C
Biographical Information for Committee Members and Staff
STEVEN R. BOHLEN, Chair, is president of Joint Oceanographic Institutions (JOI), a consortium of 29 premier oceanographic research institutions that serves the U.S. scientific community through management of large-scale, global research programs in marine geology, geophysics, and oceanography. Dr. Bohlen graduated from Dartmouth College in 1974 and received a Ph.D. in geochemistry from the University of Michigan in 1979. After 3 years as a postdoctoral research fellow at UCLA, he joined the faculty at the State University of New York at Stony Brook, where he was an assistant and then tenured associate professor in the Department of Earth and Space Sciences. His research focused on the chemical and physical evolution of the Earth’s continental lithosphere. In 1988, Dr. Bohlen accepted a research position with the U.S. Geological Survey in Menlo Park, California, and held a joint appointment at Stanford University as a consulting professor. In 1995 he became the associate chief geologist for science at the U.S. Geological Survey in Reston, Virginia, where he was responsible for the health and direction of the research programs of the Geologic Division, including earthquake, volcano, and landslide hazard reduction programs; the global seismographic network; energy and mineral resource assessment; climate change; ecosystems; and coastal and marine geology programs.
ROGER G. BARRY is professor of geography and director of the World Data Center for Glaciology at the Boulder/National Snow and Ice Data Center. He is also on the staff of the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences at the University of Colorado. His major interests are in arctic climate, cryosphere–climate interactions, mountain climate, and climatic change. Dr. Barry is a fellow of the American Geophysical Union and a foreign member of the Russian Academy of Natural Sciences. Dr. Barry has held visiting appointments at several international academic institutions, including the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia, U.K.; the Institute of Astronomy and Geophysics at the University of Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium; the Department of Geography, University of Canterbury, Christchurch, New Zealand; and the Department of Biogeography and Geomorphology, Australian National University, Canberra. His NRC service includes membership of the Committee on Climate Data Records from Operational Satellites: Development of a NOAA Satellite Data Utilization
Plan, the Polar Research Board (1987-1991), and the Committee on the Human Dimensions of Global Change (1989-1991). He was also a member of the U.S. delegation to the sixth International Conference on Permafrost in Beijing, China (1993).
STEPHEN S. HOLT is professor of physics at the Franklin W. Olin College of Engineering and professor and director of science at Babson College. He was previously the director of space sciences at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center. His primary research discipline is high-energy astrophysics. He has been selected to be principal investigator and/or project scientist on eight NASA scientific spacecraft, including joint missions with Germany, Japan, Russia, and the United Kingdom. Dr. Holt has received several significant awards, including the NASA Medal for Exceptional Scientific Achievement on two separate occasions, the NASA Medal for Outstanding Leadership, the NASA Medal for Distinguished Service (NASA’s highest award), the John C. Lindsay Memorial Award for Outstanding Science, and the COSPAR Medal for International Scientific Cooperation. He is a fellow of both the American Physical Society and the American Association for the Advancement of Science and has been elected to chair a number of scientific societies, including the High Energy Astrophysics Division of the American Astronomical Society, the Astrophysics Division of the American Physical Society, and the Astrophysics Commission of COSPAR. Dr. Holt has served on numerous national and international committees, including the NRC Committee on Space Astronomy and Astrophysics.
RICHARD A. McCRAY is the George Gamow Distinguished Professor of Astrophysics in the Joint Institute for Laboratory Astrophysics at the University of Colorado at Boulder. He has held visiting positions at the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center (1983), Beijing University and Nanjing University (1987), the Space Telescope Science Institute (1988), Columbia University (1990), and the University of California at Berkeley (1997). Dr. McCray’s research is in the theory of the dynamics of interstellar gas, the theory of cosmic x-ray sources, and, most recently, the theory of Supernova 1987A. He is widely regarded as the world leader in theoretical x-ray astronomy. Dr. McCray is a member of the National Academy of Sciences and has extensive NRC experience, most notably from his service on the Space Studies Board (2000-2002) and as co-chair of the Committee on Astronomy and Astrophysics (2000-2002).
