Appendix F
Committee and Staff Biographies
COMMITTEE
James A. Yoder (Chair) is Vice President for Academic Programs and Dean at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI). A biological oceanographer, Dr. Yoder is well known in the oceanographic research community, having served as a researcher, professor, and more recently as Director of the Division of Ocean Sciences at the National Science Foundation in Washington, D.C., from 2001 to 2004. He has worked at NASA headquarters and has been a member of numerous national and international committees and panels on oceanographic research. In particular, he was chair of the International Ocean-Colour Coordinating Group. Dr. Yoder received a B.A. degree in botany from DePauw University in 1970, and M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in oceanography from the University of Rhode Island (URI) in 1974 and 1979, respectively. He joined the staff at the Skidaway Institute of Oceanography in Georgia in 1978, and from 1986 to 1988 was a visiting senior scientist at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, working as a program manager in the ocean branch at NASA headquarters. He joined the faculty at the Graduate School of Oceanography (GSO) at URI in 1989 and was promoted to professor in 1992. He was named Associate Dean of Oceanography at GSO in 1993 and served in that capacity until 1998, with responsibilities for curriculum planning and delivery, admissions, recruitment, and graduate student affairs. Dr. Yoder has served on NRC committees and currently is a member of the Ocean Studies Board.
David Antoine is a CNRS senior research scientist at the Marine Optics and Remote Sensing group of the Laboratoire d’Océanographie de Villefranche in France. He received a doctorate degree in oceanography from the Université Pierre and Marie Curie in Paris, France, in 1995. His research interests include marine optics, bio-optics, radiative transfer and applications, ocean color remote sensing including atmospheric corrections, and modeling of oceanic primary production from satellite ocean color. He was involved in the definition, preparation, and implementation of the European Space Agency (ESA) ENVISAT-MERIS ocean color satellite mission. He has served as chair (2007-2009) of the ocean group of the French space agency (CNES) scientific committee. He now serves as chair of the International Ocean-Colour Coordinating Group, and is a member of ESA’s Earth Science Advisory Committee.
Carlos E. Del Castillo is a member of the Senior Professional Staff with the Space Department of the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory, and is the William S. Parsons Professor at the Johns Hopkins University Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences. Dr. Del Castillo started his career at the University of Puerto Rico studying the effects of oil pollution in tropical marine environments. Later, at the University of South Florida, his interest in organic carbon biogeochemistry and the carbon cycle led him to the use of remote sensing to study biogeochemical and physical processes in the ocean through a combination of remote sensing and field and laboratory experiments. While working at NASA as a researcher, Dr. Del Castillo also served as Project Manager at Stennis Space Center, MS, and as a Program Scientist at NASA Headquarters. Dr. Del Castillo served in several inter-agency working groups, chaired NASA and National Science Foundation workshops, and is now a member of NASA’s Carbon Cycle and Ecosystem Management and Operations Working Group. Dr. Del Castillo has several well-cited publications (more than 70 citations), co-edited a book on the application of remote sensing techniques, and is a frequent reviewer for technical journals. He received a B.S. in biology and an M.S. in marine chemistry from the University of Puerto Rico, Mayaguez, and his Ph.D. in oceanography from the University of South Florida.
Robert H. Evans is a research professor at the University of Miami Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Sciences (RSMAS). Dr. Evans is a faculty member of the RSMAS Remote Sensing Group (RSG), an interdisciplinary
research group engaged in research and graduate instruction in the techniques of satellite oceanography and their application to problems in physical, biological, and chemical oceanography. Dr. Evans’ focus of research is to develop quantitative methods that permit timely access to satellite remote sensing observations of transient events in the ocean, using imaging infrared sensors and multi-spectral infrared and color scanner observations. He continues evolutionary development of processing and analysis capabilities with the goal of generating long-term time-series of oceanic mesoscale variability.
Curtis Mobley is the Vice President for Science and Senior Scientist at Sequoia Scientific, Inc. Dr. Mobley has a background in physics and meteorology, but most of his career has been devoted to research in radiative transfer theory applied to problems in optical oceanography. He created the widely used HydroLight computer program and wrote the textbook Light and Water: Radiative Transfer in Natural Waters. Early in his career he was a Fulbright Fellow in Germany, and has held both regular (at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory) and senior (at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory) National Research Council Resident Research Associateships. He was an oceanographer with the University of Washington Joint Institute for the Study of the Atmosphere and Ocean during the 1980s. From 1989 to 1991, he was the Program Manager of the Ocean Optics (now Littoral Sciences and Optics) program at the Office of Naval Research. Dr. Mobley has been an associate professor of physics at Pacific Lutheran University and is now an Affiliate Professor in the School of Oceanography at the University of Washington.
