F

Biographies of Committee Members and Staff

COMMITTEE

RALPH L. McNUTT, JR., Co-Chair, is a senior space physicist at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory (APL). Dr. McNutt is currently the project scientist and a co-investigator on the MESSENGER Discovery mission to Mercury, deputy principal investigator for the Plasma Instrument for Magnetic Sounding (PIMS) instrument on the Europa flyby mission (in development), a co-investigator of the Parker Solar Probe mission (in development), a co-investigator on the New Horizons mission to Pluto, and a co-investigator on the Voyager Plasma Science and Low-Energy Charged Particles experiments. He is also a member of the Ion Neutral Mass Spectrometer Team for the Cassini Orbiter spacecraft. He has worked on the physics of the magnetospheres of the outer planets, the outer heliosphere (including solar wind dynamics and properties of very low frequency radiation), Pluto’s atmosphere, pulsars, high-current electron beams, the physics of active experiments in the mesosphere/thermosphere (artificial aurora), and the solar neutrino problem. He received his Ph.D. in physics from Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Dr. McNutt has served as a member of several committees of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, including the Committee for the Review of the Next Decadal Mars Architecture, Committee on Priorities for Space Science Enabled by Nuclear Power and Propulsion: A Vision for Beyond 2015, Committee on the Assessment of Solar System Exploration, and Committee on New Opportunities in Solar System Exploration. He was the co-chair of the Committee on Radioisotope Power Supplies and a member of the Steering Committee on Planetary Science Decadal Survey: 2013-2022.

KATHRYN C. THORNTON, Co-Chair, is a professor at the University of Virginia in the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering. Dr. Thornton has extensive human spaceflight experience and served for 12 years as a NASA astronaut, flying on four space shuttle missions and performing extravehicular activities (i.e., spacewalks) on two of them. Dr. Thornton is currently on the board of directors of the Space Foundation and Astronaut Scholarship Foundation. She earned her Ph.D. in physics from the University of Virginia. She served as a member of the National Academies’ Aeronautics and Space Engineering Board (ASEB), the Committee for Technological Literacy, the Committee on Meeting the Workforce Needs for the National Vision for Space Exploration, and the Mitigation Panel for Defending Planet Earth: Near-Earth Objects Surveys and Hazard Mitigation Strategies, and as vice chair of the Committee on Science Opportunities Enabled by NASA’s Constellation System.

DAVID A. BEARDEN is general manager of the NASA and Civil Space Division at the Aerospace Corporation and is responsible for management and technical leadership of the company’s support to NASA headquarters and centers as well as civil space agencies. Dr. Bearden leads a multidisciplinary team of scientists and engineers that develops and sustains technical consulting business from civil agencies, commercial companies, and international space clients. Dr. Bearden has corporate responsibility for proposal preparation, project planning, and project delivery to NASA programs. Through training courses and daily involvement in the delivery of technical expertise to customers, Dr. Bearden has gained considerable expertise concerning the issues, risks, and potential solutions in many cutting-edge technical fields including technology insertion analysis balancing benefit, cost, and risk, as well as telecommunication and remote sensing. Dr. Bearden is a nationally recognized cost analysis expert with over 20 years of technical and management experience in the acquisition and development of advanced technology space systems. Since joining the Aerospace Corporation, Dr. Bearden led the Hubble Space Telescope Servicing Analysis of Alternatives, which earned him the 2006 Aerospace Corporation’s President’s Award. In summer 2009 he led the aerospace team that served as the technical arm of the Augustine Committee. Dr. Bearden has led various mission studies, including the Lunar Robotic Exploration Architecture and Mars Sample Return studies. Dr. Bearden was among the recipients of a NASA Group Achievement Award for Technical Support to Aquarius/SAC-D Standing Review Board. In 2015 Dr. Bearden was selected as an associate fellow of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA). Dr. Bearden was awarded a Ph.D. in aerospace engineering from the University of Southern California, Los Angeles. Dr. Bearden also led the aerospace team that supported the last round of the decadal surveys using the Aerospace-developed Cost and Technical Evaluation process. He has served on the National Academies’ Committee on Survey of Surveys: Lessons Learned from the Decadal Survey Process, Committee on Assessment of Impediments to Interagency Cooperation on Space and Earth Science Missions, and Committee on NASA’s Beyond Einstein Program: An Architecture for Implementation.

