IEEE Buenaventura Section Fall Celebration Dinner

THE SPACE TRAVELER’S HITCHHIKER GUIDE

Our IEEE Buenaventura Section Fall Celebration Dinner

Nov 5, 6:00 pm to 9:00 pm

Discounts for IEEE members
Seating limited to the first 230 reservations.

Location: The First Neighborhood Community Center
31830 Village Center Road
Westlake Village, CA 91361

Program

At this sit down dinner, we will start with a short safari excursion of the sky by Space Entrepreneur PAM HOFFMAN.
We will honor a group of 50 very special IEEE members who are recipient of legacy IEEE pins.
And for the piece de resistance, we will meet AN AMAZING PANEL OF PLANETARY SCIENTISTS FROM NASA – JPL for a conversation moderated by Dr. Rosaly M. Lopes.

We will transport ourselves forward in time when we can travel and visit many planets of our galaxy. Our panelists will share their thoughts about what they would write in a “Hitchhiker Guide” for readers with the ambition to visit the largest planets of our galaxy.

Rosaly M. Lopes, Ph.D., will be the Panel Moderator. Dr. Lopes is the Manager & Senior Research Scientist, at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Planetary Science. She joined JPL as National Research Council Fellow in 1989 and, in 1991, became a member of the Galileo Flight Project, a mission to Jupiter. She was responsible for observations of Jupiter’s volcanic moon Io from 1996 to 2001, using Galileo’s Near-infrared mapping spectrometer. During this exciting period of her career, she discovered 71 active volcanoes on Io, a moon of Jupiter, for which she was honored in the 2006 edition of the Guinness Book of World Records as the discoverer of the most active volcanoes anywhere.

Dr. Lopes is currently a member of the Cassini Flight Project, with the role of Investigation Scientist on the Cassini Titan Radar Mapper Team. She is studying the geology of Titan, Saturn’s largest moon, particularly its strange ice volcanoes. She chairs the Outer Planets Task Group of the International Astronomical Union’s working group for planetary system nomenclature, and is therefore responsible for overseeing the naming of features on the outer planets and satellites. Dr. Lopes has written more than one hundred peer-reviewed scientific publications. In addition to her science work, she is a strong supporter of education, diversity, and outreach, nationally and internationally. She has been active in the media, giving hundreds of interviews, and has been featured on over twenty TV documentaries and shows in the US alone, including for National Geographic, Discovery, Science Channel, PBS, The Weather Channel and History channel. She has published seven books, “The Volcano Adventure Guide” (Cambridge University Press, 2005; Portuguese translation 2008), “Volcanic Worlds: Exploring the Solar System Volcanoes” (Praxis-Springer, 2004; co-edited by Tracy Gregg), “Io After Galileo” (Praxis-Springer, 2007, co-edited by John Spencer), “Alien Volcanoes” (John Hopkins Press, 2008, co-authored by Michael Carroll), “Volcanoes: A Beginner’s Guide” (Oneworld Publishing Co., UK, 2011, also a book on tape), “Modeling Volcanic Processes” (Cambridge University Press, 2013, co-edited with S. Fagents and T. Gregg) and “Alien Seas” (Praxis, 2013, co-edited with Michael Carroll). She was honored to have Sally Ride write the Foreword for “Volcanic Worlds”, the first planetary science book to have all its chapters written by female scientists, and to have Arthur C. Clarke and James Cameron write the Forewords for, respectively, “Alien Volcanoes” and “Alien Seas”.

In 2005, Dr. Lopes won the prestigious American Astronomical Society’s Carl Sagan medal for excellence in communicating science to the public. Among her other awards are the Lowell Thomas award for exploration from The Explorers Club (2014), the Wings Women of Discovery award (2009), the NASA Exceptional Service Medal (2007), the Women at Work Medal of Excellence (2006), the Latinas in Science medal from the Comision Feminil Mexicana Nacional (1991), and the 1997 Woman of the Year in Science and Technology Award from the Miami-based GEMS.

