Steven N. Rader Manager NASA Center of Excellence for Collaborative Innovation

Steve Rader currently serves as the  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.  

Mr. Rader has Mechanical Engineering degree from Rice University and has worked at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston, TX for 25 years. He started his career as an environmental control and life support systems flight controller for Space Station Operations.   Mr. Rader moved into flight software engineering where he developed delay tolerant communications software for the Space Shuttle and International Space Station as well as ground and flight command & control systems for the X-38 emergency crew return vehicle. Mr. Rader led the development of NASA’s Constellation Program’s interoperable Command, Control, Communications & Information (C3I) architecture. After the Constellation program, Mr. Rader supported the Mars design reference mission definition and a number of analog missions studying space mission operations and design. Mr. Rader began studying crowdsourcing communities in 2011 and joined the Center of Excellence for Collaborative Innovation as the deputy director in 2013. 

Official bio