Bill Bluethmann

Education: University of Kansas, doctorate degree in mechanical engineering
Hometown: Arvada, Colorado
What inspired you to join NASA? At the time I entered the workforce after graduate school in the mid-1990s, NASA was doing incredible work preparing to assemble the International Space Station robotically, as well as more advanced work such as Robonaut. NASA is the place to be for robotics.
Favorite beverage, food, or fuel: I've been a daily coffee drinker for 35 years. Every couple weeks I treat myself to a banh mi at a local Vietnamese restaurant.

Bill Bluethmann is the VIPER rover element lead at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston. Bill was the project manager of the Human Robotics Systems project for NASA’s Game Changing Development Program. From 1998 to 2007, he was a member of NASA’s Robonaut team, building a dexterous humanoid robot for space exploration, serving as the project’s software development lead in the early phases of the system’s development. Outside of NASA, Bill enjoys golfing and coaching high school and middle school robotics teams.