Our Instructors
Michael Wessel, PhD
Dr. Wessel holds a master’s degree in computer science from the University of Hamburg, Germany, and a minor in Physics from the same university, as well as a PhD in Computer Science from the Technical University of Hamburg (TUHH). By now, he has more than 40 years of experience with electronics and computers, and ~ 25 years of professional experience as a computer scientist.
His journey into electronics started at the age of 11 with Busch Electronics kits. These are similar to the well-known Radio Shack “Science Fair Kits” in the US. He then got into computing at the age of 13. His first computer was a 4bit Educational Single Board Computer, the Busch Microtronic 2090, that could only be programmed in Machine Code. Later, he cut his teeth in BASIC, Turbo Pascal and Z80 assembler programming on the Amstrad CPC, followed by the Amiga 500 in 1987.
Michael (this is his preferred salutation) has been an teaching assistant / lab assistant / computer science instructor for many years both at the University of Hamburg, and at the Technical University of Hamburg. He thought diverse classes ranging from basics of computer science programming in Scheme, Common Lisp, Prolog, Java, to classes on image processing, databases, and Artificial Intelligence.
Michael got his first Raspberry Pi soon after the first RPi 1 came out – in April 2012. Since 2014, he is also an active Arduino user, and has published many open source projects. Check out his projects page on Hackaday.
Dr. Wessel has developed the content and is the main instructor of Palo Alto Coding.
Alexander M. Fester, GUNN Highschool Student
Alexander Fester is our teaching and lab assistant. He is participating in the class room and instructs and assists students that get stuck. Alex has an in-depth understanding of the course content, knows what the students know, and – most importantly – knows what they don’t know, and is hence our main insight into student affairs, and interface to students.
Alex has a passion for aviation, model rockets, and robotics. For his second elementary school science fair project he used a Raspberry Pi together with a waterproof ultrasonic sensor to measure the speed of sound in saline water with different salt-level concentrations. He also has experience in Arduino programming, and created a Colorduino-based animated Christmas ornament for his mom at the age of 14.
Alex earned hands-on robotics engineering experience in the BotBall robotics programs, as well as multiple self-founded and organized VEX EDR neighborhood robotics teams, which competed successfully in many robotics tournaments. Alex has programmed in Python, Java, and RobotC, and was the head of drive train engineering in his VEX EDR robotics teams.
Together with fellow GUNN students, he co-founded the Essential Heroes campaign and, during the height of the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic, used a set of 6 NOKIA-donated 3D printers to design, 3d print, and distribute hundreds of protection masks to field workers and underrepresented minorities. He was the head of the 3d printing and production team, and hence responsible for overseeing the production, the distribution, installation and maintenance of the numerous 3d printers, 3d design, quality control, etc.
Alex is currently a member of the GUNN Robotics Team (GRT), and a Senior, preparing his college applications. His plan is to major in Aeronautical Engineering. Ad Astra, Alex!