Kevin L.G. Parkin
British scientist employed at NASA
Kevin L.G. Parkin (born 1977 in London) is an American British scientist who is best known for his study of beamed energy propulsion.
Areas of interest
Rocket propulsion and gasdynamics, high power microwaves and directed energy, object-oriented software engineering, space mission design. Since 2016, Kevin has served as the systems director of Breakthrough Starshot, a $100M initiative to send a beam-driven probe to Alpha Centauri within the next generation.
Education
Parkin attended the University of Leicester, where he received his bachelor's degree in physics in 1999. He then attended graduate school at the California Institute of Technology, where he received his master's degree in science in 2001. He completed his Ph.D. at Caltech in 2006, from which he derived his research for beam energy.
Career
Parkin was previously a member of the Carnegie Mellon Silicon Valley Research Staff and previously Deputy Director of the Mission Design Center at NASA Ames, and project lead for the Microwave Thermal Rocket. Beginning with his Ph.D. thesis on Microwave Thermal Propulsion, his work spans theoretical, computational and experimental domains for the general problem of space access and economics. In July 2005, he was awarded the Korolev Medal by the Russian Federation of Cosmonautics.
He founded the NASA Ames Mission Design Center (MDC) and developed its software architecture.
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