[2] Staats and his colleagues developed and built SAM as a hermetically sealed and pressurized research station and habitat analog for experiments related to living and working on the Moon and Mars.

[17][18] Terra Soft delivered the desktop OS Yellow Dog Linux and turn-key high performance computing (HPC) solutions for DoE, DoD, NASA, and higher education customers.

[22] Since 2017, he has been assisting Professor Amy Connolly and her colleagues at OSU and Cal Poly with a student project to develop evolutionary algorithms that evolve antenna designs for improved neutrino detection.

[23] Staats was a visiting scientist at Northwestern University for the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatory (LIGO) on the application of machine learning in detector characterization, noise mitigation, and transient (supernova), detection from late 2016 through mid 2020.

[10] At the University of Arizona, Biosphere 2, he and his colleagues developed SAM, a terrestrial analog and prototype for an off-world habitat used for training and research to benefit a future space-dwelling humanity.

[2] The SAM habitat analog tests the viability of mechanical and plant-based life support, studies of the microbiome of a sealed environment, food cultivation in a sealed greenhouse, tool use during extra-vehicular activities in a pressurized space suit, developing a high-fidelity computer model to aid in the design of future habitats, and many other tasks are necessary to get ready for life in space.

[27] In 2017, Staats returned to SAAO, producing a short film about the first detection of a fully multi-messenger event involving merging binary neutron stars.