Brian Coltin
Computer Scientist at NASA Ames Research Center (SGT)
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, United States
Summary
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Rockstar🎓
Top SchoolBrian Coltin is a computer scientist with 11 years of experience blending robotics research and production-grade software development, currently at NASA Ames. He holds a PhD in Robotics from Carnegie Mellon and has deep hands-on experience in robotic systems such as Astrobee, where he contributed simulator improvements, arm behavior fixes, and release engineering for the NASA open-source codebase. His background spans academic research and industry internships at Aldebaran, Intel, and IBM, giving him a practical edge in cobots, RoboCup, and remote sensing. At NASA he bridges research and operational needs, often tackling build-system and cross-version compatibility challenges that keep complex systems runnable. Coltin is based in Pittsburgh and brings a mix of rigorous academic training and pragmatic engineering focused on making advanced robotic capabilities reliable in real-world environments.
12 years of coding experience
3 years of employment as a software developer
Bachelor of Science (BS), Computer Science, Bachelor of Science (BS), Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon University
English, Spanish, Japanese
Github Skills (9)
develop10
c-language10
cprogramming-language10
ros10
operating-system10
debian-packaging9
release-management9
cmake8
opencv8
Programming languages (5)
Github contributions (5)
nasa/astrobee
Mar 2018 - Jan 2023
NASA Astrobee Robot Software
Role in this project:
Backend Developer
Backend DeveloperContributions:3 releases, 444 reviews, 36 commits in 4 years 11 months
Contributions summary:Brian contributed to the `nasa/astrobee` repository, which focuses on NASA Astrobee Robot Software, by implementing bug fixes, simulator improvements, and internal changes. Key contributions included modifications to the `arm_nodelet.cc` file, which suggests involvement in the arm behavior system. The user also fixed build issues related to new OpenCV versions, improved debian package builds, and released multiple software versions, indicating a role in software development and release management.
roboticsrobotrobot-softwarenasa
bcoltin/astrobee
Aug 2020 - Oct 2025
NASA Astrobee Robot Software
Contributions:1 release, 22 pushes, 31 branches in 5 years 2 months
roboticsrobotrobot-softwarenasa
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