Dr. Raymond Francis
Dr. Raymond Francis’ current research is in new techniques for autonomous science, and the mission design and operations consequences of such increased autonomy capabilities. Many of the autonomy applications call for automated interpretation of images of natural scenes, and he develops techniques to do that, both for geological and atmospheric applications. He often works closely with both the science and engineering teams on programs – whether in the development or operation stage.
Dr. Raymond Francis is the Deputy Science Operations Team Chief for the Mars 2020 rover project, and works in several operations roles for both the Perseverance and Curiosity Mars rovers. He is a member of both the ChemCam and SuperCam instrument teams, and take part in planning both geological and atmospheric science observations on the two rover missions. He is also the lead system engineer for the AEGIS autonomous instrument targeting system, used for ChemCam on Curiosity.