Borax half-marathon
Hi there. My name is Lubos Brieda. I was born in Slovakia and grew up in Banská Bystrica. I moved to the United States when I was 14. In 2005, I got my M.S. in Aerospace Engineering from Virginia Tech. As part of my graduate research, I wrote a computer code for simulating ion thruster plasma plumes and their impact on spacecraft contamination, Draco. You can read all the fun details in my thesis (8Mb). After college, I worked at the Air Force Research Lab at Edwards AFB, CA, where I continued to work on my code and used it to support a mission that flew the first US-built Hall thruster (type of a plasma thruster)! I worked at AFRL until 2008, when I left the west coast to join Dr. Keidar and MpNL at the George Washington University to start working on my doctorate. I completed the qualifiers in 2010 and defended my dissertation in 2012. While working on my degree, I also worked part-time at NASA Goddard where I specialized in contamination control analysis for the MMS, Exomars, and GOES-R missions. I have also started a company and a blog dedicated to plasma physics and computer simulations, particleincell.com. I also run a popular cooking website specializing in traditional Slovak cooking, slovakcooking.com. You can find additional details in my resume.
Few more things about me. Besides traveling, my biggest hobby is highpointing - trying to summit the highest point in each state. I am currently at 47. Only 3 left to go! Some of my travel highlights include a trip to India, a month-long journey on a train from Munich to Ulan-Batar on the tran-siberial railway, a backpacking trip through Slovak's mountains, and a trip to Colombia and to Costa Rica. I also enjoy running and biking. Couple years ago I also got into gardening, and ended up with radishes, onions, tomatoes, potatoes and strawberries. It was great since I basically just tilled the soil and planted bunch of various seeds. I am currently engaged to a pretty awesome Colombian girl named Sandra. We are getting married this September.
Pictures from this website can be used freely for a non-comercial purposes, given you give the proper credit, such as a link to the original page. Older photos were taken using Minolta Maxxum 5 with the Tamron XR-DI 28-300mm lens on Fuji Reala ISO100 film. Even older low resolution photos were scanned from prints using a standard flatbed scanner. Newer stuff was loaded directly from photo CDs. The recent stuff is from a pocket digital camera (Samsung and Canon Elph). And the really recent stuff is from Nikon D90 DSLR also with a Tamron lens. If you have any questions, feel free to shoot me an email using the form below:
Thanks for stopping by!