Laurie Barge is a Research Scientist, Jet Propulsion Laboratory Planetary Chemistry & Astrobiology. She is researching hydrothermal vents, water-rock interfaces, and chemical energy for life to understand habitability of icy worlds and early Mars. She is also looking at the chemistry / electrochemistry of iron minerals (especially iron oxyhydroxides and iron sulfides): organic interaction, redox reactions, implications for Mars habitability and the emergence of life on Earth. She is also researching self-organization in chemical, geological, and prebiotic systems: from inorganic self-assembly to the emergence of metabolism.

Luther Beegle, Ph.D., is the group supervisor for the Instrument Development and Spectroscopy Research Element at Jet Propulsion Laboratory. He is an experimental astrophysicist by training and has extensive experience developing and designing instrumentation such as organic molecule extract techniques, charged particle optics, ion mobility spectrometers, and cylindrical ion trap mass spectrometers for space and terrestrial applications. In addition, a current area of research is how robotic sample acquisition techniques physically and chemically alter the volatile components of samples on current and future in situ missions. Dr. Beegle has earned a Ph.D., Astrophysics University of Alabama at Birmingham (1997), an M.S., Physics University of Alabama at Birmingham (1995), and a B.S., Physics/Astronomy, University of Delaware (1990).

Michael Russell, Ph.D., is the Planetary Chemistry and Astrobiology at Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology. Michael Russell’s research into the emergence of life and early evolution will help determine whether earth alone supports life in our universe. He theorizes that oxygenic photosynthesis, acting upon iron sulfide deposits in volcanic, oceanic vents, allowed the precursors of protein and RNA to form. Dr. Russell’s study of 360-million-year-old mineral deposits in Ireland led to the insight that iron sulphite cells may have provided three-dimensional molds for the first cell walls. His groundbreaking research led to a tour of North America as the Society of Economic Geologists’ distinguished lecturer in 1984. In June 2009, Dr. Russell was awarded the William Smith Medal from the Geological Society of London for his lifetime contribution to applied geology.
Since 2006, Dr. Russell has tested his theory as a NASA Senior Research Fellow at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena. In addition, a number of ongoing international collaborations have bolstered his original narrative of the hydrothermal origin of life as a result of geological, geochemical and tectonic forces. Russell has been featured on two BBC programs, including “Origin of Life” and “Life on Mars.” Russell did his undergraduate work at the University of London in Geology and Chemistry (1963), took his PhD at University of Durham on Mineral Deposit Geochemistry (1973), taught at the University of Glascow, and was a visiting Professor at the University of Grenoble.

Anezina Solomonidou, Ph.D., is a Planetary Geologist at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. She specializes in the study of the general geology and more specifically in volcanology and spectroscopy of the icy moons of the outer solar system. She studies the nature of the surface and the intercorrelation between the surface, the atmosphere and the interior of planetary bodies. Since 2014, she is a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) working with Dr. Rosaly Lopes. She holds collaborations with various scientists and institutions from all over the world such as the Observatory of Paris, the German Aerospace Center (DLR), the Lunar and Planetary Laboratory (LPL) etc. Dr. Solomonidou has a PhD in Astronomy and Astrophysic, Observatoire de Paris – LESIA, Paris, France (co-tutelle) (2013), an MSC in Geosciences – Planetary Geology, University College London (2008), and a BS in Geology, University of Patras (2007).

Mark Swain, Ph.D., is the Group Supervisor, Jet Propulsion Laboratory Exoplanet Discovery and Science. He researches how to characterize the observations of exoplanets, the environments in which they form, and the development of techniques and new instrumentation for high-dynamic-range exoplanet spectroscopy. Dr Swain’s goal is to eventually characterize exoplanets in the habitable zone. He has been exploring the following three questions: 1) are there observable, systematic metallicity differences in the hot Jovian exoplanets, and what does this reveal about formation scenarios? What role does water have in governing the atmospheric radiation balance in exoplanet atmospheres? And What are the differences between the dayside and nightside on hot Jovian worlds? Dr. Swain earned a Ph.D., Physics and Astronomy from the University of Rochester (1996), an M.A., Physics from the University of Rochester (1992), and a B.A., Physics, from the University of Virginia (1989).

We invite industry members to join us during the networking opening session and mix with other members. We have free “exhibit” space if you would like to bring brochures, product demos or poster.
Our ultimate objective is to start a cross-university student branch in Ventura County that optimally will be headquartered in CSU Channel Islands. CUCSI is launching a 4 year engineering program in Spring of 2016.