4800 Oak Grove Drive
M/S T1719-106
Dr. Philip Twu is a Robotics System Engineer and Technical Group Supervisor of the Robot Ops and V&V Group. He earned a Ph.D. in Electrical and Computer Engineering from the Georgia Institute of Technology in 2012, where his research focused on decentralized coordination algorithms for multi-robot systems.
From 2012-2017 Philip was at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory (JHU/APL) where he worked on and took leadership roles in a diverse portfolio of projects for NASA and DoD sponsors related to algorithm development, analysis, software engineering, and systems engineering. In these roles, Philip performed end-to-end system-of-systems analysis, concept exploration, trade studies, modeling, and simulation of networked sensor systems. He led a software development team to support planetary scientists in the visualization, mapping, and analysis of science data for small solar system bodies. Philip has also made critical contributions to spacecraft fault management integration and testing for the Parker Solar Probe mission, space system modeling and simulation for mission concept studies, and the development of autonomy algorithms for heterogeneous teams of unmanned vehicles.
Philip joined JPL in 2017 with the dream of contributing to the search for life in our solar system and has been primarily involved with flight projects. On the Mars 2020 mission, he was systems engineer for the Perseverance rover's new autonomous navigation system and also worked surface operations as mobility downlink chair. On the Europa Lander Pre-Project, he was Task Manager and Autonomy Architect for Surface Mission Autonomy where he led multi-disciplinary teams in concept formulation, system architecting, system modeling, software prototyping, integration and test, and knowledge capture documentation. On the Psyche mission, he was the GN&C V&V Lead and L3 GN&C Deputy Lead. Currently he works on the Mars Sample Return (MSR) Sample Transfer System (STS) as the Robotics Systems Engineering Team Lead and Cost Account Manager.