Robert Rashford – ISIM Electronics Compartment and OTE Simulator Project Manager, NASA

He has held the IEC position since May 2005 and the ISIM position since July 2009. In his position, Rashford is responsible for the overall engineering development of the IEC and OSIM, managing the cost and budget, making sure the entire system is delivered on time and that they meet technical requirements.

Prior to this position with Webb, Rashford was the Project Manager and Principal Technical Lead for the development and delivery of space flight hardware at Genesis Engineering Solutions. He was responsible for designing, developing and executing manufacturing techniques to reduce time, cost and improve product performance.

From September 1987 to January 1991, Rashford served as the Structural Engineer and Project Engineer at the Orbital Sciences Corporation (OSC). There he designed and developed unique spacecraft support systems for the Upper Atmosphere Research Satellite (UARS) Airborne Support Equipment (UASE).

Rashford worked as the Design and Test Engineer at General Electric (GE) from 1983 to 1987. In this role, he designed and tested a variety of spacecrafts for both commercial and military applications. From January 1982 to January 1983 Robert was the Design Engineer for Bechtel Corporation, where he designed a nuclear reactor support structure.

Over 20 years, Robert has managed to design a great number of highly complex engineering systems that successfully flew on board NASA's Manned Space Flight Programs. These programs include the Hubble Space Telescope (HST) Servicing Missions in 1993, 1997, 1999, 2000 and 2002. Also, he led the technical team during the development of similar space flight systems for key NASA missions to the International Space Station (ISS). He was a member of the Instrument Engineer team for NASA's CoSMIR, CoSSIR and AESMIR, where he designed, studied, fabricated, integrated, tested and successfully delivered the final project.

Robert received a bachelor's degree in Mechanical Engineering from Temple University in Pennsylvania in 1982, as well as a Master's in Science in Engineering and Management from the University of Maryland in 1993. Robert's hobbies include playing racket ball and cooking Caribbean dishes.