Silvano Colombano Ph.D.
Member of AIAA Space Architecture Technical Committee (SATC) – Construction Subcommittee
BACKGROUND
Dr. Silvano Colombano received an M.A. in Physics and a Ph.D. in Biophysical Sciences from the University at Buffalo. He has spent most of his working career at NASA-Ames Research Center first as a researcher in Closed Ecological Life Support Systems (CELSS) and later in Artificial Intelligence and Robotics. He began the development work on the Astronaut Science Advisor (a.k.a. PI-in-a-box) and managed the project until its deployment on SLS-2 (Space Shuttle STS -58) in 1993. He has been doing research and development work in Artificial Neural Networks, Genetic Algorithms and Fuzzy Logic in the Intelligent Systems Division at NASA-Ames. He is author or co-author of over 80 technical publications. He lead a group in “Evolutionary Biotronics”, comprising projects in Evolutionary Hardware, Modular Cooperative
Robotics and Artificial Life, and organized a workshop on Self-Sustaining Robotic Ecologies called “Robosphere “ in 2002, 2004 and 2006. He has been interested in self-deploying robotic space structures. He has worked on Systems Engineering for the Orion space capsule flight S/W and a Fault Management System for the Deep Space Habitat. The last project he led at NASA (2019-20) was the development of Autonomous Medical Operations (AMO), a machine learning system for providing autonomy in medical care for astronauts during deep space missions. He is now retired and active in consulting and teaching projects.
