Alaska Satellite Facility hires three new software engineers

February 24, 2021

The Alaska Satellite Facility, part of the Geophysical Institute at the University of Alaska Fairbanks, has recently hired three full time junior software developers as it continues to expand its services to researchers worldwide. All three employees — Kim Fairbanks, McKade Sorensen and Alex Lewandowski — were previous interns at ASF, where they applied a range of skills they’d acquired while studying computer science at the UAF as undergraduates.

The ASF has a dedicated staff of about 70 employees who handle more data than any other department and research group within the Geophysical Institute. Through a system of several large antennas spread across the UAF campus, the facility is continually downloading and processing data from a menagerie of orbiting satellites.

Researchers around the world can freely access this data, using it to study any number of Earth processes such as sea ice dynamics, erupting volcanoes and ecosystem changes.

The new junior software developers will be working on a range of projects focused on making ASF data easier for researchers to access and analyze.

NASA recently renewed its contract with the Alaska Satellite Facility, providing over $28 million in funding over the next five years. As ASF continues to expand its operations and invest funding in development, it is constantly creating new local employment opportunities with a strong focus on engineering and software development.

Kim Fairbanks

Kim Fairbanks obtained an associate degree and initially intended to start a career in the oil and gas industry. But with the 2014 economic collapse, she decided to try her hand at computer coding.

“I was told you need to be an expert at math and have been coding all your life, but I quickly found out that wasn’t true, because I started coding right after my associate’s,” she said.

Fairbanks has worked on a number of projects at ASF focused on expanding the accessibility of remote sensing data and is currently a front-end developer for ASF’s data search engine.

McKade Sorensen

McKade Sorensen is finishing a NASA internship in which he works with a team at the Goddard Space Flight Center on cloud server development while simultaneously starting his new career at ASF. He’s also completing a dual bachelor’s/master’s degree at UAF.

“Time management has been the key to handling my workload,” said Sorensen, who’s taking fewer courses this year to better allocate time to studying and managing the various projects he works on.

At ASF, he’s working on developing code to make the process of downloading and archiving data more efficient.

Alex Lewandowski

Alex Lewandowski took a somewhat unconventional route through his academic career. He worked for over 15 years as a gold and silversmith and spent time working from home afterward when he started a family.

“When the kids were old enough to go off to school, I suddenly had more time,” he said. “So, I decided to shake things up by pursuing my growing interest in computer science and enrolled at UAF as a CS major.”

He’s now the lead front-end developer on ASF’s OpenSARlab, a project aimed at bringing together all the tools needed for researchers to utilize the remote sensing data offered through the facility.