Biographies
Dr. James L. Burch
James Burch was born on November 28, 1942 in San Antonio Texas. He went on to get his B.S. in Physics at St. Mary’s University in 1964 and later a Ph.D. in Space Science at Rice University in 1968. Dr. Burch moved on after receiving his PhD to become a Captain in the United States Army from 1968 until1971. He worked with NASA from 1971 up to 1977 when he started working for Southwest Research Institute (SwRI) in San Antonio Texas. Dr. Burch is currently the Vice President of the Instrumentation and Space Research Division at SwRI. He is the Principal Investigator for the MMS SMART mission.
Mr. Bill Gibson
Bill Gibson received his B.S. in Engineering Science at the Centenary College of Louisiana in 1968. Mr. Gibson did some graduate work in Engineering and Electrical Engineering at the Universities of Florida and Houston from the years 1969 to 1974. Mr. Gibson has experience in managing projects involving the development of scientific instruments and different systems on Space Shuttles, satellites, and rockets. He has manages such projects as the SEPAC Interface Unit for Spacelab Mission I, High Altitude Plasma instrument for the Dynamics Explorer Satellite, and the Fast Ion Mass Spectrometer for the Centaur Rocket Project. He has worked for companies such as Lockheed Electronics Inc. Autometrics Co., and is currently working at Southwest Research Institute.
Mr. Ron Black
Ron Black is the Payload Systems Manager on the recent MMS SMART mission. Mr. Black received his B.S. in Electrical Engineering from Auburn University in 1979. Mr. Black has experience as project manager, systems engineering, digital hardware/software design, integrating, testing and calibrating space science flight instruments. Mr. Black has worked at NASA/Marshall Space Flight Center as well as Southwest research Institute. He has worked with Los Alamos, the Royal Institute of Technology and Southwest Research Institute.
Dr. Roy B. Torbert
Roy Torbert was born on July 5, 1949 in Columbus Georgia. He received his B.A. in Physics from Princeton University in 1971 and his PhD in Physics from the University of California, Berkley in 1979. He has received numerous awards, such as the National Science Foundation Fellow Award from 1971-1975 and the Von Braun Fellow Award from the University of Huntsville in 1985.
Dr. Thomas E. Moore
Thomas Moore is the Fields Plasma team lead on the MMS SMART mission. He received his honors B.S. in Physics and M.A.T. in Education from the University of New Hampshire in 1970 and 1971. He later received his PhD in Astrogeophysics from the University of Colorado in 1978. Dr. Moore’s interests are in the heating and acceleration of ionospheric plasmas, their escape into space and further acceleration of these plasmas to form unstable plasma sheets. He has been on multiple suborbital as well as orbital missions with NASA. Dr. Moore has been working with NASA since 1983 and is currently the Head of the Interplanetary Physics Branch.
Mr. David Young
David Young was the leader of the Plasma Composition team on the MMS SMART mission. He received his B.S. in Physics from the University of Louisiana, Lafayette in 1964 and his M.S. in Space Science from Rice in 1967. He also went on to receive a PhD in Space Science from Rice University in 1970 and a Venia Docendi in Space Physics from the University of Bern in Switzerland in 1980. His primary interests are the chemical composition of solar plasmas and the development of instrumentation required for their measurement. He was awarded the International Space Science Institute’s Heinrich Greinacher Prize in 2002.
Mr. Michael Hesse
Michael Hesse is the Theory and modeling team lead on the MMS SMART mission. Dr. Hesse received his Diplom Physiker (M.S.) in Physics and his Dr. rer. nat. from Ruhr-University Bochum in Germany in 1985 and 1988. His interests are in the numerical modeling of magnetotail dynamics, plasmoid formation and evolution and the analytical theory of three-dimensional magnetic reconnection. He has worked with Los Alamos Laboratories, Hughes ST Systems Corporation and NASA. He is currently with NASA as an Astrophysicist in the Electrodynamics Branch.
Prof. Patricia Reiff
Patricia Reiff is the Education and Public Outreach team lead for the MMS SMART mission. She is a Professor in the Department of Physics and Astronomy and the Director of the Rice Space Institute at Rice University. She focuses her research on space plasma physics, more specifically magnetospheric physics. She worked on past SwRI projects such as the IMAGE magnetospheric imaging mission, which launched March 2000.