2015 Peer Awards
Dan is responsible for DPREP and Ancillary processing of data, which a lot of outside users rely on. Dan takes this responsibility seriously. If there is any type of issues during the weekends or late at night, he’ll be on top of it, ready to answer any questions people may have about the problem. In addition, he is the curator of Tads1, Tads2 and lifeboat, which he monitors like they are his own kids. His detailed documents about DPREP have been invaluable for many other groups, and his help when C2SA was expanding make Dan an Unsung Hero.
Emre is constantly under fire as a Directorate Computer Security Engineer, and he works at it tirelessly. He is often at work late and does the unpleasant job of herding cats, constantly reminding all of the directorate system administrators of vulnerabilities and procedures that need to be in place with their systems. More importantly, he reminds system administrators when high-priority vulnerabilities are exposed, which happened a handful of times in 2014. He also works as a liaison between Code 700 incident response teams and Code 600 during security incidents, helping keep relations sane. He is always cheerful, helpful, and extremely knowledgeable on NASA computer security.
Jake Davis – Technical Excellence
Jake is an irreplaceable member of the SA team at GES DISC. He has a deep knowledge of the technology paired with an insatiable interest in the work he does, which makes him a go-to person for the most complex tasks that come up at GES DISC, and he welcomes that. Jake supports the GESDISC with dedication and highest regard to customer service. He responds quietly but quickly and with accuracy. Every one of the major improvements to the processes of system administration at GES DISC in the recent few years has been either been suggested, implemented, or explained to the group — or all of the above — by him.
Lou can only be described as a positive force who leads his team into using the best practices to effectively foster an environment of exemplary success. He has advocated for the team as the best education team on the planet. He is accepting of his team’s ideas and welcomes sessions that allow creative juices to flourish, encouraging team consensus that is further developed and implemented for their clients. Lou recognizes the need to identify and remain ahead of the curve while encouraging growth in the team. He is able to relinquish leadership when it becomes evident that a member of the team should be leading within an area of their expertise. Lou is a leader when he needs to lead, a team player when we need to meet goals, and an unsung hero when he spends sleepless nights writing and polishing a proposal that will benefit the entire team.
Mike is an Unsung Hero for all his creative and technical work in building cutting edge high performance servers for the Code 606.1 High End Computer Networking Team. He has worked through many issues dealing with beta testing motherboards, processors and raid controllers. Mike has been up to the task of building servers that push performance limits, even when it means staying late to build a server from beta parts received a couple of weeks before we have to ship. He has built servers that have been used for stress testing and troubleshooting our network and for testing network equipment, as well as our very high performance raid servers that have been used to do world class demonstrations at the Super Computing conventions.
Khuram Maqbool – Technical Excellence
Khuram is a vital key in keeping our systems operating and functioning properly. Without his technical expertise, it quite literally would be difficult–and in some instances impossible–to conduct the business of supporting our NASA customer. He consistently makes the time to troubleshoot the many technical problems that arise, and, in every instance team members have needed his technical assistance, he has rapidly, efficiently, and correctly solved the problem.
Atheer Al-Jazrawi – Leadership
The Agile Giovanni development team relies on the operations team to make sure the website is up and functioning as expected. As the operations lead, Atheer has been instrumental in helping the development team figure out a process that gives the operations team sufficient advance notice to update their monitoring software, resulting in a marked improvement the hand-off from engineering to operations with each new Giovanni release.
Kate Ramsayer – Wildcard
Not only is Kate a great leader and team player, she is an absolute joy to be around. Kate brings her impeccable writing skills, sharp wit and very warm personality to every project. She is a fantastic editor, a passionate writer and always comes up with very engaging content on a daily basis. She is always pushing herself to come up with better ideas and new ways to work on challenges.
Laura is a talented writer who unravels and explains the incredibly complex science behind the James Webb Space Telescope. She writes profiles of team members, to highlight the many tasks involved in building the space telescope, and has stayed into the wee hours of the night to tell the story of the work that goes on at Goddard. At times working around-the-clock at NASA and traveling extensively to enthusiastically represent Webb and NASA, she is an incredibly knowledgeable, outgoing and engaging ambassador for Webb to both the media and the general public.
Angie has the amazing ability to be on top of all the factors that go into ensuring the success of the people around her. Not only does she accomplish a myriad of difficult tasks, she also will stop everything to answer queries and handle all the behind-the-scenes details with a smile. Angie is the true embodiment of a team player.
Daniel DaSilva – Technical Excellence
Daniel’s eagerness to sign up for new tasks and learn and apply new technical skills has immensely helped the SESDA3 team at the NASA GESDISC, and make him the perfect candidate for the Technical Excellence award. His main contributions include development of shape file support and Histogram visualization in Giovanni. He has also been active in NASA GESDISC Days of Innovation by developing new WebGL based visualization methods, improving search relevancy and optimization of time series algorithm in Giovanni.
Jeff Martz is an extremely diligent and resourceful worker who on many occasions has gone out of his way to help make sure his customers have their network restored as soon as possible; even coming in at strange hours or working extra late to resolve an issue. He shares his extensive documentation on the state of SESDA3 purchases, cabling runs, switch interconnects, and security scan reports. In addition he keeps the computer racks and spare equipment organized. Jeff is easy to work with and always pitches in even when it is not in his area of duties, making him a worthy recipient of the Team Player award.
Christine Smit is truly and undoubtedly an Unsung Hero of the Giovanni system development team at NASA Goddard. Being highly skilled and knowledgeable in all parts of this extremely complicated software system, Christine often serves as the critical link holding together both the system the team. Christine frequently steps in to help out less experienced members of the team, and does not hesitate to take on the most challenging tasks, all while remaining a humble and personable colleague.
Michael Berganski – Technical Excellence
Michael Berganski always steps up to the plate to help the GES DISC Web team, in whatever capacity is required, and is the epitome of technical excellence. In his role as system administrator he is often the first one to action the support tickets, and in many case has shown the impossible to be possible. Michael is an excellent example of the SESDA 3 “brand” of excellence, not only demonstrating a high level of success for his customers but also his peers.
