Great Minds in STEM recognizes NASA Engineer George Salazar
2013-10-28
For Hispanic Heritage Month, Johnson Space Center is honoring a few Hispanic-American employees whose culture and history has helped shaped them into the people they are today.
George Salazar, chief engineer of JSC’s Human Interface Systems Branch, attended the Hispanic Engineer National Achievement Awards Corporation (HENAAC) conference from Oct. 3 to 5 to accept the prestigious lifetime achievement award. Salazar jumped through several hoops to get clearance to attend the conference on his own despite the government shutdown. The conference, themed “Forged by Tradition … Fueled for Tomorrow,” celebrated a quarter century of honoring the best and brightest science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) minds America has to offer.
The HENAAC conference is organized by Great Minds in STEM, the gateway for Hispanics in those specialized subjects. The awards are presented to outstanding role models in STEM, and the lifetime achievement winners have given 30 or more years of amazing service and commitment to furthering STEM. Salazar said of the conference that “it is a memory that I will cherish for the rest of my life.”
Aside from the awards ceremony, the HENAAC conference offers college students a chance to network and interact with high-level STEM professionals and explore internship and hiring opportunities. Salazar had the chance to serve as a mentor to students at the conference and was sought out by Julio Hernandez, son of former NASA astronaut Jose Hernandez.
A video from JSC Director Ellen Ochoa was shown before Salazar received his award, which was presented by Olga Gonzalez-Sanabria. She is a NASA retiree who worked at Glenn Research Center.
Salazar has spent more than 30 years contributing to JSC in the areas of telemetry; communications; speech control; command and data handling; audio; displays and controls; intelligent lighting; project management; and systems engineering. He also holds four patents in telemetry and adaptive data acquisition; fuzzy logic computing hardware systems; adaptive speech control; and data handling flight computers. As the chief engineer for the Human Interface Branch in the Avionics Systems Division, one of Salazar’s several roles includes leading the displays and controls hardware/software integration for the Orion Program.
Salazar was also recognized for the work he has contributed to improving our community. He has been involved in education outreach since he first started working at JSC and has influenced about 15,000 students, from kindergarten to college age, through those years.
Coming from two parents with elementary-level educations, Salazar has seen many obstacles in his life and has risen above them to find tremendous success in his career. Even in high school, his grades and test scores were low. Despite that, Salazar went on to a junior college in Houston on probation, transferred to a university to earn his bachelor’s degree and, ultimately, earned his master’s degree 26 years after completing his associate’s degree.
“I am living proof that scores do not measure capability,” Salazar said. “A person’s perseverance and drive determine their success.”
George Salazar, chief engineer of JSC’s Human Interface Systems Branch, attended the Hispanic Engineer National Achievement Awards Corporation (HENAAC) conference from Oct. 3 to 5 to accept the prestigious lifetime achievement award. Salazar jumped through several hoops to get clearance to attend the conference on his own despite the government shutdown. The conference, themed “Forged by Tradition … Fueled for Tomorrow,” celebrated a quarter century of honoring the best and brightest science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) minds America has to offer.
The HENAAC conference is organized by Great Minds in STEM, the gateway for Hispanics in those specialized subjects. The awards are presented to outstanding role models in STEM, and the lifetime achievement winners have given 30 or more years of amazing service and commitment to furthering STEM. Salazar said of the conference that “it is a memory that I will cherish for the rest of my life.”
Aside from the awards ceremony, the HENAAC conference offers college students a chance to network and interact with high-level STEM professionals and explore internship and hiring opportunities. Salazar had the chance to serve as a mentor to students at the conference and was sought out by Julio Hernandez, son of former NASA astronaut Jose Hernandez.
A video from JSC Director Ellen Ochoa was shown before Salazar received his award, which was presented by Olga Gonzalez-Sanabria. She is a NASA retiree who worked at Glenn Research Center.
Salazar has spent more than 30 years contributing to JSC in the areas of telemetry; communications; speech control; command and data handling; audio; displays and controls; intelligent lighting; project management; and systems engineering. He also holds four patents in telemetry and adaptive data acquisition; fuzzy logic computing hardware systems; adaptive speech control; and data handling flight computers. As the chief engineer for the Human Interface Branch in the Avionics Systems Division, one of Salazar’s several roles includes leading the displays and controls hardware/software integration for the Orion Program.
Salazar was also recognized for the work he has contributed to improving our community. He has been involved in education outreach since he first started working at JSC and has influenced about 15,000 students, from kindergarten to college age, through those years.
Coming from two parents with elementary-level educations, Salazar has seen many obstacles in his life and has risen above them to find tremendous success in his career. Even in high school, his grades and test scores were low. Despite that, Salazar went on to a junior college in Houston on probation, transferred to a university to earn his bachelor’s degree and, ultimately, earned his master’s degree 26 years after completing his associate’s degree.
“I am living proof that scores do not measure capability,” Salazar said. “A person’s perseverance and drive determine their success.”