D
Committee and Staff Biographical Information
WESLEY L. HARRIS, Chair, is the Charles Stark Draper Professor of Aeronautics and Astronautics and the associate provost for faculty equity at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). Before his appointment as associate provost, he served as head of MIT’s department of aeronautics and astronautics. Prior to MIT, he served as associate administrator for aeronautics at NASA headquarters and vice president and chief administrative officer of the University of Tennessee Space Institute. His expertise is in fluid mechanics; aerodynamics; unsteady, nonlinear aerodynamics; acoustics; lean manufacturing processes; and military logistics and sustainment. He earned a B.S. in aerospace engineering from the University of Virginia and an M.A. and Ph.D. in aerospace and mechanical sciences from Princeton University. He is a member of the National Academy of Engineering. Dr. Harris has served on the NRC’s Air Force Studies Board, the Committee in Examination of the U.S. Air Forces Aircraft Sustainment Needs in the Future Strategy to Meet Those Needs, the Committee on Benchmarking the Technology and Application of Lightweighting, and the Committee on Assessment of NASA Laboratory Capabilities.
MARK ANDERSON is director of Platform Performance Technology for Boeing Research and Technology. He is responsible for leading research and development in the fields of aerodynamics, fluid mechanics, flow control, computational fluid dynamics, aerothermodynamics, propulsion, acoustics, mass properties, stability and control, flight control, guidance, navigation, and configuration design for applications across the Boeing enterprise. In addition he serves as designated program chief engineer for flight and systems technology and flight functional leader. He began his career as an aerodynamics engineer within Boeing Commercial Airplanes, serving in a series of research and product development assignments before becoming a manager within the Preliminary Design and Enabling Technology organization. He subsequently was transferred to Boeing Research and Technology, where he has served in a series of assignments with increasing responsibility until assuming his current positions in 2003. He is an associate fellow of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics and has served as chairman of the institute’s national Aircraft Design Technical Committee. He has supported NASA as a participant and leader for non-advocate reviews and advisory committees. He has served as a member of the Board of Visitors for the University of Washington’s Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics, and is currently a member of the Embry Riddle Aeronautical University Engineering Advisory Board. He is a member of Tau Beta Pi and Sigma Gamma Tau engineering honor societies. He was educated first in aeronautical engineering (BSAE) at Wichita State University and subsequently in political economy and history at the University of Glasgow. He holds an M.S. Aeronautics and Astronautics (M.S.AA) graduate degree from Stanford University.
NEIL A. ARMSTRONG is the retired chairman of the board for EDO Corporation. He is also a former NASA test pilot and astronaut. From 1949 to 1952 he served as a naval aviator and flew 78 combat missions during the Korean War. Mr. Armstrong joined the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA), NASA’s predecessor, as a research pilot at the Lewis Laboratory in Cleveland and later transferred to the NACA High Speed Flight Station at Edwards Air Force Base, California. He was a project pilot on many pioneering high-speed aircraft, including the 4,000 mph X-15. He has flown more than 200 different models of aircraft, including jets, rockets, helicopters, and gliders. In 1962 Armstrong was transferred to astronaut status. He served as command pilot for the Gemini 8 mission, launched March 16, 1966, and performed the first successful docking of two vehicles in space. He later commanded Apollo 11. During 1971-1979, Mr. Armstrong was a professor of aerospace engineering at the University of Cincinnati, where he was involved in both teaching and research. From 2006 to 2008 he served as chair of the NASA Advisory Council’s aeronautics committee. He has an M.S. in aerospace engineering from the University of Southern California. He was previously a member of the Greatest Engineering Achievements of the 20th Century Selection Committee.
