Bruce Pittman

Bruce Pittman is the Director of Flight Projects and Chief System Engineer at the NASA Space Portal at the Ames Research Center where he supports suborbital human-tended research, orbital applications and research, and lunar commercialization. He has been involved in high technology product development, project management and system engineering for over 30 years.

He started his career working at NASA Ames for 11 years on a number of space projects including Pioneer Venus, the Infrared Astronomy Satellite (IRAS), the Cryogenic Grating Spectrometer on the Kuiper Airborne Observatory, the Space Station Freedom Technology Advocacy Group, and several advanced studies programs. He has also worked with NASA as a contractor on a number of projects including the NASA Space Portal (2005-present), Commercial Orbital Transportation Services (2006-2007), ISS Commercialization (2005-2006) High Speed Civil Transport (1997-1998), Program and Project Management Initiative ( 1988-1993), the Space Exploration Initiative (1989-1991) and Space Shuttle Processing (1987-1988).

Mr. Pittman has also been a founder and member of the startup team in a number of early growth companies including SpaceHab, Kistler Aerospace, New Focus, Product Factory, Prometheus II Ltd., and Industrial Sound and Motion.

Mr. Pittman has a BS in Mechanical Engineering from U. C. Davis and a MS in Engineering Management from Santa Clara University. Mr. Pittman is an Associate Fellow of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA) a member of the AIAA Commercial Space Group and founder and first chairman of the System Engineering Technical Committee. He is also a member of the organizing committee for the Space Investment Summit series, a member of the Aerospace Technology Working Group (ATWG) and President of the Silicon Valley Space Club. He has authored or co-authored over 3 dozen papers on a technical, management and business topics in aerospace and high technology. In addition to his technical work Mr. Pittman is also a member of the adjunct faculty in the Graduate Engineering School at Santa Clara University.

For his technical work Mr. Pittman has been awarded two NASA Special Achievement Awards, three NASA Group Achievement Awards and the AIAA Distinguished Leadership Award.