User:Brian enke99/bio

Brian Enke (born 31 October 1964) is an American software integration expert and author. Enke currently conducts space research as a Senior Research Analyst in the Department of Space Studies at the Boulder, Colorado branch of the Southwest Research Institute. He lives in Nederland, Colorado.

In 2001, Enke developed the first "Third-Generation" (3Gen) manned Mars exploration and space settlement plan. His Medusa 3Gen plan is a set of 15 modifications to the NASA Design Reference Mission version 3.0 and Mars Direct architectures. The primary goals of the Medusa architecture are to achieve an order of magnitude reduction in mission cost, risk, and complexity compared to Mars Direct. Enke initially promoted the Medusa 3Gen plan in his 2004 fictional novel, Shadows of Medusa.

Qualifications and Professional Experience

Enke holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Computer Science from North Central College (1990) and a Master's Degree in Computer Science from Northwestern University (1995). He worked as a lead software integrator and system quality engineer on the 5ESS Switch telecom project at Bell Laboratories in Naperville, Illinois from 1984 through 2001. Since 2001, he has worked on numerous space research and computer learning projects at the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colorado.

Enke is also the Chairman of the Board and Chapter Contact for the Rocky Mountain Mars Society chapter, as well as a founding member and Advisor of the MarsDrive Consortium.

Shadows of Medusa (2004). This fictional novel outlines the third-generation Medusa manned Mars mission plan.

Size-Frequency Distributions of Fragments from SPH/N-Body Simulations of Asteroid Impacts: Comparison with Observed Asteroid Families., Daniel D. Durda, William F. Bottke Jr., David Nesvorny, Brian L. Enke, William J. Merline, Erik Asphaug, and Derek C. Richardson. Icarus.
Comparing results of SPH/N-body impact simulations using both solid and rubble-pile targets., Durda, D. D., W. F. Bottke, B. L. Enke, D. Nesvorny, E. Asphaug, and D. C. Richardson. Bull. Amer. Astron. Soc. 38, 582. 2006.
The formation of asteroid satellites in large impacts: Results from numerical simulations., Daniel D. Durda, William F. Bottke Jr., Brian L. Enke, William J. Merline, Erik Asphaug, Derek C. Richardson, Zoe M. Leinhardt. Icarus 170, 243�257.
Karin Cluster Formation via Asteroid Impact., David Nesvorny, Brian L. Enke, William F. Bottke, Daniel D. Durda, Erik Asphaug, and Derek C. Richardson. Icarus. publication pending.
Automated Knowledge Discovery from Simulators., M.C.Burl, C.DeCoste, B.L.Enke, D.Mazzoni, W.J.Merline, L.Scharenbroich. SIAM Conference on Data Mining, 2006.
Automated Identification of Martian Craters Using Image Processing., M. Magee, C.R. Chapman, B. Enke, S.W. Dellenback, W.J. Merline, M.P. Rigney. LPSC 2003 abstract.