Robert Durkin – NESC Academy Biography

Robert Durkin was born and raised in Herington, Kansas. He received a bachelor of science in aerospace engineering in 1993 from Wichita State University. He started his civil servant career at NASA in 1993  at the Weightless Environment Training Facility (WETF). He transitioned to the NBL in 1997 and was responsible for the Breathing Gas System and was the flight lead for STS-88, the first NASA mission trained  in the NBL. In 1998, he moved to EA and was the EM division lead for Mockup Design and Fabrication. In 2001, he became the assistant to the subsystem manager for Shuttle Landing Systems. In 2002, he  returned to the NBL as the facility manager and has continued to take jobs of higher responsibility in the facility. He became the chief of the NBL in August 2010.