Celesfial Centennial

SPEAKERS AND PRESENTERS Celestial Centennial BIOGRAPHIES and Mars Fest Symposium Death Valley National Park is proud to team up with NASA, the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence Institute, Mars Science Laboratory (Curiosity), Death Valley National History Association and others to bring this event to the public. The Celestial Centennial and Mars Fest Symposium is featuring speakers this year with a broad range of subjects such as Mars, planetary and night sky protection, and beyond. Please see a schedule for a full list of presentations and times. Scientist’s biographies appear in no particular order. SPEAKERS AND PRESENTERS Celestial Centennial BIOGRAPHIES and Mars Fest Symposium Keynote Speaker Tyler Nordgren is a Professor of Physics and Astronomy at the University of Redlands. Prior to arriving at Redlands in 2001 he was an astronomer at both Lowell Observatory and the U.S. Naval Observatory in Flagstaff, Arizona. He earned his PhD in astronomy from Cornell University in 1997 for work on dark matter in interacting spiral galaxies. In addition to publishing roughly two dozen peer reviewed scientific articles he is also the author of “Stars Above, Earth Below: A guide to astronomy in the national parks,” a popular science book dedicated to revealing what visitors to America’s national parks can observe in a dark night sky. Since 2007, Dr. Nordgren has worked closely with the U.S. National Park Service Night Sky Program to promote astronomy outreach and night-sky preservation in national parks. Dr. Nordgren has helped document this vanishing landscape with award-winning artwork and night sky photography that has been on display in galleries from New York City to Flagstaff, Arizona and has been used in a number of national parks. He is a past-member of the Board of Directors for the International Dark- Sky Association. In 2012, NASA’s Curiosity rover joined Spirit and Opportunity on Mars, each carrying sundials, or “Marsdials” which Dr. Nordgren helped design with a team of seven other scientists and artists. His new book on the Great American solar eclipse of 2017, entitled “SUN MOON EARTH: The History of Solar Eclipses from Omens of Doom to Einstein and Exoplanets” will be published in 2016. Josh Hoines has a Bachelors of Science in Ecology and Evolution from the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. Josh has advanced education in Restoration Ecology from the University of Idaho. Over the last 16 years Josh has work collaboratively to establish early detection and rapid response programs for the federal land managers in southern Nevada; served as the Interagency Restoraiton Program Coordinator for the Southern Nevada Agency Partnership; the Vegetation Ecologist for Joshua Tree National Park; and is now the Chief of Science and Integrated Resources for Death Valley National Park. SPEAKERS AND PRESENTERS Celestial Centennial BIOGRAPHIES and Mars Fest Symposium Jill Tarter holds the Bernard M. Oliver Chair for SETI Research at the SETI Institute in Mountain View, California and serves as a member of the Board of Trustees for that institution. Tarter received her Bachelor of Engineering Physics Degree with Distinction from Cornell University and her Master’s Degree and a Ph.D. in Astronomy from the University of California, Berkeley. She served as Project Scientist for NASA’s SETI program, the High Resolution Microwave Survey and has conducted numerous observational programs at radio observatories worldwide. She is a Fellow of the AAAS, the California Academy of Sciences, and the Explorers Club, she was named one of the Time 100 Most Influential People in the World in 2004, and one of the Time 25 in Space in 2012, received a TED prize in 2009, two public service awards from NASA, multiple awards for communicating science to the public, and has been honored as a woman in technology. She was the 2014 Jansky Lecturer. In 2015 she became President of the California Academy of Sciences. Asteroid 74824 Tarter (1999 TJ16) has been named in her honor. Since the termination of funding for NASA’s SETI program in 1993, she has served in a leadership role to design and build the Allen Telescope Array and to secure private funding to continue the exploratory science of SETI. Many people are now familiar with her work as portrayed by Jodie Foster in the movie Contact. Alfonso F. Davila, PhD is a senior research scientist at the SETI Institute. His research focuses on astrobiology, and in particular the study of terrestrial environments that are analogous to Mars and other planetary bodies, such as the Atacama Desert in northern Chile, and the ice-free regions of Antarctica. These studies provide important clues regarding the environmental limits of life, the evolution of habitability on Mars, and how to search for evidence of life beyond the Earth. SPEAKERS AND PRESENTERS Celestial Centennial BIOGRAPHIES and Mars Fest Symposium Dr. Robert M. Haberle is a Space Scientist at the NASA/ Ames Research Center in Mt. View, California. He has a Ph.D. in Atmospheric Science from the University of Wash- ington and is an expert on the