JOEL N. BREGMAN is the H.D. Curtis Professor of Astronomy at the University of Michigan. Prior to his time at the University of Michigan he was an associate scientist at the National Radio Astronomy Observatory. His research interests include high-energy astrophysics, gaseous components of the universe, intermediate-mass black holes, elliptical galaxies, and globular clusters. He earned his Ph.D. in astronomy and astrophysics from the University of California, Santa Cruz (Lick Observatory). He served on the National Academies’ Task Group on the Availability and Usefulness of NASA’s Space Mission Data.

ANNY CAZENAVE is director of Earth science at the International Space Sciences Institute, Bern, and senior scientist at the Laboratoire d’Études en Geophysique et Oceanographie Spatiale at Observatoire Midi-Pyrénées, Centre National d’Etudes Spatiales in Toulouse. Dr. Cazenave has extensive experience in using remote sensing data for a variety of applications in Earth science (geodesy, Earth rotation, gravity and internal Earth structure, sea level rise and climatic causes, land hydrology). She has long been involved in satellite altimetry missions—in particular, the TOPEX/Poseidon and Jason series. Dr. Cazenave was elected to the French Academy of Sciences and the National Academy of Sciences, and she was the recipient of the William Bowie Medal. Dr. Cazenave received her Ph.D. in geophysics from the University of Toulouse. She has served on the National Academies’ Committee on the Assessment of NASA’s Earth Science Programs and Committee on National Requirements for Precision Geodetic Infrastructure.

ANNE R. DOUGLASS is a senior scientist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC) with the Atmospheric Chemistry and Dynamics Laboratory. Dr. Douglass is the project scientist for Aura, the Earth Observing System (EOS) atmospheric chemistry mission. She was deputy project scientist for Aura and for the Upper Atmosphere Research Satellite (UARS). Her research uses atmospheric constituent observations along with models to understand and predict the evolution of stratospheric ozone and other species that are important to ozone and climate. She is co-lead for the Goddard Earth Observing System Chemistry Climate Model, a three-dimensional model that couples a general circulation model with a representation of relevant stratospheric and tropospheric photochemical processes. She is recipient of the Nordberg Award for Earth Sciences, a NASA Exceptional Scientific Achievement

Medal, and a NASA Outstanding Leadership Medal, and is a fellow of the American Meteorological Society and the American Geophysical Union. She earned her Ph.D. in physics from Iowa State University.

VICTORIA E. HAMILTON is a staff scientist and section manager at Southwest Research Institute (SwRI) in Boulder, Colorado, in the Department of Space Studies. Dr. Hamilton has extensive experience with laboratory spectroscopy and Mars data analysis as an affiliate of the Mars Global Surveyor Tropospheric Emission Spectrometer (TES) science team, as a participating scientist on the Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) mission, and as deputy principal investigator for the THEMIS instrument on the 2001 Mars Odyssey mission. She is a science team co-investigator and deputy instrument scientist on the OSIRIS-REx asteroid sample return mission launched in 2016, and a co-investigator and deputy instrument principal investigator on the Lucy Trojan asteroid survey mission. She has published on laboratory mineral and meteorite spectroscopy, numerical modeling of infrared spectra, Martian surface composition, Martian atmospheric aerosol composition, and surface thermophysical properties. Dr. Hamilton has built, operated, and managed a NASA-supported spectroscopy laboratory equipped with three spectrometers for measuring visible, near-infrared, and thermal infrared properties of rocks, minerals, and meteorites in reflectance and emission. She has received the NASA Group Achievement Award for the Mars Science Laboratory Science Office Development and Operations Team, 2001 Mars Odyssey Thermal Emission Imaging System Team, and Mars Global Surveyor Thermal Emission Spectrometer Team. She received her Ph.D. in geology from Arizona State University. She was a member of the National Academies’ Committee on Cost Growth in NASA Earth and Space Science Missions and Committee on NASA Science Mission Extensions.

MARC L. IMHOFF is a visiting research scientist with the University of Maryland Earth System Science Interdisciplinary Center, concentrating on the use of Earth observations, models, and tools for addressing sustainability and the human enterprise. He spent three decades as a principal scientific investigator, science team leader, and project scientist for satellite missions and programs at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC), where he focused on satellite observations of biogeochemical cycles and human dimensions of global environmental change. Dr. Imhoff led scientific research projects using data from Landsat, the space shuttle imaging radar, NASA’s Earth Observing System (EOS) satellites, and the Defense Meteorological Satellite Program (DMSP), addressing a broad range of land-cover measurements and quantitative estimates of human impacts. Dr. Imhoff pioneered the development of the DMSP low-light nighttime “city lights” imaging combined with other satellite data to study urbanization, urban heat islands, and impacts on life-critical functions of the biosphere. Dr. Imhoff was project scientist for the Earth System Science Pathfinder 3 and for the EOS-AM1 Flagship Earth Science Mission-Terra. After leaving NASA, Dr. Imhoff served as deputy director and interim director of Pacific Northwest National Laboratory’s Joint Global Change Research Institute, supporting the development of integrated assessment models for climate change and energy policy. Dr. Imhoff was a Sigma Xi Distinguished Lecturer and received both the Robert H. Goddard Exceptional Achievement Award for Science and NASA’s Outstanding Leadership Medal. Dr. Imhoff holds a B.S. in geography and an M.S. in agronomy from the Pennsylvania State University and a Ph.D. in biological sciences from Stanford University.

