Philip Harris

About Me:

Sitting in on an MCC position

My name is Philip Harris, and I am a junior at the University of Denver (DU) majoring in Computer Science. I have minors in Math, Geographic Information Systems, and Leadership. At school, I am president and co-founder of Club Curling, and I also serve on the executive board for the Resident Hall Association. I also was a resident assistant for freshman students at DU. If I'm not in class or doing homework, I'll either be skiing, riding my bike, rollerblading, or simply watching Heros on NBC.

My long co-op story:

I've actually been a co-op at two different NASA centers: Dryden Flight Research Center (DFRC) out on Edwards Air Force Base in California, and I am currently at Johnson Space Center (JSC) here in Houston, TX. I had always wanted to work for NASA, and my dream is to one day be an astronaut. Of course, being a flight director would be amazing as well. As strange as it may seem, I just completely forgot about this my senior year of high school and the first part of my freshman year at DU. Then I had to travel to Fargo, ND for a theatre convention (of all things), and that was where I met one of the NASA Dryden pilots - and he informed me about the co-op program.

In front of the vacuum chamber

About six months after that, I applied to six different NASA centers, and heard back from Dryden just before Thanksgiving. I took the position out there, and I was amazed each and every day I came to work. It was good to work for NASA in the "aeronautics" arena, as Dryden has little to do with much of the space aspect of NASA. I really gained an understanding of a forgotten part of NASA . During my rotation at Dryden, I received a call from JSC - and transferred down here in the Fall of 2007.

Rotations

Spring 2007: I was working at Dryden in Code MC, which is the range engineering branch. I was basically responsible for assisting in the software testing of our mission control centers on site. One of my other main projects was developing a hand-out booklet about the capabilities of the Western Aeronautical Test Range. It was a lot of fun, because I got to work with graphics, engineers, the print shop, and a variety of people from all over the center. The booklet is now an official publication approved by headquarters, and I was proud to have helped create it.

Hanging out with my residents

Fall 2007: I worked at Johnson in the Information Resources Directorate Workstation Engineering Group. It was an interesting branch to be in - the three of us are responsible for all of the workstations (over 15,000) that are located on-site at JSC. My main projects involved developing SharePoint sites for the center and branch, testing out encryption products (basically, trying to make things break), and managing some other software testing that is going on on-site.

Summer 2008: In the summer of 2008, I will be working over in the International Space Station group, DI-2, and hopefully earning my basic flight controller certification for the Mission Control Center here at JSC.

Contacting Me

You can contact me at Philip.Harris@du.edu