Dr. Chia-Yen Peng – NESC Academy Biography

Dr. Peng received his M.S. and Ph.D. degrees from California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, California.  

Dr. Peng is a Principal Engineer at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), Pasadena, California.  His responsibilities are in the areas of Loads and Dynamic Simulations for JPL flight projects including Cassini-Huygens to Saturn, Mars Pathfinder, Deep Space 1, Shuttle Radar Topography Mission, Mars Exploration Rovers, Mars Science Laboratory, Soil Moisture Active and Passive Mission, Asteroid Lander.

Dr. Peng has 30 years’ experience in structural dynamics, multi-body dynamic simulations and modal testing.  Dr. Peng has been a technical lead to simulate the complex separation and Entry/Descent/Landing (EDL) events for many space, planetary, and Earth exploration missions, including the very successful Mars missions such as Mars Pathfinder, Mars Exploration Rovers and Mars Science Laboratory.  Currently, he is working on the next Mars exploration mission – NASA’s 2020 Mars Rover to search red planet for signs of life.  Since it is very difficult, expensive, and in many cases impossible to test the EDL systems in an environment such as on Mars or on other planets, these missions heavily depend on his team to conduct sophisticated multi-body dynamic simulations to predict the system performance, to validate the system design concept, and ultimately to achieve the mission success.