Issa Nesnas is the Group Supervisor for the Robotic Software Systems group and the Principal Investigator of the multi-institutional robotic software architecture (CLARAty). He has over 15 years of experience in robotic system and software design, sensor-based robotic control, and vision-guided manipulation.

Issa joined JPL in 1997 where he worked on planetary dexterous manipulation for rovers and landers. He developed algorithms for vision-based manipulation, sample acquisition, and instrument placement from rover platforms. He was the Cognizant engineer on CLARAty from 1999 to 2001. More recently, Issa has led several research tasks including rover-based visual tracking and the development of the Rocky 8 and Axel rovers. He also worked on the entry, descent, and landing for the Mars Science Laboratory mission.