I'm Joseph Nix. I grew up in Fort Wayne, Indiana. At a very young age, I was mesmerized with the stars and the night sky. Following this curiosity, I found myself at the University of Alabama in Huntsville, studying physics and math. Rocket City was great fun! I learned a lot. It didn't take long for me to meet Mike and Chris and many other very supportive friends. In our downtime from actual school work, we would play cards (quite competitively), volleyball, hockey in the dorm hallways. In addition, we would code, do math, physics, and rocket science just for fun. Now, I've turned that last part into a living.

Coding, math, and physics provide ample ways to be useful and help the world, and I get to have fun doing it as my career. If we do a good job together, one day I'll get to travel into space.

Hi, I'm Chris Smith. Being young, I have tinkered with computers most of my life. I studied Physics and rocket propulsion at the University of Alabama in Huntsville. There I got to use all kinds of fun tools for all sorts of delightful tasks. I took a single programing class (intro to C) and went from there. I taught myself FORTRAN later on and loved it as it seemed far more intuitive than C. I got to use FORTRAN for numerical analysis on stars and rocket components. I even wrote a friendly little innocuous virus for a friend's computer once. We both enjoyed it very much.

I started using Linux one day after my xp machine was incapacitated by a nasty virus. I fell in love with Linux, not for any of the technical or philosophical reasons that most would attribute to their Linux love, but because of the community. I loved being able to get into the guts of the operating system and feel like I was really doing something fancy. At the time I had no idea what was going on, but I loved that I could Google the solution to a problem and copy in some gangly command into the terminal and BOOM problem solved. Over time, I solved enough problems that way to get a feel for what I was actually being instructed to do by the community and understand it. I'm at the point now where the solutions to most of my problems are not so easy to find, and instead I often get the pleasure grokking these problems out more or less on my own. I feel that I am at a point where I have come full circle, in the past I would marvel at the wealth of seemingly god-like expertise that was out there to help me along, and now I can contribute to that vast body of knowledge.

Community is what I love the most about this field. There is no barrier to entry for the knowledge you need, you simply reach out and grab it. What you will find is a community of people eager to help you and eager for your contributions.

My name is Michael Verhulst,

I have a passion for building advanced solutions for complex problems. I am fascinated by systems of all kinds, and love the art and science of engineering software solutions in python. I studied Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering at the University of Alabama In Huntsville. I also studied Liberal and Integrative Studies emphasizing Commercial Spaceflight and Astrophysics at the University of Illinois at Springfield. I am interested in algorithms, data-storage paradigms, security, high performance computing, innovative business models, physics, mathematics, spaceflight, rock climbing, swimming, linux and all things python.

Alan Cugler is my name, and innovation is the game. I’ve grown up as a “do it yourselfer” learning to fix engines, renovate houses, and brainstorming up new inventions. I graduated high school early and joined the US Army to give myself a jumpstart in life. With the experience from the military, I grew to value teamwork and communication as much as my ability to do it myself.

I have a healthy respect for history and make a point to study history in my free time. The history of discovery, and political and military history, have shown the human condition in how we react and grow. Learning from history has been beneficial in addressing everyday problems in work and life. Someone grappled with a similar situation and took action to the best of their ability. Whether good or bad, those experiences are now mine as second hand knowledge, and I can make a more informed decision.

Material science really gets me excited as well. As an ongoing hobby I learn as much as I can about different materials, how to make them, and how those unique qualities in materials have often been the solutions to entire engineering problems. I’ve studied traditional and industrial methods for smelting, glass blowing, plastics, bio fuels, wood working, farming, recycling, etc.

With all this interest in materials and history, I learned early in my teens that programming is also valuable. I am excited by the ability to potentially create technology whenever I have an idea. Often, when I find limitations in services or programs I get a sense of satisfaction knowing I have the ability to build upon what I am working with.

Hi, my name is Jason Traub.

My love and passion for music eventually led me to study Electrical Engineering while attending the University of Florida. I am a guitarist and song-writer, and have always had an aptitude for math, science, and philosophy. I originally just wanted to build a guitar amplifier. Through the curriculum however, I grew to appreciate the many applications we rely on in our everyday lives. Furthermore, it always seems like the latest and greatest music is taking advantage of the newest technology (from the electric guitar, to the Moog synthesizer, to the Yamaha DX7, and on...). The ability to draw a fundamental connection between music and technology, I believe, allows me to develop scientific applications with a greater intuition.

My technical career has led me from consumer electronics, to building robot brains with an AI startup, to testing rocket components at SpaceX. It seems like I have carved myself a niche in computer science, with the help of my formal education, work experience, and the wealth of information available on the internet. And I really enjoy it! I’m at the point where I thoroughly understand the fundamentals of how to build computers; now I’d like to tell them what to do.

