Three ESI researchers recently defended their dissertation and theses.

ESI research engineer, Dr. Ivan Gamino del Rio, earned his PhD in Space Research and Astrobiology from the Universidad de Alcalá, Spain in fall 2024. Dr. Gamino del Rio’s dissertation was titled “New hardware computer architecture approach to increase the reliability of space computer systems”. He developed a novel computational framework from the ground up for space applications, which included a parallel processor to keep track of the telemetry of on-board software as it is running. At the ESI, Dr. Gamino del Rio is currently supporting software development for the Trans-Iron Galactic Element Recorder for the International Space Station (TIGERISS) instrument. TIGERISS, a collaboration between NASA GSFC and several US universities including UMBC (CSST and ESI), will measure the abundance of heavy elements in cosmic rays emanating from high-energy events, such as supernovas. TIGERISS measurements will help scientists to better understand how and where these particles originated throughout our Milky Way galaxy.

ESI research engineer Carissa Arillo earned her Masters of Engineering in Robotics at the A. James Clark School of Engineering at the University of Maryland College Park in fall 2024. Her coursework involved robot perception, navigation, and control, as well as machine learning and modeling. As part of her ME research, Arillo developed a large-scale mission-based autonomous navigation robot with a focus in embedded systems for robotics. At ESI, Arillo leads the software development of a new digital twin architecture for future remote sensing applications. This project is a collaboration between UMBC/ESI and a partnering space industry corporation. Arillo supervises a small team of UMBC students in the demonstration of neural networks that direct a leader-follower pair of spaceborne remote sensors to detect and measure Earth targets.

ESI systems engineer Danny Nelson earned his Masters of Science in Mechanical Engineering from UMBC in winter 2025. His thesis was titled "Thermal design and analysis of a next-generation Hyper-Angular Rainbow Polarimeter (HARP) instrument". Nelson developed a thermal model that assesses the design and on-orbit temperature control performance of MegaHARP, a planned future iteration of HARP2. HARP2 is ESI’s advanced Earth observation instrument that is currently on-board the NASA Plankton Aerosol Cloud ocean Ecosystem (PACE) mission. He currently supports the testing and development of the AirHARP2 instrument suite at ESI, mission support for OreSat and HARP2, and GAPMAP, a multi-angle polarimeter mission out of UMBC technology incubation company, GRASP-Earth.

Congratulations Ivan, Carissa, and Danny!