Dr. Russell E. Trahan, III

Welcome

Welcome to the website of Russell Trahan, III. This site contains my resumé information and information about my current projects and research.

Russell received his BS, MS, and PhD from Texas A&M University under the supervision of Dr. David Hyland in Aerospace Engineering with a concentration in Dynamics, Controls, and Optics. His graduate research included space-borne optical interferometry, optimal control methods, system estimation, and computational methods for large degree-of-freedom real-time simulations.

Since 2015 he has worked at the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory in the optics division's Advanced Optical Instruments group. Much of his research has focused on combining computational methods with optical system analyses to develop practical solutions to cutting edge computational problems. His experience with GPU computing ranges from 3D real-time graphics to massively paralleled scientific computations. He has about 15 years of experience with the OpenGL, OpenCL, CUDA, and DirectX GPU computing APIs. He has used these programming tools on several projects to deliver state-of-the-field computational throughputs and informative graphical outputs for simulations. He is also fluent with over 15 years of experience in C++, OpenMP, and several other languages and APIs used for CPU and GPU parallelization of scientific computing applications.

Recent Updates

• Near-Earth Object Observations using Synthetic Tracking
  Chengxing Zhai, Michael Shao, Navtej Saini, Philip Choi, Nez Evans, Russell Trahan, Kutay Nazli, Max Zhan
  Publications of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific, Volume 136, Issue 3, id.034401, 21, March 2024.
  Paper, Abstract
• Radio/Optical Observation of Repeating FRBs with Novel DSN Instrument
  Walid Majid, Michael Shao, Daniel Hoppe, Russell Trahan, Charles Naudet, Robert Preston, Barzia Tehrani
  American Astronomical Society, AAS Meeting #243, id. 359.34. Bulletin of the American Astronomical Society, Vol. 56, No. 2 e-id 2024n2i359p34, February 2024.
  Abstract
• Team Award - JPL Earth Science and Technology Directorate - June 2020
  The team's successful development and demonstration of the synthetic tracking system significantly advanced both Air Force and NASA near-Earth object detection and tracking capabilities. The Air Force's primary interest was to improve the sensitivity of their Ground-based Electro-Optical Deep-Space Surveillance System (GEODSS). The team demonstrated an overall order of magnitude increase in sensitivity detecting small objects in geosynchronous (GEO) orbit along with other significant capability improvements.