CHARLES D. NORTON is a program manager and principal technologist at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) at the California Institute of Technology. He is the engineering and science directorate formulation lead for small satellites at JPL. His research interests are small satellites for spaceborne technology validation, high-performance computing for Earth and space science modeling, and advanced information systems technologies. He has managed CubeSat flight projects and co-led a Keck Institute study, “Small Satellites: A Revolution in Space Science.” Prior to joining JPL, he was a National Research Council postdoctoral fellow. He is a recipient of numerous awards for new technology and innovation, including the JPL Lew Allen Award and the NASA Exceptional Service Medal, and is a member of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (senior level), AIAA, and the American Geophysical Union. He holds a B.S.E. from Princeton University and an M.S and a Ph.D. in computer science from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.

CAROL S. PATY is an associate professor at the Georgia Institute of Technology (GT) in the School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences. At GT Dr. Paty established and developed the planetary science program and helped launch the interdisciplinary Center for Space Technology and Research. Dr. Paty’s research is focused on understanding planetary magnetospheric dynamics and moon-magnetosphere interactions using a combination of computational simulations and data collected by various space-based instruments. She pioneered the application of multifluid plasma dynamic simulations to icy moons and outer-planet magnetospheres and the inclusion of plasma-neutral interactions in global simulations. Dr. Paty was a participating scientist on the Cassini mission to Saturn and is currently a co-investigator on the Plasma Environment Package for the European mission to Ganymede (Jupiter Icy Moon Explorer [JUICE]). She is also a co-investigator on both PIMS and the Radar for Europa Assessment and Sounding: Ocean to Near-Surface (REASON) instruments for NASA’s mission to Europa. Previously, Dr. Paty worked at SwRI in the Space Sciences and Engineering Division. She earned her Ph.D. in geophysics and space physics from the University of Washington.

MARC D. RAYMAN is a fellow of JPL, the highest technical position, recognized for “extraordinary technical contributions made over an extended period.” He is currently the mission director and chief engineer for NASA’s Dawn mission, which has orbited and explored Vesta and the dwarf planet Ceres. He held similar positions on Deep Space 1, the first deep-space mission to use solar electric propulsion and NASA’s first mission to return close-up images of the nucleus of a comet. His portfolio of work also includes optical interferometry missions for detecting planets around other stars, a Mars sample return mission, a Mars laser altimeter, the Spitzer Space Telescope, and the development of systems to use lasers instead of radios to communicate with interplanetary spacecraft. Dr. Rayman is the recipient of numerous NASA honors, including three Exceptional Achievement Medals and three Outstanding Leadership Medals. He received his Ph.D. in physics from the University of Colorado, Boulder. He previously served on the National Academies’ Planetary Science Decadal Survey Primitive Bodies Panel.

WILLIAM S. SMITH is vice president of ScienceWorks International. Previously, Dr. Smith served as president of the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy (AURA). AURA is a consortium of 46 major academic research institutions that promotes the advancement of astronomy and its related sciences. In this capacity Dr. Smith led in the advocacy and construction of major cutting-edge astronomical facilities and built strong relationships with a wide variety of public and private universities in the United States and in other countries such as Chile, Australia, Canada, Mexico, Spain, and Japan. He also served for 14 years as a key staff member of the Subcommittee on Space of the Committee on Science for the U.S. House of Representatives. He is a recipient of a NASA Exceptional Service Award. He earned his Ph.D. in chemistry from Texas A&M University. He has not previously served on a National Academies committee.