EDWARD L. BURNETT is the Lockheed Martin Senior Fellow for Modeling, Simulation, and Controls at Lockheed Martin Aeronautics Company in Palmdale, California. His principal duty is to develop real-time, man-in-the-loop and hardware-in-the loop simulations. Mr. Burnett is currently the Lockheed Martin program manager for the Air Force Research Laboratory’s Multi-utility Aeroelastic Demonstration Program (MAD). He has worked on a number of projects at Lockheed Martin, including the F-117A, the YF-22/F-22, and the X-35/F-35. Mr. Burnett is an associate fellow of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics and the past chair of its Modeling and Simulation Technical Committee. He is also a member of the Society of Automotive Engineers, the Society of Flight Test Engineers, and the Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association and is a member of the board of directors of the Flight Test Historic Foundation at Edwards Air Force Base. Mr. Burnett also serves as a member of the California State Polytechnic San Luis Obispo aerospace and electrical engineering industrial advisory boards as well as the Embry Riddle Aeronautics University Prescott Aero/Mechanical Department industrial advisory board. Mr. Burnett earned a B.S. and an M.S. in aeronautical engineering from California Polytechnic University San Luis Obispo.
INDERJIT CHOPRA is the director of the Alfred Gessow Rotorcraft Center and is the Alfred Gessow Professor in Aerospace Engineering at the University of Maryland. His studies include work on various fundamental problems related to aeromechanics of helicopters, including aeromechanical stability, active vibration control, modeling of composite blades, rotor head health monitoring, aeroelastic optimization, smart structures, micro air vehicles, and comprehensive aeromechanics analyses of bearingless, tilt-rotor, servo-flap, compound, teetering, and circulation control rotors. Prior to teaching, Dr. Chopra spent more than 4 years at NASA Ames/Stanford University Joint Institute of Aeronautics and Acoustics working on the development of aeroelastic analyses and testing of advanced helicopter rotor systems. Dr. Chopra received his Sc.D. in aeronautics and astronautics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He is currently a member of the Aeronautics and Space Engineering Board and has served on the Committee on Review of the NASA Institute for Advanced Concepts.
RICHARD S. CHRISTIANSEN is vice president of Sierra Lobo, Inc., a small business that provides engineering and technical services to government agencies and specializes in creating and managing new, innovative technologies. In this role he supports corporate strategy and provides program management to high-end clients as well as business and partnership development. Prior to entering the private sector Mr. Christiansen served at several NASA installations, including as a research lead and project manager at NASA Ames in the Full Scale Wind Tunnel Complex, as program manager for Flight Projects with the Office of Aeronautics and Space Technology, and eventually as program director and (acting) associate administrator for the Office of Aeronautics and Space Transportation Technology, where he directed the strategy and management of research and technology development programs. Mr. Christiansen has also served as associate director at Dryden Flight Research Center, where he was responsible for plans and programs for NASA’s flight projects conducted there. Until his retirement as deputy director of NASA’s Glenn Research Center he had programmatic responsibilities in aeronautical research and space technology developments for power, propulsion, and communications, and for microgravity sciences. He
also led the center’s institutional direction in budget formulation and integration, facilities master planning, workforce strategy, and procurement. Prior to joining NASA, Mr. Christiansen was an aerospace engineer at General Dynamics and a lecturer at California State Polytechnic University-Pomona. He earned his M.S. in aeronautics and astronautics from Stanford University.
ROBERT A. COWART is director of Supersonic Technology Development at Gulfstream Aerospace Corporation, where he has worked for more than 18 years. His background spans a broad range of disciplines, including structures, systems, ground/flight test, and various R&D activities. He has worked in production, service, and completion engineering roles at Gulfstream. His current work involves managing supersonic research focusing on sonic boom mitigation and enabling civil supersonic overland flight. He serves on the Federal Aviation Administration’s PARTNER advisory board advocating supersonics and participates in CAEP’s WG1/Supersonic Task Group (SSTG). Gulfstream has successfully executed two key flight programs with NASA: F-15 Quiet Spike and F-18 External Vision System (XVS), and has played key roles in other flight activities related to NASA’s low-sonic-boom research. He received a B.S. and an M.S. in aeronautical engineering from Georgia Tech.
