THERESA M. FISHER is a program associate with SSB. During her 25 years with the Academies, she has held positions in the executive, editorial, and contract offices of the National Academy of Engineering and 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 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 and has worked as an outreach assistant for the NAS-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.

VICTORIA SWISHER joined the Space Studies Board in December 2006 as a research associate. She recently received a B.A. in astronomy from Swarthmore College. She has presented the results of her research at the 2005 and 2006 American Astronomical Society (AAS) meetings and at various Keck Northeast Astronomy Consortium (KNAC) undergraduate research conferences. Her most recent research focused on laboratory astrophysics and involved studying the x-rays of plasma, culminating in a senior thesis entitled “Modeling UV and X-ray Spectra from the Swarthmore Spheromak Experiment.”