David Heckman

David P. Heckman is a Telecommunications Engineer in the Telecommunication Architectures group at JPL. He performs analysis and software application development pertinent to spacecraft tracking and network management, including spacecraft trajectory propagation and analysis, trajectory design, general astrodynamics, network geometries and motion modeling, and network loading and coverage analysis. He designed, developed, and deployed both the Orbital Trajectory Inference Engine (OTIE) and the Beam Intercept Planning System (BIPS) applications for the Interplanetary Network Directorate at JPL; both are currently serving in mission modeling, future network loading assessments, and in developing future plans for the evolution of the Deep Space Network. His research interests include network optimization, event planning and sequencing problems, stochastic optimization, probability, computational statistics, Monte Carlo algorithms and random generators, Bayesian probability and inference applications, and numerical analysis. He holds B.S. and M.A. degrees in mathematics from the University of California at Irvine and California State University Fullerton, respectively, and earned his Ph.D. in mathematics from Claremont Graduate University in 2014.