NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center

Dr. Jonathan Kuhn is currently the structural analysis team lead for the James Web Space Telescope (JWST) Integrated Science Instrument Module (ISIM) at the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC). He has over 14 years of experience using finite element analysis to solve problems spanning a broad range of applications in transportation, telecommunications, aerospace, and academic research. While at NASA/GSFC he has provided engineering support to flight project and developmental efforts, including the New Millenium Program Earth Observing-1 (EO-1), Composite Building Blocks, Demonstrator Unit for Low Order Cryogenic Etalon (DULCE), Developmental Cryogenic Active Telescope Testbed (DCATT), Tophat, Constellation X, and JWST. He supported numerous projects in the area of Micro-ElectroMechanical Systems (MEMS), leading efforts to establish multi-disciplinary modeling and test methods for the development of MEMS devices at NASA/GSFC. While employed in the private sector he gained additional experience in a gamut of mechanical design, testing, procurement, systems engineering, and project management. He has authored or co-authored over 15 technical publications including an applied finite element analysis textbook. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Maryland, Baltimore County in 1998 in Mechanical Engineering with emphasis in engineering mechanics, composite and ceramic materials, applied mathematics, and computational engineering. While in graduate school he helped develop DENDRO, a general-purpose research finite element analysis software package.