Dr. Martin Lades, has an interdisciplinary physics Ph.D. with a dissertation on pattern recognition and neural networks from the Ruhr-Universitaet Bochum, Germany, and an M.S. in physics on applied optics from the Friedrich-Alexander Universitaet Erlangen, Germany. His research work includes pattern recognition research at LLNL and software development in bioinformatics. He has managed R&D, IT, and information security efforts and co-founded a VC funded tissue engineering startup running FDA trials. Martin joined the Space Elevator community 2004 attending the SE conference in D.C. He is currently working on optical design and control system questions for the 2008 Kansas City Space Pirates entry in Spaceward's Power Beaming competition. He was working with the same team in 2006 and 2007, for example contributing the KCSP mirror targeting device for 2007. Martin's passion is to coalesce the forces for Space Elevator development and support their communication infrastructure.