Mr. Stephen Jurczyk became NASA’s associate administrator, the agency’s highest- ranking civil servant position, effective May, 2018. Prior to this assignment he was the associate administrator of the Space Technology Mission Directorate, effective since June, 2015. In this position he formulated and executed the agency’s Space Technology programs, focusing on developing and demonstrating transformative technologies for human and robotic exploration of the solar system in partnership with industry and academia.
He previously was Director at NASA’s Langley Research Center in Hampton, VA. Named to this position in May 2014, he headed NASA’s first field Center, which plays a critical role in NASA’s aeronautics research, exploration and science missions. Jurczyk served as Langley’s Deputy Center Director from August 2006 until his appointment as director.
Jurczyk began his NASA career in 1988 at Langley in the Electronic Systems Branch as a design and integration & test engineer developing several space-based Earth remote sensing systems. From 2002 to 2004 Jurczyk was director of engineering, and from 2004 to 2006 he was director of research and technology at Langley where he led the organizations’ contributions to a broad range of research, technology and engineering disciplines contributing to all NASA mission areas.
Jurczyk received several awards during his NASA career, including two NASA Outstanding Leadership Medals, the Presidential Rank Award for Meritorious Executive in 2006, and the Presidential Rank Award for Distinguished Executive in 2016 — the highest honors attainable for federal government leadership.
Jurczyk is a graduate of the University of Virginia where he received Bachelor of Science and Master of Science degrees in Electrical Engineering in 1984 and 1986. He is an associate fellow of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics.
Ernest Serrano is Senior Director of Engineering for MQ-1C Gray Eagle for General Atomics Aeronautical Systems, Inc. (GA-ASI), where he has overall technical responsibility for the development, production, and field support of the Army’s Gray Eagle Unmanned Aircraft System (UAS). The Gray Eagle program was GA-ASI’s first formal Program of Record when it was awarded in 2005 and has since fielded over 200 aircraft and flown over 700,000 hours in mostly overseas operations. Mr. Serrano has been with the Gray Eagle program since its inception and currently directs over 100 multi-disciplinary project and system engineers, while coordinating activities of matrixed functional engineering teams to execute the program.
During his tenure, the Gray Eagle program has won two Aviation Week Program Excellence awards for the development of the new Gray Eagle Extended Range and for superb logitics support of Gray Eagle systems in the field where accurate and timely engineering support is vital. Mr. Serrano also has had responsibility for Internal Research and Development programs that support the Gray Eagle system to include a new high efficiency diesel engine, new aircraft variants and payloads, and modernized capabilities to make Gray Eagle relevant in the emerging global multi-domain operations.
Mr. Serrano joined GA-ASI in 1994 as a software engineer on the company’s original software development team responsible for MQ-1 Predator and MQ-9 Predator B systems. He took on progressive positions of responsibility in software engineering and in 2006 became the software development manager for the Gray Eagle program. Under Mr. Serrano’s direction, the Gray Eagle software team implemented the first Automatic Takeoff and Landing System in the company that has logged over 150,000 take-offs and landings in the field and incorporated a Manned Unmanned Teaming (MUM-T) capability that allows interoperability between Gray Eagle and Apache helicopters for tactical weapons and reconnaissance operations.
After a successful Gray Eagle system Initial Operational Test & Evaluation in 2012, he transitioned to Gray Eagle Chief Engineer with overall engineering technical responsibilities for the program. He led the IRAD development of Gray Eagle Extended Range aircraft providing 40 hours of endurance to the Army and is currently leading the efforts to develop a new avionics, navigation, and datalink suite that will modernize the Gray Eagle fleet to meet new operation demands in contested environments.
Mr. Serrano holds a Bachelor’s degree in Mathematics-Computer Science from the University of California, San Diego (UCSD). He is married and has three children.
As one of the three founders and Managing Partners of PACE, Alexander Schneegans was instrumental in driving the enterprise from start-up to its current status as a trusted partner of leading aerospace organizations around the world. Alexander heads the business line Preliminary Design & Evaluation, which focuses on developing software solutions supporting the design and marketing of complex, highly engineered products such as aircraft and their sub-systems. Alexander earned his engineering degree in 1992 from Technische Universität Berlin, Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics, where he also served as a research assistant before starting his own company.
Claudia Mowery is Vice President of USAF programs, responsible for managing all domestic MQ-9A US Air Force, Air Force Special Operations Command, and Air National Guard programs. Claudia joined GA-ASI in January 2007 and has been in the unmanned aircraft industry since 2001.
While at GA-ASI, Claudia has held several positions including: Program Director of USAF Block 50 Ground Control Station responsible for managing development and test.
Technical Director / Chief Engineer of the Block 50 GCS. Claudia was responsible for successful technical design reviews: Preliminary Design Review (Apr 2016) and Critical Design Review (May 2017) as well as Contractor Testing and First flight of the Block 50 GCS (2019).
Integration Manager for the Army’s flagship MQ-1C Gray Eagle program ($100M Acquisition Category ACAT-1D). Claudia was directly responsible for the integration and testing of the system in preparation for an Initial Operational Test and Evaluation (IOT&E) and a Follow-on Test and Evaluation (FOT&E). Both of these milestone test events were successfully executed in 2012 and 2015 respectively and resulted in Full Rate Production (FRP) for the program.
