"My family [are my role models] -- my mother for her unbelievable spirit and energy; my sister for her artistic nature and strong character; my father for his joyfulness and outgoing personality. These are all traits I try to emulate."

Outside Interests:

Kobie loves to play and coach ice hockey. "I enjoy the challenges of working with and coaching kids. I also [played]...Pro Beach Hockey. I love almost all sports." He also enjoys eating at good restaurants and finding outstanding "hole-in-the-wall places". He is fond of the outdoors and likes to go camping, in addition to taking his motorcycle on trips into the California mountains. He also loves almost all movies, especially sci-fi, and has even "dabbled in acting a bit".

How he became interested in his profession:

Kobie's interest in engineering began when he was a child. "I was always building LEGO structures, rovers and vehicles and spacecraft, or things like that. I didn't know what they were, but they looked cool to me, and when we got Atari and a television...I took them apart to see what was going on in there."

Kobie focused on NASA at an early age. "I grew up in Nebraska...and you could really see the stars there. The first night I went out and realized that the white creamy stuff in the sky wasn't clouds, but the actual Milky Way, I got really interested in that, and started doing research on stars, and things like that. All [of this] culminated in me wanting to work as an engineer for NASA, building space vehicles."

What he likes about his field of work:

"I live to work. I don't work to live. So when I wake up I get to go, 'Wow, I get to go to work, and I get to test the rover today, or I'm going to get to throw a vehicle out of a helicopter, or I'm going to get to blow up something, or I'm going to get to design this thing that's going to end up on Europa and study the icy moon to see if there's life there, or I'm going to get to build a new vehicle that's never been thought of before.' I get to sit back in my office and create, and spend some time with some people I enjoy...and come up [with] new ideas of how we're going to explore the solar system. There's nowhere else in the world that you get that experience."