Dr. Richard J. Terrile

Richard J. Terrile, Ph.D. is an astronomer and the director of the Center for Evolutionary Computation and Automated Design at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. He uses techniques based on biological evolution and development to advance the fields of robotics and computer intelligence. He earned his Ph.D. in Planetary Science from the California Institute of Technology and has developed missions to Mars and to the outer solar system.
 
Rich is the discoverer of four moons around Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune and took the first pictures of another solar system around the nearby star Beta Pictoris. His other interests include planetary rings, planetary geology, evolutionary computation, and the development of medical instrumentation for tissue identification during neurosurgery.
 
Rich is a private pilot, a SCUBA and ski instructor, a rock climber and caver, and was an astronaut candidate. He has interests in fiction writing, photography, cinematography and movies, and works as a technical advisor on several major motion pictures, including work with Academy Award winning directors James Cameron and Steven Soderbergh. He was featured in several science shows and has been a regular performer at the Ice House and the Comedy Store in the “Improv Inferno” improvisation group.
 
His Terrile Science and Technical Consulting offers science and technical consulting services for motion picture, movies, television, corporate, and financial customers. Movies that he has been a technical consultant for include 2010: The Year We Made Contact, Solar Crisis, Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines, and Solaris. Read the full list of movies that he has advised.
 
Watch Richard Terrile ideaCity05.