JOHN B. HAYHURST is retired as senior vice president of the Boeing Company and president of Boeing Air Traffic Management. Previously, Mr. Hayhurst was vice president of business development for the Commercial Airplane Services business unit of Boeing Commercial Airplanes Group (BCAG). Prior to this assignment, he served as vice president and general manager of 737 aircraft programs. In addition, he was general manager of the BCAG production site in Renton, Washington. Before that, he served as vice president for Boeing Americas and was responsible for the Boeing business relationships with airline customers in North America and Latin America and for the sale of Boeing commercial airplanes to customers in those regions. Mr. Hayhurst joined Boeing in 1969 as a customer support engineer. He held positions of increasing responsibility related to commercial airplanes and in 1987 was promoted to vice president of marketing. In this position, he played a significant role in the launch of the Boeing 777. Subsequently, he was responsible for leading teams planning the design, development, and manufacture of aircraft larger than the Boeing 747. He then served as vice president-general manager of the Boeing 747-500X/600X program. Mr. Hayhurst is a fellow of the Royal Aeronautical Society and holds a B.S. in aeronautical engineering from Purdue University. He received an M.B.A. from the University of Washington in 1971. In 1998, Mr. Hayhurst was awarded an honorary doctorate in engineering by Purdue University. He is currently a member of the Aeronautics and Space Engineering Board.
TIMOTHY LIEUWEN is a professor of engineering at the School of Aerospace Engineering at Georgia Institute of Technology and an expert in propulsion engineering. Dr. Lieuwen is the author of Combustion Instabilities in Gas Turbines and Syngas Combustion. His research lies at the intersection of combustion, fluid mechanics, acoustics, and controls. Much of his work is directed toward the development of clean combustion energy systems for power generation, aircraft propulsion, and the refining/process industries. His work involves coordinated experiments, computations, and theoretical analyses. Experiments generally use state-of-the-art laser diagnostics to characterize the unsteady velocity field and flame dynamics. He also uses computations to simulate flame and flow dynamics, and theoretical analyses to provide insight for limiting cases. He served previously on the NRC aeronautics decadal survey Propulsion and Power Panel.
RONALD F. PROBSTEIN is the Ford Professor of Engineering, Emeritus, at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. His career centered on scientific applications of fluid mechanics, both theoretical and experimental, to numerous areas of conceptual, economic, or societal importance, including hypersonics, dust comets, desalination, physicochemical hydrodynamics, synthetic fuels, in situ soil remediation with electric fields, and slurry rheology. His contributions to the fields of hypersonics, rarefied gas flow, desalination, and water purification earned him election to the National Academy of Sciences and the National Academy of Engineering. As a fluid dynamicist, Dr. Probstein carried out fundamental and applied studies of hypersonic and physicochemical flows. His research on hypersonic viscous and rarefied gas flows played a significant role in ICBM and spacecraft reentry development.
Dr. Probstein served on the NRC Committee on Microgravity Research (1993-1995) and on the Space Studies Board (2004-2006).
ELI RESHOTKO is the Kent H. Smith Professor Emeritus of Engineering at Case Western Reserve University. Dr. Reshotko joined the faculty at Case Western in 1964 and prior to that worked at NACA Lewis Flight Propulsion Laboratory (now NASA Glenn Research Center). His area of expertise is viscous effects in external and internal aerodynamics; two- and three-dimensional compressible boundary layers and heat transfer; stability and transition of viscous flows, both incompressible and compressible; and low-drag technology for aircraft and underwater vehicles. He has expertise in propulsion engineering, thermodynamics, aerodynamics, and aircraft propulsion. He is a member of the National Academy of Engineering and a fellow of the AIAA, ASME, the American Physical Society, and the American Academy of Mechanics, for which he served as president. He is co-author of more than 100 publications and is affiliated with many task forces, committees, and governing boards. He earned his Ph.D. in aeronautics and physics from the California Institute of Technology. Dr. Reshotko currently serves as the NAE Section 1 liaison members chair, and he is currently a member of the Aeronautics and Space Engineering Board.
