Michael Starch has been a software engineer at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory for over a decade. In that time he has designed and built cloud-scale data processing systems, engineered flight control software, and advocated open source software development. Most recently he was the Mars Helicopter Downlink and Tools lead for Ingenuity's first powered flight on another planet. He also functions as the cognizant engineer and community manager for the open source F′ embedded systems framework used on a number of spacecraft including Ingenuity itself. Underpinning all this is a love of automation and a healthy dose of Python.

Michael graduated with a Bachelors in Computer Engineering from the University of Michigan College of Engineering in Ann Arbor, Michigan. In his free time, Michael mentors students at a local high school, helps organize local technical organizations, and loves to talk anything tech.