Kurt Mandl ran the terraforming station on Velara III and kept working even though his team suspected the planet harboured life.
Kurt Mandl was the director of the terraforming project on Velara III in Home Soil. When the Enterprise checked on the colony, which was behind schedule, Troi sensed he was hiding something, and soon one of his team was killed by a laser drill that seemed to turn on him.
Picard learned that Mandl's team had already encountered tiny crystals on the planet that might be alive, but Mandl had pressed on with the project anyway. The crystals proved to be an intelligent inorganic life form, the microbrains, and Velara III was placed under quarantine. Walter Gotell played him.