Our Advisors

Winston E. Scott is a retired U.S. Navy Captain, aviator and two-time shuttle astronaut and currently serves as special assistant to the president at Florida Institute of Technology.  He entered Naval Aviation Officers Candidate School in 1973 and completed flight training and was designated a naval aviator in 1974. Scott later earned his Master of Science degree in aeronautical engineering with avionics. During his Navy career, Captain Scott served as a helicopter pilot with Helicopter Anti-Submarine Warfare Squadron Light Thirty-Three at NAS North Island, CA. flying the SH-2F helicopter. He later served a tour of duty as a fighter pilot with Fighter Squadron Eighty-Four at NAS Oceana, Virginia flying the F-14 Tomcat fighter/interceptor. He subsequently served as a production test pilot and engineering director at the Naval Aviation Depot at NAS Jacksonville, FL., as a research development test and evaluation (RDTE) pilot and Deputy Director of the Tactical Aircraft Systems Department in Warminster, Pennsylvania. As a RDTE pilot Scott was current in the F-14 Tomcat, the F/A-18 Hornet and the A-7 Corsair aircraft. He has accumulated more than 7,000 hours of flight time in more than 25 different military and civilian aircraft and more than 200 shipboard landings. Captain Scott was an associate instructor of electrical engineering at Florida A&M University and Florida Community College at Jacksonville.

Captain Scott was selected to become an astronaut by NASA in 1992. Serving as a mission specialist, he logged over 24 days in space; including 3 spacewalks totaling over 19 hours.

Nicole Stott is a veteran astronaut with two spaceflights and 104 days living and working in space on both the Space Shuttle and the International Space Station (ISS); including 3 Space Shuttle missions (STS128, STS129, STS133), ISS Expeditions 20 & 21, and one spacewalk. Nicole brought a small watercolor kit with her on her mission to the ISS and is the first astronaut artist to paint while there.  She is also a NASA Aquanaut and holds the Women’s World Record for saturation diving following her 18 day mission with the NEEMO9 crew on the Aquarius undersea habitat.

After 28 years with NASA, she has set off on her next adventure as an Artist. Through her artwork, she will uniquely share the awesome beauty she was blessed to experience through the windows of her spacecraft, and will continue to promote the amazing things we’re doing every day in space that benefit us all right here on Earth. Combining her artwork and spaceflight experience, she is also actively working to inspire student, educator, and general public interest in S.T.E.A.M. (Science, Technology, Engineering, Art, and Math) that comes wonderfully through the integration of Art and Science.

Dr. Yvonne Cagle’s medical training was sponsored by the Health Professions Scholarship Program, through which she received her commission as an officer with the United States Air Force. In April 1988, she became certified as a flight surgeon logging numerous hours in a diversity of aircraft. She was actively involved in mission support of aircraft providing medical support and rescue in a variety of aeromedical missions.

Selected by NASA as an astronaut in April 1996, she completed two years of training and evaluation, and is qualified for flight assignment as a mission specialist. Initially assigned to the Astronaut Office Operations Planning Branch, supporting Shuttle and Space Station, followed by a special assignment to NASA’s Ames Research Center. Yvonne is currently assigned as the lead ARC Astronaut Science Liaison and Strategic Relationships Manager for Google and other Silicon Valley Programmatic Partnerships. Yvonne has contributed on-going data to the Longitudinal Study on Astronaut Health, and served as a consultant for space telemedicine, traveled to Russia to establish international medical standards and procedures for astronauts, and conducted health screenings of Mir-18 consultants from the Russian Federation. Yvonne is a certified FAA Senior Aviation Medical Examiner and has been ACLS Instructor qualified.

