#2 - Dr. Gregory Welch: Voyager, NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, and the Kalman Filter

<p><a href="https://nursing.ucf.edu/people/gregory-welch/">Gregory Welch, PhD</a>, a computer scientist and a 2020 UCF Pegasus Professor, is the AdventHealth Endowed Chair in Healthcare Simulation in the UCF College of Nursing, Co-director of the UCF <a href="https://sreal.ucf.edu/">Synthetic Reality Laboratory</a>, and a Professor of Computer Science, Modeling &amp; Simulation.</p> <p>Dr. Welch studied electrical engineering at Purdue and went on to obtain a PhD under Dr. Gary Bishop at UNC Chapel Hill. During his doctoral work, he published an internationally-recognized technical report titled, "An Introduction to the Kalman Filter," which can be found on his personally-maintained <a href="http://www.cs.unc.edu/~welch/kalman/">website</a> dedicated to the Kalman Filter.</p> <p>As he speaks about at length in this episode, prior to his PhD, Dr. Welch worked on the Voyager Spacecraft Project at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. He wrote software for both Voyager spacecraft and notably wrote onboard memory saving software during Voyager II's Neptune encounter, enabling additional planetary imaging. Much of the software he wrote for the spacecraft still operate to this day.</p> <p>Dr. Welch has applied his expertise in computer science to aerospace, defense, simulation &amp; training, healthcare, and much more. His passion for engineering systems that have real-world applications is inspiring. Much of his recent work at UCF is dedicated to nursing simulation and training, perhaps topics for another interview.</p>