D
Biographies of Committee Members and Staff
FRANCES BAGENAL (Chair) is a professor in the Department of Astrophysical and Planetary Sciences and the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics at the University of Colorado at Boulder. The main theme of her research has been the synthesis of data analysis and theory in the study of space plasmas, especially in the fields of planetary magnetospheres and, more recently, the solar corona. Dr. Bagenal is a co-investigator on the Voyager Plasma Science (PLS) experiment and has worked with colleagues at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in analyzing plasma data obtained in the magnetospheres of Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune. She is an interdisciplinary scientist on the Galileo project, specializing in a study of the Io plasma torus in the magnetosphere of Jupiter using both in situ plasma measurements and spectroscopic remote sensing observations. She has been a member of the NRC Space Studies Board, the Committee on Planetary and Lunar Exploration, and the Committee on International Space Programs. She also served as a member of the Solar and Space Physics Survey Panel on Education and Society.
CLAUDIA J. ALEXANDER is a space plasma physicist at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. She does research on comets and on the exosphere of Jupiter’s moon Ganymede. She serves as both the project scientist and the project manager of the NASA contribution to the International Rosetta Mission, and she has recently served as the project manager of the Galileo Mission (until its demise). She began her research career with a study of the thermal history of Ganymede while an undergraduate at the University of California, Berkeley. She continued research at the University of California, Los Angeles on the solar wind and the solar wind interaction with Venus. She completed a Ph.D. in space plasma physics (gas kinetic theory) at the University of Michigan in 1993, where she wrote a numerical model of the process of expansion of gases from a comet nucleus. Dr. Alexander also has community interests. She contributes to a NASA sponsored, Internet-based, public science learning tool entitled “Windows to the Universe.”
JAMES L. BURCH is vice president of the Southwest Research Institute Instrumentation and Space Research Division. As an investigator in a number of spaceflight experiments, Dr. Burch has achieved a prominent reputation in the fields of upper-atmosphere geophysics and space plasma physics. In 1996 he was selected as the principal investigator for the NASA Imager for Magnetopause-to-Aurora Global Exploration investigation, which provided the first-ever global images of key regions of Earth’s magnetosphere as they respond to variations in the solar wind. Dr. Burch was elected a fellow of the American Geophysical Union. He has served as chair of the SSB Committee on Solar and Space
Physics and has been a member of the Space Studies Board. He also served on the ad hoc committee that produced the 2004 NRC workshop report on the exploration of the outer heliosphere.
ANTHONY CHAN is an associate professor in the Department of Physics and Astronomy and a member of the Rice Space Institute at Rice University. His area of expertise is in theoretical plasma physics with an emphasis on space and astrophysical plasmas. Dr. Chan’s research involves the study of sources, losses, and acceleration mechanisms of relativistic electrons in Earth’s magnetosphere as part of the National Space Weather Program and the NSF Geospace Environment Modeling (GEM) program. He is also working in collaboration with NASA astronaut Franklin Chang-Diaz and his team in the Advanced Space Propulsion Laboratory at the Johnson Space Center to develop plasma rocket technology for NASA’s interplanetary missions.
JAMES F. DRAKE is a professor in the Department of Physics and the Institute for Physical Science and Technology at the University of Maryland. His work is currently focused on magnetic reconnection with space physics applications and turbulence and transport with applications to the magnetic fusion program. Dr. Drake is a fellow of the American Physical Society and was the recipient of a Humboldt Senior Scientist Research Award. He is currently a member of the SSB Committee on Solar and Space Physics and was a member of the ad hoc committee that produced the 2004 NRC workshop report on exploration of the outer heliosphere.
JOHN C. FOSTER is a group leader with the Atmospheric Sciences Group at the Millstone Hill Observatory, and he is associate director of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Haystack Observatory, where he is a principal research scientist. Dr. Foster’s research interests are in the physics of the magnetosphere, ionosphere, and thermosphere, especially magnetosphere/ionosphere/atmosphere coupling, incoherent scatter radar, plasma waves and instabilities, and ionospheric convection electric fields, and cleft and high-latitude phenomena. Dr. Foster previously served as a member of the NRC U.S. National Committee for the International Union of Radio Science (ex officio, 1999 to 2002), the SSB Committee on Solar and Space Physics (2001 to 2002), and the BASC Committee on Solar-Terrestrial Research (1988 to 1991).