climate of Mars. He has led the development of a state-of-the-art climate model for Mars and has published numerous papers on the topic. He has participated in many of NASA’s missions to Mars and is currently a co-investigator on the Curiosity Rover’s meteorology experiment. He is presently leading an effort for a Cambridge University Press soon-to-be published book on the Atmosphere and Climate of Mars. Working with Planetary Society CEO Bill Nye the Science Guy and other colleagues, Mat Kaplan creates public radio’s only series that is devoted to the exploration of our solar system and beyond. Heard on 140 stations, the weekly half-hour is also one of the most popular science-related podcasts. His list of distinguished guests is a final frontier who’s who that includes astronauts, scientists like Jill Tarter, NASA leaders, engineers, authors, space entrepreneurs and dreamers. Planetary Radio can be heard on iTunes, SoundCloud, Stitcher and at planetary.org/ radio. SPEAKERS AND PRESENTERS Celestial Centennial BIOGRAPHIES and Mars Fest Symposium Ernest Bowman-Cisneros received a Bachelors of Science in Ge- ology from the University of Texas at El Paso (1989). After a grad- uate school stint at Northern Arizona University, studying the metamorphic history of the Old Woman Mountains in California, he began a 20 year career combining a love of geology and com- puters, supporting science and NASA spacecraft missions while working at the Astrogeology Branch of the USGS, Duke Universi- ty and Northwestern University. Ernest has supported the CLEM- ENTINE, NEAR/MSI, MRO/CRISM and MESSENGER/MDIS mission/instruments. Ernest most recent work has been with the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) mission, serving as the Science Operations Center (SOC) manager for the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Camera (LROC) instrument - managed and operated from the campus of Arizona State University, in Tempe Arizona. Ernest has been responsible for developing the SOC facility, hiring and training all the operations staff and overseeing the instrument operations since the mission launched in 2009. The LROC instrument has acquired 1,724,747 observations of the Moon, totaling over 600 TB worth of files and representing a dozen different image products. LROC images are available for viewing and download at the website www.lroc.sese.asu.edu. Dr. Chris McKay is a research scientist with the NASA Ames Research Center. His research focuses on planetary science and the origin of life. He is also actively involved in planning for future Mars missions including human exploration. Chris been involved in research in Mars-like environments on Earth, traveling to Death Valley, the Antarctic dry valleys, Siberia, the Canadian Arctic, the Atacama, Namib, & Sahara deserts to study life in these Mars-like environments. He was a co- investigator on the Huygens probe to Saturn’s moon Titan in 2005, the Mars Phoenix lander mission in 2008, and the Mars Science Laboratory mission, in 2012. SPEAKERS AND PRESENTERS Celestial Centennial BIOGRAPHIES and Mars Fest Symposium Andrea Jones is an Education Specialist at the Planetary Science Institute, based out of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. She conducts education and public outreach activities for NASA planetary science missions and programs, including the Mars Science Laboratory Curiosity rover, the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, and three of NASA’s Solar System Exploration Research Virtual Institute (SSERVI) teams–FINESSE, DREAM2, and RIS4E. Andrea is Director of International Observe the Moon Night, an annual worldwide celebration of lunar and planetary science. She earned her undergraduate degree in Geology from the College of William & Mary, and a Masters degree in Geosciences, with a focus in planetary geology, from the University of Arizona. Dr. Luther Beegle is currently the Principal Investigator for SHERLOC on Mars 2020 as well as the Deputy Section Manager for the Planetary Science Section within the Science Division at JPL. The Scanning Habitable Environments for Raman and Luminescence for Organics and Chemicals is an arm mounted instrument that will search for potential biosignatures on the surface of Mars and will enable the collection and caching of highly valuable samples for eventual return to earth for study. An experimental astrophysicist by training, he has extensive experience developing and designing instrumentation such as organic molecule extract techniques, charged particle optics, ion mobility spectrometers, and cylindrical ion trap mass spectrometers for space and terrestrial applications. A current area of research is how robotic sample acquisition techniques physically and chemically alter the components of samples on current and future in situ missions. He is a Surface Sampling Scientist on the Mars Science Laboratory working with the science team to identify suitable high valued scientific samples that will not damage the Sample Acquisition, Sample Processing and Handling (SA/SPAaH) on the MSL rover.

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