John Barber

John Barber has a B.S. from Washington State University and an M.S. from Cornell University in Mechanical Engineering, and over 30 years of experience in transportation and related technical fields. He began his career with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, first conducting wind tunnel research of hypersonic flow fields at the Langley Research Center. Here he was a co-inventor of a laser-based interferometer used in these studies. He was later at the Manned Spacecraft Center (now the Johnson Manned Spacecraft Center) in Houston, TX, where he conducted planning for future manned lunar and planetary expeditions and participated in the Apollo Lunar Landing Program. Mr. Barber has also developed a concept for a MagLev sled which will be introduced on this program. Mr. Barber became involved in transportation programs when, after leaving NASA near the end of the Apollo Program, he joined the U.S. Department of Transportation’s Transportation Systems Center in Cambridge, MA. Here he participated in a variety of studies and analyses of the application of new and emerging technologies to urban transportation, as well as feasibility, planning, environmental and operations analyses of conventional urban transit projects under consideration for funding by the United States government. He subsequently joined the U.S. Department of Transportation’s Urban Mass Transportation Administration (currently the Federal Transit Administration), where he was involved with both conventional transit technology projects and the agency’s research and development program. Here he was a participant in the agency’s magnetic levitation technology development project. Mr. Barber left the government to join private industry in the field of urban transportation system design and implementation. He has specialized in systems engineering for a variety of major urban transit projects, both in the United States and abroad, working as a member of leading industry design and construction management teams. In addition, he served as systems engineer for a European-based company seeking to commercialize a magnetic levitation system in the U.S. He also managed the preparation of project designs and proposals incorporating magnetic levitation technology, as a member of a major transit design firm working in conjunction with a leading Asian developer of magnetic levitation equipment.