People Category: Monday SciTech Sessions

Dr. Thomas Zill is the Head of Air Vehicle Concepts and deputy head of the DLR Institute of System Architectures in Aeronautics in Hamburg, Germany. He earned a diploma (Dipl.-Ing.) in automotive engineering and shortly after a diploma in aerospace engineering from the University of Technology of Braunschweig, Germany. He has received a PhD degree in Aerospace Sciences from the University of Technology Hamburg for his work in the field of collaborative multidisciplinary design optimization for air vehicle design.

Prior to joining to DLR he worked as a Senior Consultant in Program Transformation Management for Capgemini Consulting, where he focused on the digital transformation in supply chain management in the European aerospace sector. He is a certified PMI project management professional (PMP) and has 10+ years of experience in the field of vehicle design and optimization. At DLR his work focuses on the coordination of research projects in the frame of Clean Sky 2 with focus on the mitigation of climate impact of aviation.

John Murray joined NASA in November 2000. He currently serves as the NASA Disaster Program’s associate program manager, and the program’s lead response and risk reduction coordinator at NASA’s Langley Research Center. He recently also served as the deputy program applications lead of the NASA Cyclone Global Navigation Satellite System (CYGNSS) mission, which was completed in December 2018.

Mr. Murray’s research has focused on natural disasters, aviation weather, coastal inundation, and the volcanic ash threat to aviation. He initiated and has overseen the Disasters Program’s research on coastal inundation and recurrent flooding due to sea level rise and land subsidence in the lower Chesapeake Bay region.

Mr. Murray previously served as the senior atmospheric scientist for the NASA Aviation Safety Program, Atmospheric Environment Safety Technologies Project. From 2002 through 2011, he worked as deputy program manager for the NASA Science Mission Directorate’s Applied Science Program weather applications research, and was lead scientist for weather applications until 2011 as project manager for the NASA Advanced Satellite Aviation-weather Products Project. He was concurrently the NASA Aviation Safety Program’s project meteorologist in support of atmospheric basic-state measurement, and in-flight icing and aviation turbulence sensor development and validation efforts for its Tropospheric Airborne Meteorological Detection and Reporting (TAMDAR) Project.

Mr. Murray served as a NASA principal investigator for the 2003 Atlantic THORPEX Regional Campaign (ATReC) and the 2004 Pacific THORPEX Observing System Test (P-TOST). THORPEX — The Observing system Research and Predictability Experiment — was an international research program established by the World Meteorological Organization to accelerate improvements in the utility and accuracy of high impact weather forecasts up to two weeks in advance.

John has been awarded the NASA Exceptional Service Medal, the NASA Langley Research Center’s Paul F. Holloway Award for Technology Transfer, and three separate group achievement awards.

Mr. Murray received a B.S. in Oceanography from the Florida Institute of Technology in 1979 and an M.S. in Meteorology and Oceanography from the Naval Postgraduate School in 1987. He was commissioned a meteorology and oceanography officer in the U.S. Navy in May 1980, and served in a wide variety of senior technical and supervisory positions including as a certified weather forecaster. Mr. Murray’s last assignment before retirement from active duty was as director of meteorology and oceanography for the U.S. Atlantic Fleet Submarine Force.

Rhiannan Price leads the Sustainable Development Practice at Maxar Technologies and collaborates with public and private sector partners across the development and humanitarian spectrum. She focuses on accelerating use of our space-based technology in support of the UN Sustainable Development Goals. Rhiannan also serves on the Applied Sciences Advisory Committee for NASA, The Chicago Council’s Global Task Force on Food Security, and the Technology Advisory Board for the Office of the Prosecutor for the International Criminal Court. Prior to joining Maxar, Rhiannan worked at a small tech firm specializing in international agriculture and served in the Peace Corps. She has lived in Uganda, Tanzania, and Dominica and speaks four languages. Rhiannan has a Masters in International Human Rights from the Korbel School at University of Denver where she was a Boren Fellow.

Dr. Gijs de Boer is a Research Scientist at the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences at the University of Colorado Boulder. His primary research revolves around the development and deployment of innovative observing technologies to measure the Earth system. This includes unmanned aerial vehicles and surface observing systems, with an emphasis on difficult to reach locations. This work has taken him to the Arctic, tropics and areas of complex terrain to lead field campaign efforts aiming to improve our understanding of the atmospheric processes supporting clouds, aerosols, precipitation and the surface energy budget, and the interactions between them. He has worked to integrate observations with numerical weather prediction, including efforts to improve numerical parameterizations and evaluate model performance. His work has resulted in being awarded the 2013 Presidential Early Career Award in Science and Engineering by President Barack Obama, and has been recognized by the leadership positions he holds in the Arctic science community, including acting as a team co-lead for the Interagency Arctic ResearchPolicy Committee (IARPC), as a US Representative to the International Arctic Science Committee (IASC)Atmosphere Working Group, and as a co-lead for the US Department of Energy (DOE) AtmosphericSystems Research High Latitude Processes Working Group. He is currently the site scientist for two majorDOE-managed observatories in northern Alaska and serves on the National Center for Atmospheric Research(NCAR) Observing Facilities Assessment Panel (OFAP). Finally, he has served on the organizing committees for a variety of international meetings, including acting as chair for the International Society forAtmospheric Research using Remotely-piloted Aircraft, organizing a repeating session on the use ofUnmanned Aerial Systems in Atmospheric Research at the American Geophysical Union fall meeting, a session on Observing with autonomous vehicles in polar regions at the Arctic Science Summit Week and assisting with the organization of a recently completed forum on Engineering and Arctic Science convened by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).

Brian German is Director of the Georgia Tech Center for Urban and Regional Air Mobility (CURAM) and the National Institute of Aerospace (NIA) Langley Associate Professor in the Georgia Tech School of Aerospace Engineering. He specializes in configuration design of electric aircraft, battery electric propulsion modeling, and operations research problems for innovative scheduled and on-demand air services. His work focuses primarily on new types of electric regional aircraft and eVTOL aircraft for urban air mobility. Prof. German is a founding member and former Chair (2014-2016) of the AIAA Transformational Flight Program Committee, which was chartered to explore the opportunities of emerging aircraft electric propulsion and autonomy technologies, and he is a member of the AIAA Aircraft Electric Propulsion and Power Working Group. Prof. German received the NSF CAREER award in 2012, and he is an Associate Fellow of AIAA.