Dr. Waleed Abdalati serves as the Director of the University of Colorado’s Earth Science and Observation Center, which carries out research and education activities on the use of remote sensing observations to understand the Earth.  Prior, Waleed was appointed NASA chief scientist on Jan. 3, 2011, serving as the principal adviser to NASA Administrator Charles Bolden on NASA science programs, strategic planning, and the evaluation of related investments. Dr. Abdalati is also a fellow of the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences at the University. His research has focused on the use of satellites and aircraft to understand how and why Earth’s ice cover is changing, and what those changes mean for life on our planet. He also has served as leader of the Ice Cloud and land Elevation Satellite-2 (ICESat-2) Science Definition Team and has led or participated in nine field and airborne campaigns in the Arctic and Antarctic.

Dr. Abdalati received a Bachelor of Science degree from Syracuse University in 1986, a Master of Science degree from the University of Colorado in 1991, and a Ph.D. from University of Colorado in 1996. Waleed has published more than 50 peer-reviewed papers, book chapters, and NASA-related technical reports, with approximately 1500 citations in the peer-reviewed literature. He has given featured lectures and keynote addresses to the United Nations, AIAA, SPIE, AGU, and various other professional and international organizations, as well as public lectures at The Smithsonian Institution, The American Museum of Natural History, and The Adler Planetarium. Waleed has received various awards and recognition, most notably the NASA Exceptional Service Medal and The Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers from the White House.

Sean Casey is a co-founder of the Silicon Valley Space Center (SVSC).  The SVSC integrates the innovative and entrepreneurial practices of Silicon Valley into the burgeoning NewSpace industry.  This includes the Valley’s practices for business acceleration, incubation, and angel level funding.  The SVSC enables entrepreneurial start-up or early-stage companies to commercialize products or service concepts for space, and helps entrepreneurs identify niches in NewSpace markets.  SVSC incorporates the Valley’s richness of technology, business, entrepreneurial finance, and educational leadership.

Dr. Sean Casey has been a Senior Scientist with USRA’s SOFIA program since 1997 and has served as the management and technical lead for SOFIA’s science instrument development program, lead for science instrument integration and commissioning, and science liaison for the review of system level requirements for SOFIA’s final operating capability. Dr. Casey’s work has been recognized as an example of NASA’s goal for “more efficient and cost effective methodologies to [instrument] design and construction…”. He is a co-author on over 34 science publications and has a PhD in Astrophysics from the University of Chicago and dual MBAs from the Berkeley Haas and Columbia Schools of Business.

Dr. Dave Fritts is IIAS’s Chief Scientist of Aeronomy (Project PoSSUM) and has worked in a number of areas of atmospheric dynamics extending from the stable boundary layer (SBL) into the thermosphere, acquiring broad experience with theoretical, modeling, and experimental activities. He has guided a number of experimental programs, including rocket campaigns in Alaska, Norway, Sweden, and Brazil, radar measurements on six continents, and multi-instrument field programs (see Synergistic activities above). He has installed MF or meteor radars at Hawaii, McMurdo, Rothera, Rarotonga, Tierra del Fuego (TdF), and King George Island (KGI), participated in the planning of the ALOMAR LiDAR/radar observatory in northern Norway, and suggested the formation and structure of the NSF-funded Consortium of Resonance and Rayleigh LiDARs (CRRL) within which he serves as PI for the ALOMAR sodium LiDAR. Dave also helped design and was an Interdisciplinary Scientist with the NASA TIMED satellite mission studying the dynamics and energetics of the middle atmosphere.

Dave holds a Ph.D. and an M.S. degree in physics from the University of Illinois and a B.A. in physics from Carleton College. He has been a professor of physics at the University of Alaska, Fairbanks, and a research professor of electrical and computer engineering at the University of Colorado at Boulder. He has over 200 publications; listed among top 1/2% of cited researchers by ISIhighlycited.com. He has served as the Associate Editor for the Journal of the Atmospheric Sciences (1991-2011) and the Journal of Geophysical Research (1994-1997). He has served as president of the International Commission on the Middle Atmosphere (ICMA) within IAMAS from 1992 to 1996 and as chairman of the Middle Atmosphere Continuous Upward Coupling of Wave Energy (UCWE) commission from 1989 to 1994.