Jorge L. Sarmiento is the George J. Magee Professor of Geosciences and Geological Engineering at Princeton University. He obtained his Ph.D. at the Lamont-Doherty Geological Observatory of Columbia University in 1978, then served as a postdoctoral fellow at the Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory/NOAA in Princeton before joining the Princeton University faculty in 1980. He has published widely on the global carbon cycle, the use of chemical tracers to study ocean circulation, and the impact of climate change on ocean biology and biogeochemistry. He has participated in the scientific planning and execution of many of the large-scale multi-institutional and international oceanographic biogeochemical and tracer programs of the past three decades. He was Director of Princeton’s Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences Program from 1980 to 1990 and 2006 to the present, and is Director of the Cooperative Institute for Climate Science. He has served on the editorial board of multiple journals and as editor of Global Biogeochemical Cycles. He is a Fellow of the American Geophysical Union and the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
Shubha Sathyendranath is a Senior Scientist at the Plymouth Marine Laboratory (UK) and an Adjunct Professor at Dalhousie University (Canada). She served as Executive Director of the Partnership for Observation of the Global Oceans (POGO) until 2008 and continues to be involved in POGO, currently focusing on its capacity building efforts. She is an expert in marine optics and has several years of experience working on ocean color algorithm development and applications, and has published extensively in this field. She earned a doctorate in Optical Oceanography from the Université Pierre and Marie Curie in Paris, France, in 1981. Dr. Sathyendranath is a former member of the National Academies’ Committee on International Capacity Building for the Protection and Sustainable Use of Oceans and Coasts.
Carl F. Schueler retired as Chief Scientist of Raytheon Santa Barbara Remote Sensing (SBRS) in 2006, and was an industry remote sensing and electro-optics consultant until joining Orbital Sciences Corporation in 2008. Since the early 1980s he has led numerous sensor studies and proposals that have resulted in polar and geosynchronous Earth observation and planetary exploration instruments. He managed SBRS’s mid-1990s Defense Meteorological Satellite Program (DMSP) Block 6 and Polar-orbiting Operational Environmental Satellite (POES) studies leading to Raytheon’s participation in the National Polar-orbiting Operational Environmental Satellite System (NPOESS), now the NASA/NOAA Joint Polar-orbiting Satellite System (JPSS). As Technical Director from 1996 to 2002, he led the Visible Infrared Imager/Radiometer Suite (VIIRS) design, leading to an award in 2000 following the Preliminary Design Review. From 2001 to 2006 he led SBRS’s proposal to win the NASA Glory Aerosol Polarimetry Sensor (APS) program and served as Technical Director through Preliminary and Critical Design Reviews, achieving the highest NASA quality ratings. At Orbital he authored the 2008 Geostationary Earth Orbit (GEO) staring wide field-of-view (WFOV) Commercially Hosted InfraRed Payload (CHIRP) proposal, garnering the largest unsolicited Air Force award in history, and served as CHIRP Chief Scientist until 2010. Since then, he has developed missile warning and Space Situational Awareness (SSA) architectures. He serves on two Society of Photo-Optical Instrumentation Engineers (SPIE) program committees and on the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA) Space Systems Technical Committee (SSTC). He received a Ph.D. in electrical and computer engineering at University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB) in 1980 under a Howard Hughes Doctoral Fellowship. He is a senior member of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE). He has published 80 papers on remote sensing and instrument design and served on five NRC committees, including the 2007 Decadal Study Weather Panel.
David A. Siegel is a Professor of Marine Science in the Geography Department and Director of the Earth Research Institute at the University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB). He joined the UCSB faculty in 1990 after one year
as a postdoctoral fellow at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution. Dr. Siegel is an interdisciplinary marine scientist. His research focuses on the assessment and functioning of aquatic ecosystems using the tools of an applied physicist: radiative transfer and fluid mechanics. He has published more than 100 refereed works in satellite ocean color remote sensing, marine bio-optics, and the coupling of ecological and ocean physical processes from basin- to micro-scales with application in problems including biogeochemical cycles, plankton ecology, and fisheries oceanography. Dr. Siegel is a Fellow of both the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the American Geophysical Union. Dr. Siegel is a member of the Earth Science Subcommittee of the NASA Advisory Committee and has been a member of several NASA Earth Science research teams, including Science Working Groups for the Aerosol-Cloud-Ecosystem (ACE) and Hyperspectral InfraRed Imager (HypsIRI) decadal survey missions. Dr. Siegel received his undergraduate degrees from the University of California, San Diego, in 1982 and his doctoral degree from the University of Southern California in 1988.
