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Space flight participant, USA

DATE AND PLACE OF BIRTH:
September 10, 1948, Budapest Hungary. In 1966 he moved to Copenhagen, Denmark and in 1966 he left for the United States. In 1982 he acquired the U.S. citizenship.

EDUCATION AND RANKS:
In 1972 he graduated from the University of California at Berkeley and earned his B.S. in engineering and mathematics.
In 1976 he got Ph.D. in computer science from Stanford University.

SOCIAL ACTIVITIES:
From 1998 he is a member of the board of guardians of the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton.
In January 2004 he established the Charles Simonyi Fund for Arts and Sciences with a capital of 75 M doll.
He is a founder of the title of professor of social science at Oxford University.

TITLES:
In 1997 he was selected as a member of National Academy of Engineering, USA.
He is an Honorary Doctor from the University in Pecsi Tudomanyegyetem, Hungary, 2001 and the corresponding member of the Academy of Sciences of Hungary.

AWARDS:
He was decorated with the Service Order (Hungary) in 2006 and the Grand Cross - the Hungarian Republic Order in 2007.

HOBBY:
Collects modern art, is fond of classical music. He received a license as a pilot of multiengine aircraft, jets and helicopters. The flying time by the end of 2006 was more than 2,000 hours.

WORK EXPERIENCE:
His boyhood interest in space resulted in his selection as Hungary’s. Jr. Astronaut at age 13, for which he won a trip to Russia and met one of the first cosmonauts, Pavel Popovich.
When he went to a secondary school he earned additionally as a night watchman in the computer laboratory. He was keen on computers and programming. When he finished school he independently developed compiling programs.
In 1966-1968 he worked as a computer programmer in company A/A Regnecentralen in Copenhagen, Denmark, then he moved to the United States to study.
From 1972 to 1980 he worked at Xerox Palo Alto Research Center (PARC), where he created the first WYSIWYG (what-you-see-is-what-you-get) text editor, called Bravo, i.e. in the mode of full conformity of the screen display and printing.
From 1981 he worked in the Microsoft Corporation where he took part in development of Microsoft Excel, Multiplan, Word and other software applications.
From 1991 he worked as a senior specialist in architecture of the Advanced Technology branch of Microsoft Research (Redmond, Washington) where he was engaged in the following problem: Intentional Programming or IP.
In the Corporation he held posts of Director of application development, chief architect, leading engineer.
In August 2002 he left the Microsoft Corporation and together with Professor Gregor Kiczales established the Intentional Software Corporation.
In the summer of 2006 he passed medical examination at the Institute of Biomedical Problems (IBMP) and on August 8, 2006 at the meeting of the Chief Medical Board he got an allowance for the spaceflight training.
Since September 5, 2006 he started training at Yu.A. Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Center under the VC-12 program as the spaceflight participant.
He performed his first spaceflight on April 7-21, 2007 as a spaceflight participant, a member of the visiting crew of Increment-12, together with Phedor Yurchikhin and Oleg Kotov. On April 9,2007 the Soyuz TMA-10 spacecraft docked with the ISS and the crew began to perform a program of activities on the Station. The undocking of the Soyuz TMA-9 spacecraft from the ISS Increment-14 crew (Mikhail Tiurin and Michael Lopez-Alegria) which whom Simonyi returned to the Earth was on April 21, 2007 at 13.11 (Moscow time). The mission duration was 13 days, 19 hours 00 min 28 s.
In October 2008 by the joint decision of the medical-and-labor examination commission of IBMP and Yu.A. Gagarin CTC he was allowed for special training. On December 19, 2008 by decision of the Chief Medical Board with participation of IBMP and Yu.A. Gagarin CTC specialists Charles Simonyi was allowed for the crew training. Recommendations on observing the training and rest mode as well as a diet were given to him.
On January 11, 2009 he began training at Yu.A. Gagarin CTC.
Charles Simonyi passed training under the VC-16 visiting crew program as a spaceflight participant.

February 2009
Based on data of Yu.A. Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Center, site astronaut.ru