Mark Leon

Mark Leon (1962 - 2018) was a former civil servant with NASA Ames Research Center. His primary work was in education and communication systems.

Mark Leon
OccupationElectrical Engineer, Civil Servant
Known forMCing at many FIRST robotics competitions

Early life

Mark Leon grew up in a rather rough East San Jose neighborhood, and graduated from James Lick High School in 1980. He originally began taking a slightly more academic route to life when he began hiding in the library from other high school students who were attempting to beat him up.[1]

He also attended San Jose State University[2] and won a silver medal in the 1985 Collegiate National Judo Championships.[1] He received his bachelor's degree in electrical engineering.

Communications work

In the 1980s Leon was instrumental in establishing trans-Atlantic communication between American, French and English space agencies. In the 1990s he completed the first audio/video link to Antarctica. This was thought to be impossible at the time.[3]

Affiliation with FIRST Robotics

For many years Mark Leon worked as a Master of Ceremonies in many FIRST robotics competition events both on and off season. He was particularly well known for wearing a bright blue NASA coat and dying his hair the same color for these events.[4][1] He was widely cited as an inspiration to many high school students to build robots and impacted many career choices. He is also credited with the existence of a large number of FRC teams.[5]

Robotics Alliance Project

Beginning in 1998 Mark moved to the Robotics Alliance Project at NASA Ames.[1] This department works primarily in educational and outreach projects and was estimated in 2006 to have reached more than 100,000 middle and high school students.[3] He also ran the Ames Robotics Academy every summer.[6]

gollark: Or probably weapon attacks at all.
gollark: Or any time, really.
gollark: There would be no photon torpedoes at this time.
gollark: ```Cold Ones (also ice giants, the Finality, Lords of the Last Waste)Mythological beings who dwell at the end of time, during the final blackness of the universe, the last surviving remnants of the war of all-against-all over the universe’s final stocks of extropy, long after the passing of baryonic matter and the death throes of the most ancient black holes. Savage, autocannibalistic beings, stretching their remaining existence across aeons-long slowthoughts powered by the rare quantum fluctuations of the nothingness, these wretched dead gods know nothing but despair, hunger, and envy for those past entities which dwelled in eras rich in energy differentials, information, and ordered states, and would – if they could – feast on any unwary enough to fall into their clutches.Stories of the Cold Ones are, of course, not to be interpreted literally: they are a philosophical and theological metaphor for the pessimal end-state of the universe, to wit, the final triumph of entropy in both a physical and a spiritual sense. Nonetheless, this metaphor has been adopted by both the Flamic church and the archai themselves to describe the potential future which it is their intention to avert.The Cold Ones have also found a place in popular culture, depicted as supreme villains: perhaps best seen in the Ghosts of the Dark Spiral expansion for Mythic Stars, a virtuality game from Nebula 12 ArGaming, ICC, and the Void Cascading InVid series, produced by Dexlyn Vithinios (Sundogs of Delphys, ICC).```
gollark: And it's all just horribly dense spaghetti code.

References
  1. "Mark Leon, Helping Kids Build a Better Robot". Archived from the original on 2009-09-30.
  2. Mark León - NASA Learning Technologies
  3. "Spaceward Bound, Mark Leon". Archived from the original on 2016-05-20.
  4. Mark Leon
  5. "Mark Leon has left the planet". Chief Delphi. 31 December 2018. Retrieved 18 May 2020.
  6. NASA Ames Robotics Academy
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