Our Team

Our Asteroid Institute is a B612 program which collaborates with major institutions around the world working on asteroid related projects including research, science, and technologies. Our leadership drives strategy and operations and the Board of Directors oversees our long-term vision. Our Founding Circle, Asteroid Circle and global community of donors make our work possible.

Asteroid Institute
Leadership
Founding Circle
Asteroid Circle
Board Of Directors
Strategic Advisor
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Matthew and Sarah Welty

Matthew Welty is a lifelong space buff and an active recreational fixed-wing pilot. He was an early employee of Facebook and a leader in the engineering organization during a period of exponential growth. He also held prominent roles in consumer internet and biotechnology companies prior to...
CARISE

Carise Fernandez

Lead Software Engineer
Carise is the lead software engineer at B612, bringing experience in cloud engineering to ADAM. Carise was formerly a software engineer at Google, developing a security product in Google Cloud Platform to detect malicious activity in real-time. Prior to B612 and Google, Carise led product...
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John Carrico

Institute Astrodynamicist
Throughout his career, John has designed and developed mission planning algorithms and software, and worked as an astrogator: planning missions, designing trajectories, and tracking spacecraft. He has worked on flight dynamics mission analysis, operations, development, and systems integration. John has supported several operational Earth and...
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Rick Armstrong

Son of Astronaut Neil Armstrong, Rick has proudly continued his father’s legacy of giving back through his own philanthropy and by representing the Armstrong family. Rick earned a B.A. in Biology from Wittenberg University with a concentration in marine biology. He worked for a number...
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Tito’s Handmade Vodka

As the company grew, Tito empowered each and every member of the team, regardless of their role, to support the causes they were passionate about in their local communities.
Harold-Reitsema

Harold Reitsema

Institute Mission Director
Harold is a planetary astronomer with more than 30 years experience specializing in the design and building of interplanetary spacecraft and astronomical imaging detectors. During his tenure at Ball Aerospace, he led design teams for Hubble Space Telescope, was the principal investigator for NASA Planetary...
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Jensen Huang

Jensen Huang founded NVIDIA in 1993 and has served since its inception as president, chief executive officer and a member of the board of directors.
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Emmie King

ADAM Software Engineer
Emmie is supporting  the ADAM project. As a software engineer with Space Exploration Engineering (SEE) she works to understand...
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