James E. Reis
Hubble Ground System Manager
Jim Reis serves as the ground system manager for the Hubble Space Telescope at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. As such, he is the expert in all applications, networks, interfaces and security aspects of the system and oversees the workforce responsible for its sustaining engineering. The Hubble ground system encompasses a wide diversity of facilities, computer resources and networking infrastructure that must be continuously operational through planned and unplanned telescope changes during the entire life of the mission.
Reis’ career started as a programmer for the steel industry in Dravosburg, Pennsylvania, in 1988. There he developed process control and monitoring software for steel mills. He joined NASA in 1991 as a computer engineer focused on software and interfaces related to NASA’s ground stations and communication satellite network.
In 1996, Reis joined the Hubble ground system team. He helped modernize the command and control system, initiated automation of its systems administration, and incorporated an infrastructure for future automation. After moving up into various ground system lead positions, Reis was selected in 2005 as the ground system manager, where he was responsible for implementing changes necessary to support Hubble’s final servicing mission in 2009. His attention would then turn to the implementation of an automated flight operations capability that utilized the infrastructure he helped create earlier in his career. For his work on Hubble’s ground system, Reis has been the recipient of five honor awards, a customer service excellence award and a special act award.
Reis was born and raised in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. He received his Bachelor of Science in computer science from the University of Pittsburgh and a Master of Science in computer science from The Johns Hopkins University.
Currently, Reis lives in Bowie, Maryland, with his wife, Amy, and their two children. His hobbies include computers and electronics, console gaming and supporting his children’s activities.
