Casey Hare is the Founder and Chief Technology Officer at Angstrom Designs. He holds Bachelor of Science degrees in Mechanical Engineering and Physics from the University of California, Santa Barbara and a Master of Science in Mechanical Engineering from Stanford University. With 25 years of experience, Casey is responsible for the invention of Angstrom’s patented programmable LED solar simulator (pLEDss), a revolutionary instrument that enables the characterization and calibration of multi-junction solar cells.

Among Casey’s aerospace contributions, he was the electrical subsystem and risk mitigation lead engineer for the NASA Crew Exploration Vehicle (CEV) solar array effort and the principal investigator of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) Mars Dust Removal program. He also was the technical director for the solar array effort for the successful Communications/Navigation Outage Forecasting System (C/NOFS) rebuild program. Casey has led over a dozen highly successful NASA Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) and Small Business Technology Transfer (STTR) programs.

Outside aerospace, Casey has worked on a wide variety of systems including computed radiography, chemical detection, nanoscale microscopy and automated automotive systems. He was an instructor of system design in the department of mechanical engineering at the University of California at Santa Barbara from 2004 through 2019. Casey currently holds six patents and has five pending applications. He serves as secretary of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA) Solar Cells and Solar Panels Committee on Science.