ALEXANDER S. SZALAY is the Alumni Centennial Professor in the Department of Physics and Astronomy at Johns Hopkins University. His research interests include the multicolor properties of galaxies; galaxy evolution; the large-scale power spectrum of fluctuations; gravitational lensing; pattern recognition and classification problems; and large, scalable databases. He served on the NRC Panel on Theory and Computation in Astronomy and Astrophysics (1998-2001) and is currently a member of the U.S. National Committee for CODATA. Dr. Szalay also played a leading role in the development of the National Virtual Observatory, an international Web portal allowing astronomers to tap into and search multiple astronomy databases.
PAULA SZKODY is a professor of astronomy at the University of Washington. She is widely known for her work with dwarf novae and magnetic cataclysmic variables (CVs). As a participant in the Sloan Digital Sky Survey, she and her colleagues are currently finding the faintest, lowest mass transfer CVs. Dr. Szkody uses a multiwavelength approach to observational studies of the CVs. She is an active user of the Hubble Space Telescope, Chandra, FUSE, and XMM–Newton satellites as well as APO and ground-based optical facilities around the world. She is a fellow of the AAAS, has served as president of the
International Astronomical Union’s Commission 42 on Close Binaries and as a scientific editor of the Astrophysical Journal, and is currently editor of Publications of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific. Dr. Szkody served on the NRC Task Group on Space Astronomy and Astrophysics (1996-1997).
PAUL VANDEN BOUT is a senior scientist at the National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO). He served as director of the NRAO from 1985 to 2002 and as interim director of the Joint ALMA (Atacama Large Millimeter Array) Office from 2002 to 2003. Before joining the NRAO in 1985, Dr. Vanden Bout was a faculty member at the University of Texas, Austin, where he was head of the millimeter astronomy group in the Department of Astronomy. Prior to that, he was a postdoctoral fellow and faculty member in the Physics Department at Columbia University, where he worked in x-ray astronomy. His current research interest is spectroscopy of star-forming molecular clouds, particularly in distant galaxies. He is a member of the American Astronomical Society, the International Astronomical Union, and the International Radio Science Union and a fellow of the American Physical Society and the American Association for the Advancement of Science. He served as a member of the NRC Committee on Space Astronomy and Astrophysics (1978-1981).
Staff
PAMELA L. WHITNEY, study director (through January 2007), was a senior program officer at the Space Studies Board, where she directed studies and workshops on international cooperation in space, Earth remote sensing, Mars planetary protection, and space policy, among other space technology and research topics. Ms. Whitney also served as the executive secretary of the U.S. national committee to the Committee on Space Research (COSPAR) of the International Council for Science (ICSU). Previously, she held positions as an analyst at the aerospace consulting firm CSP Associates, Inc., and as a researcher and writer for Time-Life Books, Inc. Ms. Whitney was president of Freelance Unlimited and conducted work with the National Geographic Society, the World Bank, and the U.S. Congress’s Office of Technology Assessment. Ms. Whitney holds an A.B. in economics from Smith College and an M.A. in international communication from American University. She is a member of Women in Aerospace and a corresponding member of the International Academy of Astronautics.
BRIAN D. DEWHURST, study director (after January 2007), joined the National Research Council in 2001 and is a senior program associate with the Board on Physics and Astronomy. He is the staff officer and study director for a variety of NRC activities, including the Committee on Astronomy and Astrophysics and the Committee on Radio Frequencies, and he performs other astronomy-oriented tasks. He received a B.A. in astronomy and history from the University of Virginia in 2000 and an M.A in science, technology, and public policy from the George Washington University in 2002. He joined the staff of the Space Studies Board as a research assistant in 2001 and transferred to his current position with the Board on Physics and Astronomy in 2002.
CARMELA J. CHAMBERLAIN has worked for the National Academies since 1974. She started as a senior project assistant at the Institute for Laboratory Animals for Research, which is now a board in the Division on Earth and Life Sciences, where she worked for 2 years, then transferred to the Space Science Board, which is now the Space Studies Board (SSB). She is now a program associate with the SSB.
CATHERINE A. GRUBER is an assistant editor with the Space Studies Board (SSB). She joined the SSB as a senior program assistant in 1995. Ms. Gruber first came to the NRC in 1988 as a senior secretary for the Computer Science and Telecommunications Board and has also worked as an outreach assistant for the National Academy of Sciences-Smithsonian Institution’s National Science Resources Center. She was a research assistant (chemist) in the National Institute of Mental Health’s Laboratory of Cell Biology for 2 years. She has a B.A. in natural science from St. Mary’s College of Maryland.
