Steven Rader

Steve Rader currently serves as the Deputy Manager of NASA’s Center of Excellence for Collaborative Innovation (CoECI), which is working to infuse challenge and crowdsourcing innovation approaches at NASA and across the federal government. CoECI focuses on the study and use of curated, crowd-sourcing communities that utilize prize and challenge-based methods to deliver innovative solutions for NASA and the US government.

Steve is one of 20 Challenge Mentors for U.S. Government Services Administration’s (GSA) Prizes and Challenges government-wide community of practice and has worked with various projects and organizations to develop and execute over 70 different challenges. He speaks regularly about NASA’s work in crowd-based challenges both publically and internally to the NASA workforce to promote the use of open innovation tools.

Steve has a Mechanical Engineering degree from Rice University and has worked at NASA’s Johnson Space Center for over 25 years. Prior to joining the CoECI, Steve worked in mission operations, flight software development for the Space Shuttle and International Space Station, command and control systems development for the X-38, and lead the Command, Control, Communications, & Information (C3I) architecture definition for the Constellation Program.