STEPHEN A. FUSELIER, a researcher at Lockheed Martin Advanced Technology Center, has been involved with the development of the Imager for Magnetopause-to-Aurora Global Exploration (IMAGE) spacecraft since its inception. He is currently a co-investigator on two instruments onboard IMAGE: the Far Ultraviolet (FUV) imager and the Low Energy Neutral Atom (LENA) imager. He is also the lead U.S. investigator on the Rosetta Orbiter Spectrometer for Ion and Neutral Analysis (ROSINA) on the joint European Space Agency/NASA ROSETTA mission. Dr. Fuselier is a fellow of the American Geophysical Union (AGU) and was the 1995 recipient of the AGU James B. Macelwane award.
SARAH GIBSON is a scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research’s High Altitude Observatory. Her interests are in the role of the large-scale solar coronal magnetic field in both stable and dynamic coronal structures, and in the connections between the multiple heights and scales on which these structures are observed. Her current research focus is on coronal mass ejections—the eruptions of large amounts of matter from the Sun’s outer atmosphere that can affect sensitive electronics systems on and orbiting Earth. Her recent work has focused on sigmoidal magnetic fields.
RODERICK A. HEELIS is a professor and the director of the William B. Hanson Center for Space Sciences at the University of Texas at Dallas. His research specialization covers planetary atmospheres, ionospheres, and magnetospheres and the physical phenomena coupling these regions. He has served on the NASA Sun-Earth Connections Advisory Subcommittee, the NRC Solar and Space Physics Survey Committee (2001 to 2003), and the Committee on Solar and Space Physics (1985 to 1987).
CRAIG KLETZING is an associate professor in the Department of Physics and Astronomy at the University of Iowa. His research interests lie in the area of experimental space plasma physics, especially particle acceleration processes in the auroral zone, and he has been a principal or co-investigator on several sounding rocket and satellite projects. He is currently serving on the NRC ad hoc committee to organize and conduct a workshop on distributed arrays of small instruments for research and monitoring
in solar-terrestrial physics. He has also served on the NRC’s Committee on Solar and Space Physics, the Solar and Space Physics Survey Panel on Atmosphere-Ionosphere-Magnetosphere Interactions, and the ad hoc committee that produced the 2004 NRC workshop report on the exploration of the outer heliosphere.
LOUIS J. LANZEROTTI is distinguished research professor and a member of the Center for Solar-Terrestrial Research at the New Jersey Institute of Technology, and he is also a consulting physicist to Bell Laboratories-Lucent Technologies, Murray Hill. He has contributed to research that includes studies of space plasmas and geophysics, and also engineering problems related to the impact of space processes on terrestrial technologies, as well as those used in space. He is the principal investigator for the Heliosphere Instrument for Spectra, Composition and Anisotropy at Low Energies on the Ulysses spacecraft. The American Geophysical Union (AGU) named Dr. Lanzerotti in February of 2003 to be editor of Space Weather: The International Journal of Research and Applications. Dr. Lanzerotti is a fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, the American Physical Society, the American Geophysical Union, the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics, and the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and a member of the National Academy of Engineering and the International Academy of Astronautics. He has received the NASA Distinguished Scientific Achievement Medal and the NASA Distinguished Public Service Medal. He served as the chair of the NRC Decadal Survey Committee on Solar and Space Physics, and he is chair of the NRC committee that is investigating the potential for extending the life of the Hubble Space Telescope.
GANG LU is a scientist in the Terrestrial Impacts of Solar Output section of the High Altitude Observatory at the National Center for Atmospheric Research. Her primary research covers high-latitude ionospheric electrodynamics and ionosphere-magnetosphere interactions. Dr. Lu serves as the scientific discipline representative to the Scientific Committee on Solar-Terrestrial Physics (SCOSTEP). She is a member of NSF’s Geospace Environment Modeling (GEM) Steering Committee and a member of the Auroral Plasma Physics Working Group at the International Space Science Institute. She is the associate editor for the Journal of Geophysical Research.