ROGERS E. SMITH is a consultant and a retired senior NASA test pilot. He served as a fighter pilot with both the Royal Canadian Air Force and the United States Air National Guard for 24 years, where he also held senior leadership positions. During his career as a test pilot, engineer, and technical leader, Mr. Smith held positions with the National Research Council of Canada, NASA Langley Research Center, and Cornell Aeronautical Laboratory/Calspan, and he became a research test pilot at NASA Dryden Flight Research Center. At Dryden he participated in a wide variety of test programs, involving, for example, the X-29, AFTI F-16 and F-111, X-31, F-15 ACTIVE, F-18, and SR-71 aircraft. After a distinguished career at Dryden (19 years), where he also served as chief pilot and acting director of Flight Operations, he retired in 2000 and pursued a career in consulting. Mr. Smith was then engaged with EADS in Germany, first as an advisor on the Eurofighter flight control system development and then as a vice president and director of flight test at the EADS Military Aircraft Division. He currently works as an aerospace consultant in the areas of flight test and safety. Current contracts include work with the Swiss SolarImpulse project and with Unmanned Systems Incorporated as an advisor on the testing for the U.S. Air Force Predator programs. Mr. Smith is the author of more than 30 technical papers and was co-creator of the Neal-Smith fighter control system design criterion. He is a fellow and past president of the Society of Experimental Test Pilots, a fellow of the Royal Aeronautical Society, and a member of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics. He received a B.A.S. in engineering physics and an M.A.S. in aeronautical engineering from the University of Toronto.
JOHN TYLKO is vice president of business development at Aurora Flight Sciences Corporation. He is an experienced aerospace industry executive and technology entrepreneur. Previously, Mr. Tylko co-founded General Computer Company (GCC) and served as its chief operating officer for 25 years. GCC developed a variety of innovative products in the consumer electronics and personal computer markets, ranging from video games to laser printers. Mr. Tylko was also a founding member of Aurora Flight Science’s board of directors and has been continuously involved with the company since its inception. He has served as vice president of Aurora Flight Sciences, where he led Aurora’s aerostructures business sector and was responsible for successfully managing Aurora’s Global Hawk UAV engineering and manufacturing development program as Global Hawk transitioned from prototype to full-rate production. He led the development of Aurora’s state-of-the-art composite structures manufacturing center. Mr. Tylko also assumed overall responsibility for Aurora’s business development and corporate strategic planning. He established Aurora’s relationship with Sikorsky Aircraft, which includes the design and manufacturing of major sections of the CH-53K expeditionary helicopter for the U.S. Marine Corps and the rapid development of the S-97 Raider based on the X-2, which won the 2010 Collier Trophy. He led the capture of Aurora’s first Joint Capabilities Technology Demonstration for the Department of Defense and U.S. Air Force, based on the Orion medium-altitude long-endurance unmanned aerial vehicles. He is a recipient of the MIT Founders Award, which recognizes entrepreneurship. He is a member of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics and a member of the board of directors of Women in Aerospace. He earned a B.S. in aeronautics and astronautics from MIT.
RANDY VOLAND co-founded ACENT Laboratories LLC in 2007, where he serves as vice president, to carry out research and development in advanced aerospace systems and clean/alternative energy technologies. From 1981 until his retirement in 2006 Mr. Voland was employed at the NASA Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia, where he was a hypersonic propulsion research engineer specializing in ground and flight tests of more than 20 scramjet engines at Mach numbers from 3.5 to 15 and held key roles in every successful scramjet-related flight test conducted with U.S. involvement to that point, including the record-breaking X-43A flights in 2004. He also held several technology management roles including principal investigator for the Hypersonics project in the Fundamental Aeronautics Program. In addition to his present R&D efforts at ACENT Labs in advanced biofuels, hydrogen storage and utilization, and carbon dioxide capture, Mr. Voland continues to serve the flight test community as a consultant on two U.S. Air Force hypersonic flight test programs, the X-51 Scramjet Engine Demonstrator Program and the Hypersonic International Flight Research Experiments (HIFiRE) Program. Mr. Voland graduated from North Carolina State University in 1984 with a B.S. in mechanical engineering and received an M.S. in fluid mechanics and thermal sciences from George Washington University in 1991. He is a member of several professional societies and has won several major honors and awards, including the Aviation Week and Space Technology Laureate in 2004 and the NASA Exceptional Service Medal in 2002.
