Eric Rice Email & Phone Number

Pasadena, Ca, Us

SPHEREx is a NASA Medium Explorer class cost-capped mission to study the structure and history of the universe with a spectral all-sky survey collected with a passively-cooled cryogenic telescope in Earth orbit. SPHEREx is scheduled to launch in early 2025. • Build and manage a 7-10 person team to deliver the SPHEREx mission plan, operations processes, and ground data systems.• Coach team members on technical and teaming matters to assure successful delivery of designs while maintaining a healthy and enjoyable environment for everyone. • Led the team through the transition to remote work during the pandemic, with 2 major milestone reviews successfully held as a virtual team. • Establish and manage the cost, schedule, and technical baseline of the ground element with earned value management (EVM). • Additional individual contributor duties include spacecraft fault management oversight and mission security process definition.

Pasadena, Ca, Us

JPL's Mission Protection Office is an ongoing effort in JPL's Office of the Chief Engineer to develop methods, processes, and standards to identify and control malicious cyber and counterspace security threats to NASA’s space assets. I have been a part of the office since it inception in 2012, and was appointed the lead in 2023, sharing half time with direct project work. • Establish institutional requirements and practices to secure space missions against malicious threats, with an emphasis on command intrusion, GPS interference, and other direct-to-vehicle threat vectors. • Act as a cross-functional subject matter expert in flight project design and cyber security to define institutional and project methods that integrate security into the project lifecycle.Significant contributor to NASA's Space Security Best Practices GuideLed several cross-functional studies to determine the impact of and recommended forward actions in response to NASA STD-1006 security standard. Los Angeles Department of Water and Power Smart Grid Regional Demonstration Program (SGRDP) The SGRDP was a Department of Energy initiative in 2011-2014 to research new power distribution technologies. JPL partnered with USC’s Information Sciences Institute to study how cyber security in smart meter, demand response, and electric vehicle technologies impacts public safety, energy security, and power markets. • Researched cyber-physical security methods applying JPL’s expertise in systems engineering and fault management.• Analyzed systems for cyber-physical risks, integrating methods and concepts from systems analysis, threat vector analysis, attack analysis, fault tree analysis, and risk assessment.• Developed architectures to detect and mitigate cyber attacks in smart grid systems.

Pasadena, Ca, Us

Technical Group Supervisor – Spacecraft Operations Systems Engineering (2015-2020 – 50% )Functional manager for a group of 12 high-performing leaders in operations design and execution with a focus on flight system operations and design for operability.• Support the work and career development of group members working on as many as 20 JPL flight projects in all project phases.• Maintain the standards, products, and processes for the work of the group in spaceflight operations, mission system leadership, and spacecraft operability.• Support group members in the definition of a new development process for operability in JPL flight projects.• Authored flight and ground implementation sections in proposals to NASA Discovery and New Frontiers opportunities as an additional responsibility.

Pasadena, Ca, Us

Flight System Systems Engineer for NEOCam, now renamed to NEO Surveyor (2016-2019 – 40%)NEOS is an infrared space telescope optimized to discover, track, and characterize Near Earth Objects under NASA’s Planetary Defense Coordination Office.• Led the NEOCam Spacecraft technical definition for procurement from Ball Aerospace in collaboration with the JPL Contract Technical Manager and Ball technical leadership through the Step 2 proposal, site visit, and extended Phase-A study. • Baselined the Level 3 spacecraft spec, in collaboration with the vendor and other project elements, in preparation for the Phase B gate review.• Developed and contributed to multiple project gate products and materials, including Risk Management Plan, Project V&V Plan, Spacecraft-Instrument Interface Control Document, and requirements definition across multiple project elements and levels. • Led systems engineering efforts and trades at L2 and L3, e.g. time management, pointing stability requirements and budget, operability, data management, and multiple technical budgets.

Pasadena, Ca, Us

Support the design of space missions from the perspective of protecting mission objectives from the effects of failures. For over a decade, I led FM efforts for projects and developed practices for the discipline, which includes failure analysis, root cause analysis, anomaly investigation, and the design of autonomous system capabilities to identify and respond to failure in flight.As a systems engineer and a failure management expert, I have contributed to several successful NASA science missions, including: Deep ImpactWISEKeplerSMAPNISARAs part of my institutional responsibilities, I also led a team of contributors from several NASA centers to develop the architectures section of the NASA Fault Management Handbook in 2010.

Pasadena, Ca, Us