Mark Leon (1962 - 2018) was a former civil servant with NASA Ames Research Center. His primary work was in education and communication systems.

Early life

Mark Leon grew up in a rather rough East San Jose neighborhood, and graduated from

James Lick High School James Lick High School is a public high school in San Jose, California, US, located in the Alum Rock district of East San Jose. The school is part of the East Side Union High School District. History James Lick High School opened in 1950 at ...

in 1980. He originally began taking a slightly more academic route to life when he began hiding in the library from other high school students who were attempting to beat him up. He also attended San Jose State University and won a silver medal in the 1985 Collegiate National

Judo is an unarmed gendai budō, modern Japanese martial art, Olympic sport (since 1964), and the most prominent form of jacket wrestling competed internationally.『日本大百科全書』電子版【柔道】(CD-ROM version of Encyclopedia Nipponi ...

Championships. He received his bachelor's degree in electrical engineering.

Communications work

In the 1980s Leon was instrumental in establishing trans-Atlantic communication between American, French and English space agencies. In the 1990s he completed the first audio/video link to Antarctica. This was thought to be impossible at the time.

Affiliation with FIRST Robotics

For many years Mark Leon worked as a Master of Ceremonies in many

FIRST robotics competition FIRST Robotics Competition (FRC) is an international high school robotics competition. Each year, teams of high school students, coaches, and mentors work during a six-week period to build robots capable of competing in that year's game that weig ...

events both on and off season. He was particularly well known for wearing a bright blue NASA coat and dying his hair the same color for these events and coined the phrase "Do the math, Save the world". He was widely cited as an inspiration to many high school students to build robots and impacted many career choices. He is also credited with the existence of a large number of FRC teams.

Robotics Alliance Project

Beginning in 1998 Mark moved to the Robotics Alliance Project at NASA Ames. This department works primarily in educational and outreach projects and was estimated in 2006 to have reached more than 100,000 middle and high school students. He also ran the Ames Robotics Academy every summer.NASA Ames Robotics Academy
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References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Leon, Mark San Jose State University alumni NASA people Networks American roboticists American male judoka For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology