Dr. John Cacioppo is the Tiffany and Margaret Blake Distinguished Service Professor at The University of Chicago and the Director of the University of Chicago Center for Cognitive and Social Neuroscience. Cacioppo’s research is focused on understanding the causes and effects of social isolation. Among the awards he has received are:
He has published more than 400 scientific articles, chapters, and books and has been listed as one of the “ISI Highly Cited Researchers” in Psychiatry/Psychology since 2003. He is an elected Fellow in 16 scientific organizations; a Past-President of several of these, including the Association for Psychological Science, the Society for Psychophysiological Research, and the Society of Personality and Social Psychology; and he is the current Chair of the Psychology Section of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the President of the international, interdisciplinary Society for Social Neuroscience. At NIH, he has served on various panels and boards, including as a member of the National Advisory Council on Aging, and he currently is serving as a member of the Council for the Center for Scientific Review.
Dr. Murray Felsher received his Ph.D. from the University of Texas at Austin. Following a Canadian Research Council post-Doctoral Fellowship at McMaster University, he served on the Syracuse University geology department faculty, and then as Associate Director of the Council on Education in the Geological Sciences — an NSF-funded program in Washington DC. He has taught, as a visiting professor: Chemical Oceanography at the Chemistry Department, University of Maryland; Earth and Space Sciences at the Science Department, Montgomery College; and graduate Environmental Sciences at the Biology Department, Hood College. He also was a visiting lecturer at the Oceanography Department, the University of Hawaii, and the International Space University, Cambridge, MA. Dr. Felsher served as an American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) Course Director in its Chautauqua Program for College Science Teachers, presenting short courses in both Remote Sensing and Environmental Case Studies to more than 200 professors at all 16 colleges and universities nationwide participating in that program.
Following the formation of the Environmental Protection Agency, Dr. Felsher joined EPA Headquarters as Senior Staff Geologist, where his responsibilities included coordinating all of the agency’s enforcement-related remote sensing efforts. He also served as a lecturer to U.S. astronauts training for flight, including briefing SKYLAB astronauts in methodologies for visually observing terrestrial and oceanic pollution from space. Following an assignment with EPA’s International Office Oceans Division he transferred to the Headquarters of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) and there served in several capacities, including: conceiving and serving as first Program Manager, Regional Remote Sensing Applications Program, transferring NASA satellite remote sensing technologies to other government agencies and the private sector; serving as Program Scientist for OSTA-1 — the first Space Shuttle Earth-viewing payload (STS-2); and serving as Program Scientist for both Heat Capacity Mapping Mission and the Large Format Camera mission.
Dr. Felsher left government in 1980 to form Associated Technical Consultants, which has since continued to provide remote sensing-related services to many Federal agencies and aerospace companies. From his office in the National Press Building he began Washington Remote Sensing Letter, now in its 31st year of publication. He has served on the Editorial Boards of The Journal of College Science Teaching, Remote Sensing of Environment, and Geospatial Intelligence Review.
Dr. Felsher has been an invited speaker, moderator, panelist, and session chairman at numerous technical and professional meetings, symposia, and conventions. As Founding Director of the North American Remote Sensing Industries Association (NARSIA), Dr. Felsher organized three NARSIA Congresses, and convened the “Federal Applications of Satellite Image Information” series of symposia. He is a member of the Geospatial Intelligence Foundation and served on its Program Committee for two of its symposia. He is an elected member of the Armed Forces Communications and Electronics Association’s (AFCEA) Intelligence Committee, having served as a session chairman for several of their annual Symposia. He is a Senior Fellow of the Geological Society of America.
He has served on advisory committees for NASA and DoD. He was a Board member of Syracuse Research Corporation and the American Society for Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing (ASPRS) — there as nationally elected Director of its Remote Sensing Applications Division and Chairman of its Committee on Satellite Mapping and Remote Sensing.
Dr. James Gillies is head of communication at CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research. He holds a Doctorate in physics from the University of Oxford, and began his research career working at CERN in the mid-1980s. His thesis covered the internal structure of the proton, and was carried out in a multi-national collaboration of mainly European universities. As a post doctoral researcher, he moved on to the OPAL experiment at CERN’s flagship research facility, the Large Electron Positron collider (LEP), which ran from 1989 to 2000.
In 1993, he left research to become Head of Science with the British Council in Paris. After managing the Council’s bilateral programme of scientific visits, exchanges, bursaries and cultural events for two years, he returned to CERN in 1995 as a science writer. His work at the British Council ranged from negotiating student exchange programmes for top French and UK Universities, to organizing a drawing competition for school children in conjunction with the BBC’s youth magazine programme, Blue Peter, and the French magazine Science et Vie Junior.
He has been Head of the Organization’s communication group since 2003, a period in which CERN has celebrated its 50th anniversary and launched its latest research facility, the Large Hadron Collider. The 2008 LHC first-beam media campaign run by his team made CERN and the LHC household names around the world, and with an estimated global audience of a billion viewers, the LHC start-up was possibly the most visible scientific event in history.
He is co-author of the Oxford University Press title, How the Web was Born, a history of the Internet published in 2000 and described by the London Times as being among the year’s ten best book for inquisitive minds.
A native of Salina, Kansas Dr. Steven Hawley received bachelor of arts degrees in physics and astronomy, graduating with highest distinction, from the University of Kansas in 1973, and a doctor of philosophy in astronomy and astrophysics from the University of California, Santa Cruz in 1977. Prior to his selection to NASA, Dr. Hawley was a research associate at the Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory in La Serena, Chile.
Selected special honors:
Dr. Hawley was selected as a NASA astronaut in January 1978. From 1987–1990, he was the Deputy Chief of the Astronaut Office. In June 1990, he left the Astronaut Office to assume the post of Associate Director of NASA’s Ames Research Center in California. In August 1992, he returned to the Johnson Space Center as Deputy Director of Flight Crew Operations. Dr. Hawley was returned to astronaut flight status in February 1996. After completion of his assignment to the second Hubble Space Telescope mission he returned to duty as Deputy Director, Flight Crew Operations. From October 2001 to November 2002, Dr. Hawley served as Director, Flight Crew Operations. From 2003 to 2008 he served as Director, Astromaterials Research and Exploration Science. Dr. Hawley is a veteran of five space flights (STS-41D in 1984, STS-61C in 1986, STS-31 in 1990, STS-82 in 1997 and STS-93 in 1999). Three of his missions involved NASA’s Great Observatories. Dr. Hawley has logged more than 32 days in space. Dr. Hawley also served as the first Chief Astronaut of the NASA Engineering and Safety Center from 2003 to 2004.
Dr. Hawley retired from NASA and returned to the University of Kansas in 2008 where he is a professor of physics and astronomy and Director of the Engineering Physics program. Dr. Hawley’s research interests include spectrophotometry of nebulae and active or star-forming galaxies as well as the problems of human spaceflight. Dr. Hawley is a member of the American Astronomical Society, the Astronomical Society of the Pacific, the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics, the Association of Space Explorers, Sigma Pi Sigma, and Phi Beta Kappa.
Dr. Stephen P. Maran received his Ph.D. from the University of Michigan, and is an astronomer and author with long experience in the Space Program. The author or editor of twelve books and of over 100 popular articles on astronomy and space exploration, and many more scientific publications, he retired from NASA on October 1, 2004 after more than 35 years with the agency. On August 31, 2009, he retired after 25 years (most of them overlapping with NASA service) as Press Officer of the Society.
The Dallas Morning News wrote that “Dr. Maran takes up where Carl Sagan left off, telling the story of space to anybody who’s interested. Except that Dr. Maran is funnier.” The Washington Post describes him as “a rumpled astronomer with Einstein hair and a tie blazing with bright suns,” and adds that “Maran is a phenomenon about as rare as cold steam, a scientist who gets a big kick out of talking to the rest of us.” The Post also noted, in April 2000, “You might have seen him on NBC’s Today show last August, giving Katie Couric the play-by-play on an in-progress eclipse of the sun. Or (if you’re well off) you might have run into him aboard some cruise ship, explaining the mechanics of a solar eclipse to passengers on the way to landfall at a Malaysian snake temple or bound for the sheep show in Rotorua, New Zealand.”
Maran has been recognized with the NASA Medal for Exceptional Achievement and by the International Astronomical Union, which named Minor Planet 9768 (an asteroid), Stephenmaran in his honor. He also received the Astronomical Society of the Pacific’s Klumpke-Roberts Award (1999) for outstanding contributions to the public understanding and appreciation of astronomy and was appointed the A. Dixon Johnson Lecturer in Scientific Communication for 1990 by Pennsylvania State University. In 2008, the American Astronomical Society awarded him the George Van Biesbroeck Prize, which honors a living individual for long-term extraordinary or unselfish service to astronomy, often beyond the requirements of his or her paid position. The American Institute of Physics named Maran the 2011 recipient of the Andrew W. Gemant Award for significant contributions to the cultural, artistic, or humanistic dimension of physics.
Maran has taught Astronomy at the University of California, Los Angeles and the University of Maryland, College Park. Prior to joining NASA, he worked at the Kitt Peak National Observatory, Tucson, Arizona, where he led the project that developed the world’s first robotic and remotely controlled astronomical telescope.
At the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Dr. Maran was Assistant Director of Space Sciences for Information and Outreach from 1995–2004. His prior Goddard service, starting in 1969, included such responsibilities as Project Scientist for Orbiting Solar Observatories; Head, Advanced Systems and Ground Observations Branch; Manager, Operation Kohoutek; Senior Staff Scientist in the Laboratory for Astronomy and Solar Physics; and Co-Investigator on two instruments for the Hubble Space Telescope: the Goddard High Resolution Spectrograph in the original Hubble payload and the Space Telescope Imaging Spectrograph, which was added to the orbiting observatory in February 1997. Besides leading Hubble research projects on flare stars, active galactic nuclei, and the expanding debris from Supernova 1987A, he was Principal Investigator for investigations of planetary nebulae in the Magellanic Clouds with the International Ultraviolet Explorer, an earlier NASA telescopic satellite. He was the original host of a series of NASA televised press conferences in talk-show format, Space Astronomy Update, which served primarily to announce major discoveries from the Hubble Space Telescope.
Representing NASA, Maran addressed subcommittees of the U.S. House of Representatives and the United Nations Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space. He has also been an invited speaker or lecturer to the National Academy of Engineering and to national meetings of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, American Astronomical Society, American Astronautical Society, American Physical Society, and the Astronomical Society of the Pacific.
Maran’s articles about science for the public have appeared in Smithsonian, Natural History, Popular Science, Scientific American, Sky & Telescope, and Astronomy magazines, in ten encyclopedias and encyclopedia year books, and in invited contributions to The Washington Post.
His two most recent books, both written jointly with Laurence A. Marschall and published in 2009, are Galileo’s New Universe: The Revolution in Our Understanding of the Cosmos and Pluto Confidential: An Insider Account of the Ongoing Battles over the Status of Pluto.
His other books include Astronomy for Dummies, published in English, Chinese, French, German, Russian, Bulgarian, Polish, Dutch and Portuguese; The Astronomy and Astrophysics Encyclopedia (with Foreword by Carl Sagan); a college text, New Horizons in Astronomy by John C. Brandt and Dr. Maran, which was also published in Arabic; and Gems of Hubble, written with Jacqueline Mitton. Maran is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) and of the Royal Astronomical Society and is a former Chair of AAAS’s Section on Astronomy. He also lectures on ocean cruises and astronomical tours, and has spoken on each of the first two round-the-world cruises of the Cunard liner Queen Elizabeth 2.
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