EDWARD L. WRIGHT is professor of physics and astronomy at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). At UCLA, Dr. Wright has been the data team leader on the Cosmic Background Explorer, a co-investigator on the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe, an interdisciplinary scientist on the Spitzer Space Telescope, and the principal investigator on the Wide-Field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE). Dr. Wright is well known for his Cosmology Tutorial website for the informed public and his web-based cosmology calculator for professional astronomers. He earned his Ph.D. in astronomy from Harvard University. He is a member of the National Academy of Sciences, and he has recently served on the National Academies’ Committee to Study Autonomy Research in Civil Aviation, Committee on an Assessment of the Astrophysics Focused Telescope Assets Mission Concepts, Committee on Achieving Science Goals with CubeSats, and Committee on the Review of Progress Toward the Decadal Survey Vision in New Worlds, New Horizons in Astronomy and Astrophysics.

GARY P. ZANK is director of the Center for Space Physics and Aeronomic Research at the University of Alabama, Huntsville. He is also an eminent scholar and a distinguished professor in the Department of Space Science and chair of the Department of Space Science. Previously, Dr. Zank was Chancellor’s Professor of Physics and Astronomy at the University of California, Riverside. His research interests cover space physics, astrophysics, and plasma physics. He earned a Ph.D. in applied mathematics from the University of Natal (Durban), South Africa.

He is a member of the National Academy of Sciences, and he has previously served on the National Academies’ Committee on Heliophysics Performance Assessment and the Space Studies Board (SSB).

STAFF

DWAYNE A. DAY, Study Director, a senior program officer for the ASEB, has a Ph.D. in political science from the George Washington University. Dr. Day joined the National Academies as a program officer for SSB. He served as an investigator for the Columbia Accident Investigation Board in 2003, was on the staff of the Congressional Budget Office, and worked for the Space Policy Institute at the George Washington University. He has also performed consulting for the Science and Technology Policy Institute of the Institute for Defense Analyses and for the U.S. Air Force. He is the author of Lightning Rod: A History of the Air Force Chief Scientist and editor of several books, including a history of the CORONA reconnaissance satellite program. He has held Guggenheim and Verville fellowships at the National Air and Space Museum and was an associate editor of the German spaceflight magazine Raumfahrt Concrete, in addition to writing for such publications as Novosti Kosmonavtiki (Russia), Spaceflight, Space Chronicle (United Kingdom), and the Washington Post. He has served as study director for over a dozen National Academies’ reports, including 3-D Printing in Space (2013), NASA’s Strategic Direction and the Need for a National Consensus (2012), Vision and Voyages for Planetary Science in the Decade 2013-2022 (2011), Preparing for the High Frontier—The Role and Training of NASA Astronauts in the Post-Space Shuttle Era (2011), Defending Planet Earth: Near-Earth Object Surveys and Hazard Mitigation Strategies (2010), Grading NASA’s Solar System Exploration Program: A Midterm Review (2008), and Opening New Frontiers in Space: Choices for the Next New Frontiers Announcement of Opportunity (2008).

MICHAEL MOLONEY is the director for Space and Aeronautics at the SSB and the ASEB of the National Academies. Since joining the ASEB/SSB, Dr. Moloney has overseen the production of more than 40 reports, including 4 decadal surveys—in astronomy and astrophysics, planetary science, life and microgravity science, and solar and space physics—a review of the goals and direction of the U.S. human exploration program, a prioritization of NASA space technology roadmaps, as well as reports on issues such as NASA’s strategic direction, orbital debris, the future of NASA’s astronaut corps, and NASA’s flight research program. Before joining the SSB and ASEB in 2010, Dr. Moloney was associate director of the Board on Physics and Astronomy and study director for the decadal survey for astronomy and astrophysics (Astro2010). Since joining the National Academies in 2001, Dr. Moloney has served as a study director at the National Materials Advisory Board; the Board on Manufacturing and Engineering Design; and the Center for Economic, Governance, and International Studies. Dr. Moloney has served as study director or senior staff for a series of reports on subject matters as varied as quantum physics, nanotechnology, cosmology, the operation of the nation’s helium reserve, new anti-counterfeiting technologies for currency, corrosion science, and nuclear fusion. In addition to his professional experience at the National Academies, Dr. Moloney has more than 7 years’ experience as a foreign-service officer for the Irish government—including serving at the Irish Embassy in Washington and the Irish Mission to the United Nations in New York. A physicist, Dr. Moloney did his Ph.D. work at Trinity College Dublin in Ireland. He received his undergraduate degree in experimental physics at University College Dublin, where he was awarded the Nevin Medal for Physics.

ANESIA WILKS joined the SSB as a program assistant in 2013. Ms. Wilks brings experience working in the National Academies conference management office as well as other administrative positions in the D.C. metropolitan area. She has a B.A. in psychology, magna cum laude, from Trinity University in Washington, D.C.