DEBORAH D. WHITIS, the section manager for Materials Applications Engineering at General Electric Aviation, is responsible for more than 40 materials engineers and technicians. The Materials Applications Engineering role supports materials issues on legacy and new product introduction engine programs in development, design, manufacturing, test, and in the field. Additionally, the group supports new material supplier qualifications as well as manages the internal characterization laboratories and failure analysis team. Dr. Whitis received a B.S. in mechanical engineering from the University of Illinois, an M.S. in mechanical engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and an M.S. in materials science from the University of Cincinnati as well as a Ph.D. in materials science and engineering from the University of Virginia. Her academic and industrial experience has involved the development of constitutive models for microstructural evolution and mechanical behavior for high-temperature aerospace alloys. Dr. Whitis served as the modeling task leader for the DARPA Accelerated Insertion of Materials program, coordinating the efforts of industry, university, and government laboratory resources to develop multi-scale microstructure and property models for nickel-based superalloys. She is a founding member of the Integrated Computational Materials Engineering (ICME) Technical Advisory Group (TAG) for TMS, and she serves as a member of the high-temperature alloys committee of the structural materials division and the shaping and forming committee of the materials processing and manufacturing division of the TMS. Dr. Whitis served on the NRC Committee on Integrated Computational Materials Engineering: Development of a Roadmap for a Grand Challenge in Materials.
Staff
DWAYNE A. DAY, Study Director, a senior program officer for the NRC’s Aeronautics and Space Engineering Board (ASEB), has a Ph.D. in political science from the George Washington University. Dr. Day joined the NRC as a program officer for the Space Studies Board (SSB). Before this, he served as an investigator for the Columbia Accident Investigation Board, was on the staff of the Congressional Budget Office, and also worked for the Space Policy Institute at the George Washington University. He has held Guggenheim and Verville fellowships and was an associate editor of the German spaceflight magazine Raumfahrt Concrete, in addition to writing for such publications as Novosti Kosmonavtiki (Russia), Spaceflight, and Space Chronicle (United Kingdom). He has served as the study director for several NRC reports, including Space Radiation Hazards and the Vision for Space Exploration (2006), 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).
CATHERINE A. GRUBER, editor, 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 also worked as an outreach assistant for the 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.
AMANDA R.THIBAULT, research associate, joined the ASEB in 2011. Ms. Thibault is a graduate of Creighton University, where she earned her B.S. in atmospheric science in 2008. From there she went on to Texas Tech University where she studied lightning trends in tornadic and non-tornadic supercell thunderstorms and worked as a teaching and research assistant. She participated in the VORTEX 2 field project from 2009 to 2010 and graduated with an M.S. in atmospheric science from Texas Tech in August 2010. She is a member of the American Meteorological Society.
TERRI BAKER joined the SSB in 2009 as a senior program assistant. She came to the SSB from the National Academies’ Center for Education. Mrs. Baker has held numerous managerial, administrative, and coordinative positions and has focused on improving productivity and organization wherever she works. Ms. Baker is currently working on her B.A. in business management.
DANIELLE PISKORZ, an SSB Lloyd V. Berkner space policy intern, recently graduated from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology with a degree in physics and a minor in applied international studies. She has done various research projects at L’Institut d’Astrophysique de Paris, Los Alamos National Laboratories, and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory and spent her junior year studying at the University of Cambridge. Ms. Piskorz plans to begin her graduate studies in Fall 2012 in geophysics.
MICHAEL H. MOLONEY is the director of the SSB and the ASEB at the NRC. Since joining the NRC in 2001, Dr. Moloney has served as a study director at the National Materials Advisory Board, the Board on Physics and Astronomy (BPA), the Board on Manufacturing and Engineering Design, and the Center for Economic, Governance, and International Studies. Before joining the SSB and ASEB in April 2010, he was associate director of the BPA and study director for the Astro2010 decadal survey for astronomy and astrophysics. In addition to his professional experience at the NRC, Dr. Moloney has more than 7 years’ experience as a foreign-service officer for the Irish government and served in that capacity at the Embassy of Ireland in Washington, D.C., the Mission of Ireland to the United Nations in New York, and the Department of Foreign Affairs in Dublin, Ireland. A physicist, Dr. Moloney did his graduate 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.
