Roberto Peccei

Board Chairman. Dr. Peccei is Vice Chancellor for Research and Professor of Physics and Astronomy at UCLA. He received his doctoral degree from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1969. His research focuses in the interface between particle physics, astrophysics and cosmology. He is a Fellow of the American Physical Society, the Institute of Physics (U.K.) and AAAS. Dr. Peccei played an instrumental role in JIFRESSE's development and formal affiliation with the Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
http://personnel.physics.ucla.edu/directory/faculty/index.php?f_name=peccei

Dan McCleese

Board Co-Chairman. Dr. McCleese is Chief Scientist for the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. He received a Fulbright Scholarship to study Atmospheric Physics at Oxford University where he received a Ph.D. degree. Since 2000, Dr. McCleese has been a Visiting Associate in Planetary Science at California Institute of Technology. Dr. McCleese is currently the Principal Investigator for the Mars Climate Sounder now in orbit about Mars in a two-year study of weather and climate of the planet. He is an expert on Mars and from 1994 to 2006 has served as JPL's Chief Scientist for Mars exploration.
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/bios/mccleese/

Vijay Dhir

Dean, Henry Samueli School of Engineering and Applied Science, UCLA. Dr. Dhir is Professor of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering and became Dean of the Henry Sameuli School of Engineering and Applied Science in 2003. He received his doctoral degree in mechanical engineering from the University of Kentucky in 1972 and joined the UCLA faculty in 1974. Dean Dhir has received numerous professional awards, honors and distinctions and, in 2006, was elected to the National Academy of Engineering. Dean Dhir has conducted pioneering research in fundamental and applied sciences involving boiling, and nuclear reactor thermal hydraulics.
http://www.engineer.ucla.edu/people/vdhirbio.html

Paul Dimotakis

Paul Dimotakis, Ph.D., is Chief Technologist at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory and the holder of the John K. Northrop Professor of Aeronautics Endowed Chair as well as a dual professorship in Applied Physics at the California Institute of Technology. Dr. Dimotakis earned his doctoral degree in applied physics from the California Institute of Technology. His fields of research expertise are superfluidity, turbulent flow phenomena, combustion, hypersonic flow and propulsion, laser diagnostics, high-speed image data acquisition and computational adaptive optics. He is a fellow of the American Physical Society and an associate fellow of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics.
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/bios/dimotakis/index.cfm

Diane Evans

Diane Evans, Ph.D., serves as Director of the Earth Science and Technology Directorate at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Her Ph.D. is in geological sciences from the University of Washington. Dr. Evans' scientific work is in the study of the Earth using airborne and spaceborne synthetic aperture radar aboard aircraft and spacecraft. She had held several administrative positions at JPL prior to assuming the senior leadership role in the Earth Science and Technology Directorate in 2001.
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/bios/evans/index.cfm

Joseph A. Rudnick

Joseph A. Rudnick, Ph.D., is the Acting Dean of the Division of Physical Sciences in the UCLA College of Letters and Science. His doctoral degree is in condensed matter physics from the University of California at San Diego. His research interests include: Polymers and random walks; Statistical mechanics of finite systems; Textures and domain shapes in two dimensional systems; and, the physics of disordered systems, and topics in biological physics. Dean Rudnick has served two terms as Chair of the Department of Physics and Astronomy.
http://personnel.physics.ucla.edu/directory/faculty/index.php?f_name=rudnick