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 NASA Electronic Parts and Packaging (NEPP) Program
2025 Electronics Technology Workshop |
2025 NEPP ETW Keynote Speaker
Robert Hodson, Ph.D.
NASA Langley Research Center
Dr. Hodson is the former NASA Technical Fellow for Avionics and is currently resident at Langley Research Center (LaRC). In this position, he engaged in assessing the Agency's most challenging avionics-related technical issues and continues to do so in a supporting role prior to his retirement. As the Avionics Technical Fellow, he led the Avionics Technical Discipline Team consisting of many technical experts from NASA, other government agencies, industry, and academia in the diverse areas of avionics technology.
Since joining NASA in 2002, Dr. Hodson has served in several capacities. Prior to his role as Avionics Technical Fellow, he served as the Chief Engineer for NASA Space Technology Mission Directorate (STMD) Game Changing Development (GCD) Program, as well as the GCD Deputy Program Manager and the Deputy Chief Engineer for LaRC. He was the Chief Engineer for the Electronics Systems Branch responsible for technical oversight and review of multiple new technology and flight projects. He was a core member of the NASA Engineering and Safety Center's (NESC's) Super Problem Resolution Team for Power and Avionics where he was part of the Hubble Space Telescope health assessment team and other assessment activities. He served as the Deputy Chairman of the Avionics Steering Committee and has been an advocate for avionics technology, leading the committee's avionics road-mapping efforts. Dr. Hodson was the principal investigator on the Reconfigurable Scalable Computing for Space project, which is an international collaboration to enable advanced processing capabilities for future missions. He also served as the command and data handling subsystem lead on the Crew Excursion Vehicle Smart Buyer team. Dr. Hodson was the Constellation Program (CxP) Avionics Discipline Lead and worked with multiple NASA Centers and organizations to help lead the program through multiple successful milestone reviews. In this role he also led multiple risk assessments and technical studies for the program including leading the CxP Common Avionics initiative and the Heavy Lift Vehicle Computing Architecture study.
Prior to working at NASA, Dr. Hodson was an associate professor of computer engineering and Director of the Computer Engineering program at Christopher Newport University (CNU) where he worked for 13 years. While working at CNU, he performed research with NASA, the Department of Defense, and the Department of Energy. Additionally, Dr. Hodson worked with a software startup company, JDH Technologies. As a Senior Software Scientist for JDH Technologies, his work included development of Internet-based collaboration software. Dr. Hodson also worked as an engineer with the General Electric Company for 5 years. His work at GE included hardware and real-time software design for the F-16 flight simulator and Digital Landmass RADAR simulator.
Dr. Hodson has nearly 35 years of experience as an engineer, of which over 25 have been since completion of his Ph.D. in Computer Science from the Florida State University, where his research focused on real-time expert systems computer architecture. Dr. Hodson has authored or co-authored numerous publications including technical papers, articles, and one book. Many of the papers deal with engineering and research issues related to space electronics design, computing architectures, and software systems.
In addition to his Ph.D., Dr. Hodson holds a master's degree in Computer Engineering from the University of Central Florida, and a dual bachelor's degree in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from the University of Connecticut.
NEPP Program Manager: Pete Majewicz
NEPP Deputy Manager: Susana Douglas
Site Curator: Carl Szabo