimore, Maryland based 501c(3) not-for-profit organization that provides pedagogically effective programs that measurably improve the learning performance of underserved and disadvantaged groups. Its mission is to improve human learning performance with science and technology research that adapts to individual learning needs, enhances cognitive performance, and augments human learning capabilities anytime, anywhere, at any-pace, and for anyone.