G'day, I'm David Antonini.

I've always had a thirst for knowledge and love of stories, delighting in reading about the whys and origins of things. Fiction, history, how science progresses and new discoveries have been made - it's all stories.

I enjoy words, and the evolution of language. You might say I'm ecclectic. I enjoy music, and making it. I love sport, Real Football™, basketball, cricket, rugby, whatever. Putting on events, be they music, theatre, conferences, is fun. I keenly follow goings on in science and space. I've lived on three continents in four hemispheres. At university I undertook majors from physics through to performing arts. There's a plethora of interests I don't have the time to keep up with.

My earliest memories of computers involve cassettes, stacks of floppy disks, and MS DOS prompts. I've long been enamored of the possibilities of technology, and get enthused by possibilities it holds for simple and elegant solutions to complex problems. After a career in the healthcare and education fields, and time as a stay-at-home dad homeschooling three boys. I taught myself to code, and now I look forward to learning more technologies and using them to facilitate solutions to those problems.

Hello, my name is Son, Darren, Brother, Christian, Husband, Health Nut, Uncle, Father, Engineer, Elder, in that chronological order. I am forever a student, but there is no ivory tower that could tempt me to stay. I have no intention of ever retiring from learning and growing, yet I am driven to educate myself through action and experience. It is messy, but it is real!

After living in Ireland for 13 years, some people say we moved back to America. But, really, we did not move back, we moved forward -- to Oklahoma! We truly enjoyed our Ireland adventure. Now we are ready for our Oklahoma adventure!

Physical health is a high priority. Some people actually joke about exercising and healthy eating, saying they will just be in the nursing home longer. I get the joke, but don't take it seriously. Yes, the statistics show that making healthy choices does add days to your life, but it also adds life to your days. There are many factors that could cause someone to need elderly care, but if I ever end up in a nursing home, I don't want it to be caused by unhealthy habits. Less illness, less severity of illness, shortened recovery time for illness and injury, more clarity of thought, more energy, more power, more vitality -- those are some of the benefits of a healthy lifestyle!

Organizational health is a high priority. What does this have to do with me? Anyone who wants to know about me, will be getting a sense of the principles I have learned regarding team vitality (especially from Patrick Lencioni), because that is the framework for what I will be doing. Though I am quite happy to talk about organizational health, Pat is much better at teaching it, so I focus on living it!

Healthy relationships are the highest earthly priority. This importance is primarily for the sake of those who are dearest, but healthy relationships are also the most crucial ingredient for both physical health and organizational health. As a fellow human, you deserve for me to treat you with dignity and honor. There is no excuse for me to be unkind to you!

I am Benjamin Echelmeier

Logic, learning, and puzzles. The love for these three had me diving headfirst into a study of mathematics, and it wasn't until right at the end of university that I found out that code is pretty fun too. So I taught myself, and then some friends taught me more, and now I get to continue learning how to solve logic puzzles that solve real problems!

Real life is rarely so calculated, though; the passions we get paid for aren't the only ones that matter. I enjoy games, both digital and tabletop, and using my hands to build and to fix (a wonderful break from the virtual!). And I also love good stories, and I will take them on whatever medium they're found. But "it is more blessed to give than to receive," so I find myself now crafting stories as well.

Stories, however, are not meant to be merely read or written; they are to be lived. I love going on adventures with my wife, spending time with family and friends, and exploring something new. All the while, though, there is a subtle beauty to faithfulness in the mundane and ordinary.

In all of this, my faith is the foundation. I strive to be a subcreator and a faithful steward. I am dedicated to my church-plant here in Columbus, and continue to dive deep into my faith, in study, service, and all of life.

Hey there, my name is Sam Larimore

I was born in a small town in Missouri and was the youngest of 5, my oldest brother being 10 years older than me. As a result I was very young when he started getting into Engineering and that is what began my interests in all things science and mathematics. As a kid I was a member of every educational extracurricular I could get my hands on from science olympiad to math relays to scholar bowl and more. Eventually in high school this wasn’t enough and I started teaching myself things like trigonometry and physics in my free time.

Existing in these kinds of circles led me to many of my other interests that still persist to this day. Things like theatre which I did for several years, or Dungeons and Dragons which to this day I am still writing up new stories for every day.

Eventually I went on to study at Missouri University of Science and Technology where my love of video games and internet culture led me to study computer science. There I made many of my closest friends and began my foundations in understanding and loving the unique problem solving inherent to that world. To this day that still remains my favorite aspect of working with computers.