Mr. Patrick H. Stakem has been fascinated by the space program since the Vanguard launches in 1957. He received a Bachelors degree in Electrical Engineering from Carnegie-Mellon University, and Masters Degrees in Physics and Computer Science from the Johns Hopkins University. At Carnegie, he worked with a group of undergraduate students to re-assemble, modify, and operate a surplus missile guidance computer, which was later donated to the Smithsonian. He was brought up in the mainframe era, and was taught to never trust a computer you could lift.

He began his career in Aerospace with Fairchild Industries on the ATS-6 (Applications Technology Satellite-6) program, a communication satellite that developed much of the technology for the TDRSS (Tracking and Data Relay Satellite System). He followed the ATS-6 Program through its operational phase, and worked on other projects at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center including the Hubble Space Telescope, the International Ultraviolet Explorer (IUE), the Solar Maximum Mission (SMM), some of the Landsat missions, and Shuttle. He was posted to NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory for Mars-Jupiter-Saturn (MJS-77), which later became the Voyager mission, and which is still operating and returning data from outside the solar system at this writing. He initiated and lead the international Flight Linux Project for NASA's Earth Sciences Technology Office. He is the recipient of the Shuttle Program Manager's Commendation Award, and has completed 42 NASA Certification courses. He has two NASA Group Achievement Awards, and the Apollo-Soyuz Test Program Award.

Now he supports International collaborative open-source projects, and STEM Programs.