ASCE has honored Brent Sherwood, A.M.ASCE, with the 2020 Columbia Medal for demonstrated leadership and dedication to space exploration, space architecture and in situ resource utilization.
Sherwood has made a lasting impact on space exploration and continues to make leaps toward human settlement of the moon and eventual lunar mining ventures. Born in the same year as NASA, he has 32 years of professional experience in the civil and commercial space industry. Since childhood he has aimed to build cities on the Moon.
At the Boeing Company for 17 years, he led teams in concept engineering for human planetary exploration, space station manufacturing engineering, Sea Launch program development, and commercial and space science business development. Then, at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory for 14 years, he consolidated JPL’s mission formulation and proposal methods into the JPL Innovation Foundry, and was program manager for solar system science mission formulation.
He is currently vice president, Advanced Development Programs for Blue Origin. He has served on NASA’s Human Exploration Framework Team and on the board of the American Astronautical Society. He is also a senior member of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics, where he has been chair of the Space Architecture Technical Committee for the May 2018–April 2020 term.
Sherwood has published and presented over 50 papers on the exploration, development and settlement of space, and coedited the AIAA book “Out of This World: The New Field of Space Architecture.”
The Columbia Medal is granted for sustained outstanding contribution to the advancement of aerospace engineering, sciences and technology in at least one of the following areas: teaching, research, design, development, planning, construction, management or direct participation in space-borne missions and/or ground-support activities.
