Robert French
Planetary Astronomer at SETI Institute
Sunnyvale, California, United States
Summary
👤
Senior🎓
Top SchoolRobert French is a planetary astronomer and seasoned software engineer with 12+ years at the intersection of space science and scalable engineering, currently co-investigator of NASA’s PDS Ring-Moon Systems Node at SETI Institute. He led the development and operation of OPUS, authored over a million lines of code, and built AWS-driven pipelines that consumed 15,000 CPU-hours to process Cassini imagery, delivering pixel-level metadata and updated navigation kernels to the community. A co-discoverer of Neptune’s moon Hippocamp, he combines deep research output with practical system administration, mentoring, and public outreach. Earlier in his career he co-founded and scaled Silicon Spice, helping raise $95M and contributing to a $1.25B acquisition while earning 18 patents for chip and software architecture. Equally comfortable as an individual contributor, manager, educator, pilot, and performer, he brings rare multidisciplinary fluency from compilers and embedded systems to planetary data services. Based in Sunnyvale, he seeks intellectually ambitious projects that blend rigorous science with production-quality software.
12 years of coding experience
19 years of employment as a software developer
Bachelor of Science - BS, Computer Science, Bachelor of Science - BS, Computer Science at Massachusetts Institute of TechnologyMaster of Science - MS, Astronomy, Master of Science - MS, Astronomy at Swinburne University of TechnologyMaster of Science - MS (PhD candidate), Computer Science, Master of Science - MS (PhD candidate), Computer Science at Stanford University
English
Github Skills (55)
scipy10
gradient-descent10
python10
fundamental10
mpi10
interpolation10
blas10
ndarray10
planets10
numerics10
opus10
lapack10
root-finding10
convolution10
finite-element-analysis10
Programming languages (8)
Github contributions (5)
SETI/rms-julian
Oct 2023 - Dec 2024
julian Python module
Contributions:10 releases, 2 reviews, 2 PRs in 1 year 2 months
SETI/rms-tabulation
Oct 2023 - Dec 2024
tabulation Python module
Contributions:8 releases, 6 reviews, 14 PRs in 1 year 2 months
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