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Daniel Gillies
"My Purdue Engineering degree taught me not only the fundamentals of engineering, but how to take a systems view of any problem and identify signals in seas of noise. At Purdue I participated in multiple design-fly-test activities which provided practical knowledge that today contributes to my being a better engineer. I can appreciate not only the engineering elements of a project, but all the elements - from design, to manufacturing, inspections, operations, human factors, and project management. I have used this to apply a holistic approach to problem solving which had lead me to where I am today."
Daniel Gillies | Aeronautical and Astronautical Engineering
GOES-R & GeoXO Deputy Program Systems Engineer, NOAA
Daniel Gillies has carved out an impressive career spanning aerospace engineering and project and mission management.
Since 2023, he has served as the deputy program systems engineer for the NOAA GOES-R and GEOXO programs — a joint effort
with NASA to develop and operate the nation's current and next-generation geostationary weather satellites. Recently, he
was awarded funding through NOAA Joint Ventures to integrate new environmental sensing capabilities that will help in
collecting migratory bird data.
Early in his career, he held appointments with the Space Shuttle and International Space Station programs and with
Boeing on the CH-47 and 787 campaigns. As a mission manager at SpaceX, he led early activities in gaining NASA's trust
in Space X's reuse of Dragon components long before reuse became a near-daily occurrence. At Rocket Lab USA, he was the
technical lead for tens of millions of dollars in commercial and government contracts, and through his work on the NASA
SOFIA airborne telescope, he was one of the two mission directors aboard stratospheric flights. With Astrobotic
Technologies, he was the technical lead for the VIPER mission, a $200M+ effort to launch a NASA rover to the moon's
South Pole in the next year.
Thanks to his Purdue education, Gillies is able to appreciate the engineering elements of a project as well as all of
the other factors — design, manufacturing, inspections, operations, human, and project management. "I have used these to
apply a holistic approach to problem solving, which has led me to where I am today," he said.