Prior to 2007, Claudia worked at Northrop Grumman where she held various positions as an Engineer: Mass Properties Engineer, Mechanical Subsystems Engineer (fuel, bleed-air, hydraulic), Environmental Control Systems Engineer, and Guidance Navigation and Controls Engineer on the RQ-4A and RQ-4B Global Hawk program for 5 years.
Ms. Mowery earned her Mechanical Engineering degree from San Diego State University with the distinguished honor of “Summa Cum Laude” and Valedictorian of the College of Engineering (2001). She also holds a Systems Engineering Certificate from the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena (2004) and is a graduate from the University of California San Diego’s Executive Perspective for Scientists and Engineers Program (2016).
Claudia was recently honored by AIAA for Outstanding Contribution to Aerospace Engineering (2019) and San Diego Magazine’s Rising Star (2018).
AIAA Fellow and chair, Human-Machine Teaming TC
John-Paul Clarke is a professor and the Ernest Cockrell, Jr. Memorial Chair at University of Texas, Austin (UT Austin). Prior to joining the faculty at UT Austin, Clarke was a faculty member at the Georgia Institute of Technology, the vice president of Strategic Technologies at United Technologies Corporation (now Raytheon), a faculty member at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), and a researcher at Boeing and NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL). Clarke has also co-founded multiple companies, most recently Universal Hydrogen, a company dedicated to the development of a comprehensive carbon-free solution for aviation. Clarke is a leading expert in aircraft trajectory prediction and optimization, especially as it pertains to the development of flight procedures that reduce the environmental impact of aviation, and in the development and use of stochastic models and optimization algorithms to improve the efficiency and robustness of aircraft, airline, airport, and air traffic operations. Clarke is particularly interested in leveraging his expertise to enable increasingly autonomous aircraft-enabled mobility, especially in urban and regional settings. Clarke received an Sc.D. in aeronautics and astronautics from MIT.
AIAA Associate Fellow and member of the Talent and Leadership Development Committee; Region IV Director
Kate is a Senior Systems Engineer in the Space Payload and Ground Systems Division at Northrop Grumman. She has a BS in Systems Engineering from Washington University in St. Louis, an MS in Aerospace Engineering from the University of Maryland, and previously worked for nine years at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory on space and high-altitude balloon missions for NASA. She is a lifetime member of AIAA and has been active in various roles across the institute including former chair of the Space Automation and Robotics Technical Committee (SARTC), local section leadership, SPACE forum organizing committee, SMG and New Initiatives Subcommittee, SciTech keynote speaker, and most recently on the Talent and Leadership Development Committee. In her spare time Kate enjoys boating and crabbing on the Chesapeake Bay and coaches Track and Field at her local high school.
AIAA Fellow and member of the Talent and Leadership Development Committee
Dr. Jeff Puschell is an internationally recognized Ph.D. scientist engineer with more than 30 years of comprehensive knowledge and experience in successfully developing state-of-the-art earth remote sensing satellite systems. He has been Principal Investigator, Program Manager, Chief Engineer, Chief Scientist, Technical Director or Co-Investigator on 15+ major projects sponsored by governments and private industry in space-based remote sensing, laser-based systems and observational astrophysics, including leadership roles in space-based imaging and remote sensing systems such as MTSAT-1R, VIIRS and CrIS. He is a Principal Fellow of the Raytheon Company, an honor awarded to less than 0.1% of the technical personnel in the Company and Chief Scientist for Space Systems. In their Principal Fellowship award statement, Raytheon’s executive management described Puschell as “… one of the world’s leading space-based remote sensing systems engineers…well known and highly regarded throughout the international remote sensing community as an innovative and insightful remote sensing system architect with exceptionally broad technical skill and knowledge…trusted by Customers … active in working directly with them to translate their remote sensing needs into system architectures and designs.” He is currently Principal Investigator for the NASA-funded Advanced Technology Land Imaging Spectroradiometer (ATLIS) Prototype development, a next generation land imager suitable for small satellites.
Peter Montgomery is the Jacobs, Director of Commercialization on the NASA Kennedy Space Center (KSC) Test and Operations Support Contract (TOSC), a contract providing the overall management and implementation of KSC ground systems capabilities, flight hardware processing, and launch operations. Peter has almost three decades of aerospace engineering and senior leadership experience with Jacobs with expertise in areas such as rocket propulsion, space operations, commercial and strategic launch systems, space and missiles ground testing, modeling and simulation, and project and program management. He is an American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA) Associate Fellow, and a former AIAA Board Member (Director, Technical, Space and Missiles), and he currently serves as Chair of the AIAA Talent and Leadership Development Committee, leads the organization of the AIAA International Space Planes and Hypersonic Systems and Technologies Conference, and serves on the Executive Steering Committee for the AIAA Defense Forum, while remaining active in the AIAA Space Transportation Technical Committee which he formerly chaired. Peter also currently serves locally as Vice-Chair on the National Space Club Florida Committee Board of Directors and is an active member of the United Way of Brevard County Board of Directors. He has a B.S., Aerospace Engineering, from Boston University and a M.S., Aerospace Engineering, from the University of Tennessee.
AIAA Senior Member, member of the Talent and Leadership Development Committee and Hypersonic Technology & Aerospace Planes TC, and AIAA DEFENSE Forum Technical Committee Chair
