Dr. Demoz Gebre-Egziabher
University of Minnesota Twin Cities
Director of NASA's Minnesota Space Grant Consortium
Dr. Demoz Gebre-Egziabher is a professor in the Department of Aerospace Engineering and Mechanics at the University of Minnesota Twin Cities.
Dr. Gebre-Egziabher teaches courses in aerospace systems and directs a research lab focusing on the design of multi-sensor navigation and attitude determination systems for aerospace vehicles.
He is the past secretary of the Satellite Division of the Institute of Navigation (ION) and has also served as associate editor of navigation for the IEEE Transactions on Aerospace and Electronic Systems. He is the current director of the NASA's Minnesota Space Grant Consortium.
Dr. Gebre-Egziabher is an associate fellow of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA). From 1990 to 1996 he was an officer in the United States Navy where he served as a system engineer on the staff of the Naval Sea Systems Command division of naval reactors in Washington, D.C.
Dr. Gebre-Egziabher holds a B.S. in Aerospace Engineering from the University of Arizona, a M.S. in Mechanical Engineering from George Washington University, and a Ph.D. in aeronautics and astronautics from Stanford University. He is a registered professional mechanical engineer and a licensed private pilot with an instrument rating.
Contact: gebre@umn.edu
Dr. James Flaten
University of Minnesota Twin Cities
Associate Director of NASA's Minnesota Space Grant Consortium
Dr. James Flaten is a contract professor in the Department of Aerospace Engineering and Mechanics at the University of Minnesota Twin Cities.
Dr. Flaten serves as the Associate Director of the Minnesota Space Grant Consortium (MnSGC), a NASA higher-education program which involves state-wide promotion of all-things-NASA-related. He has taught freshman seminars at the University of Minnesota - Twin Cities on high-altitude ballooning, high-power rocketry, quadcopters, and (mock) picosatellites called CubeSats.
Dr. Flaten works with college students and faculty on out-of-class NASA-related projects including building and flying miniature spacecraft into the stratosphere using weather balloons and developing science payloads for NASA suborbital rocket flights. He helps organize intercollegiate challenges on topics ranging from robotics to drones to stratospheric/eclipse ballooning. He works with Tripoli MN, a high-power rocketry club, to run the annual Space Grant Midwest High-Power Rocketry Competition.
One of his ballooning team's emphases, dating back to 2017 and being revisited in 2023 and 2024, is developing and flying experiments and video telemetry equipment during solar eclipses. Dr. Flaten also conducts teacher workshops and outreach activities at local schools and for the general public on aerospace, astronomy, physics, and engineering.
Contact: flate001@umn.edu