For a good portion of his career, Bobby Braun has wrestled with the technological challenges of putting spacecraft on Mars. His landing in Boulder, where he's taking over as dean of the University of Colorado’s College of Engineering and Applied Science, proved a long-awaited but less complicated re-entry.
Continuing a career that includes a recent turn as NASA’s chief technologist, the 51-year-old Braun brings decades of research, management and collaboration in both academia and the public sector to a school he sees at a nexus of research and industry. After he left NASA, he had several inquiries from schools looking to capitalize on his experience.
CU simply made sense.