BARRY H. MAUK is a physicist and section supervisor in the Applied Physics Laboratory at Johns Hopkins University. His professional service includes study scientist for NASA’s Living with a Star Geospace Program, principal investigator for the Auroral Multiscale MIDEX mission, principal investigator for the Energetic Neutral Atom Camera for the Earth Observing System, and co-investigator with NASA’s Voyager Low Energy Charged Particles Investigation and NASA’s Cassini Magnetospheric Imaging Instrument Investigation. Dr. Mauk has served on the NRC Committee on Planetary and Lunar Exploration and on NASA’s Sun-Earth Connections Roadmap Committee.
TERRANCE G. ONSAGER is head of the Solar Terrestrial Models and Theory Group at the NOAA Space Environment Center. His areas of research include solar wind-magnetosphere-ionosphere interactions, mass and energy coupling between the solar wind and the magnetosphere, magnetic reconnection, formation of magnetospheric boundary layers, and Earth’s radiation belts. His previous positions include research assistant and associate professor at the University of New Hampshire Physics Department and Institute for the Study of Earth, Oceans, and Space and postdoctoral research fellow at Los Alamos National Laboratory. Dr. Onsager served as a member of the NASA Sun-Earth Connection Advisory Subcommittee and the NRC Solar and Space Physics Survey Panel on Education and Society.
EUGENE N. PARKER is the S. Chandrasekhar Distinguished Service Professor Emeritus in the Departments of Astronomy and Astrophysics and Physics at the University of Chicago. His current research interests include theoretical plasma physics; magnetohydrodynamics; solar and terrestrial physics; basic physics of the active star; application and extension of classical physics to the active conditions found in the astronomical universe (e.g., the stellar x-ray corona); and the solar wind and the origin of stellar and galactic magnetic fields. A recipient of numerous prizes from his peers, he also has extensive NRC service on committees and task groups related to solar physics and astronomy. Dr. Parker is a member of the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) and chaired the NAS’s Astronomy Section from 1983 to 1986, and he served as chair of the NRC Task Group on Ground-based Solar Research (1997 to 1998).
Staff
ARTHUR CHARO, study director, received his Ph.D. in physics from Duke University in 1981 and was a postdoctoral fellow in chemical physics at Harvard University from 1982 to 1985. Dr. Charo then pursued his interests in national security and arms control at Harvard University’s Center for Science and International Affairs, where he was a fellow from 1985 to 1988. From 1988 to 1995, he worked in the International Security and Space Program in the U.S. Congress’s Office of Technology Assessment (OTA). He has been a senior program officer at the Space Studies Board (SSB) of the National Research Council since OTA’s closure in 1995. Dr. Charo is a recipient of a MacArthur Foundation Fellowship in International Security (1985-1987) and was the American Institute of Physics Congressional Science Fellow from 1988 to 1989. He is the author of research papers in the field of molecular spectroscopy; reports on arms control and space policy; and the monograph, Continental Air Defense: A Neglected Dimension of Strategic Defense (University Press of America, 1990).
THERESA M. FISHER is a senior program assistant with the Space Studies Board. During her 25 years with the National Research Council (NRC) she has held positions in the executive, editorial, and contract offices of the National Academy of Engineering, as well as positions with several NRC boards, including the Energy Engineering Board, the Aeronautics and Space Engineering Board, the Board on Atmospheric Sciences and Climate, and the Marine Board.
CATHERINE A. GRUBER is an assistant editor with the Space Studies Board (SSB). She joined 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, then as an outreach assistant for the National Academy of Sciences-Smithsonian Institution’s National Science Resources Center. She was also a research assistant (chemist) in the National Institute of Mental Health’s Laboratory of Cell Biology for 2 years. She has a bachelor of arts in natural science from St. Mary’s College of Maryland.