Cara Wilson is a research oceanographer for the Environmental Research Division at NOAA’s Southwest Fisheries Science Center. Dr. Wilson’s research interests are in using satellite data to examine bio-physical coupling in the surface ocean. Specifically, she is interested in determining the biological and physical causes of the large chlorophyll blooms that often develop in late summer in the oligotrophic Pacific near 30°N. Dr. Wilson earned a B.S. in oceanography from the University of Michigan in 1989 and a Ph.D. in oceanography from Oregon State University in 1997. Prior to joining NOAA in 2002, she worked at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center. Dr. Wilson has been a member of NOAA’s Satellite R&O (Research and Operations) task team, the Coastal Ocean Applications and Science Team (COAST), NOAA’s OCPOP (Ocean Color Product Oversight Panel), and served as the chair of NOAA’s ad hoc group on ocean color in 2008-2009. She is also the PI of the West Coast node of NOAA’s CoastWatch program.
STAFF
Claudia Mengelt is a senior program officer with the Ocean Studies Board. After completing her B.S. in aquatic biology at the University of California, Santa Barbara, she received her M.S. in biological oceanography from the College of Oceanic and Atmospheric Sciences at Oregon State University. Her master’s degree research focused on how chemical and physical parameters in the surface ocean affect Antarctic phytoplankton species composition and consequently impact biogeochemical cycles. She obtained her Ph.D. in marine sciences from the University of California, Santa Barbara, where she conducted research on the photophysiology of harmful algal species. She joined the full-time staff of the National Academies in fall 2005, following a fellowship in winter 2005. While with the Academies, she has worked on studies including the Analysis of Global Change Assessments (2007), Strategic Guidance for the NSF’s Support of Atmospheric Sciences (2007), Earth Observations from Space: The First 50 Years of Scientific Achievements (2007), Tsunami Warning and Preparedness (2010), and Adapting to the Impacts of Climate Change (2010).
Art Charo has been a Senior Program Officer at the NRC’s Space Studies Board since 1995. During this time, he has directed studies that have resulted in some 33 reports, notably the first NRC “decadal surveys” for solar and space physics (2002) and for Earth science and applications from space (2007). Dr. Charo received his Ph.D. in physics from Duke University in 1981 and was a post-doctoral fellow in chemical physics at Harvard University from 1982 to 1985. He then pursued his interests in national security and arms control at Harvard University’s Center for Science and International Affairs, where he where he was a fellow from 1985 to 1988. From 1988 to 1995, he worked as a senior analyst and study director in the International Security and Space Program in the Congressional Office of Technology Assessment (OTA). Dr. Charo is a recipient of a MacArthur Foundation Fellowship in International Security (1985-1987) and a Harvard-Sloan Foundation Fellowship (1987-1988). He was the 1988-1989 American Institute of Physics AAAS Congressional Science Fellow. His publications include research papers in molecular spectroscopy; reports for OTA on arms control, Earth remote sensing, and space policy; and a monograph, Continental Air Defense: A Neglected Dimension of Strategic Defense (University Press of America, 1990).
Heather Chiarello joined the U.S. National Academy of Sciences in July 2008. She graduated magna cum laude from Central Michigan University in 2007 with a B.S. in political science with a concentration in public administration. Ms. Chiarello is currently a senior program assistant with the Ocean Studies Board in the Division on Earth and Life Sciences, and also with the Committee on International Security and Arms Control in the Policy and Global Affairs Division of the National Academies. She is pursuing a Master’s degree in sociology and public policy analysis at The Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C.
Jeremy Justice was a senior program assistant with the Ocean Studies Board from October 2008 to July 2011. He earned a B.A. in international and area studies from the University of Oklahoma in 2008. He is currently a program coordinator at the International Foundation for Electoral Systems (IFES) in Washington, DC.
Emily Oliver was a program assistant with the Ocean Studies Board from October 2010 to May 2011. She graduated from Colgate University with Honors in Geography in 2010.
