Amit Seal Ami (William & Mary)
Joint Commission on Technology and Science

Jennifer Bertollo (Virginia Tech)
State Council of Higher Education for Virginia

Denise Daniels (Virginia State University)
Office of the Secretary of Education

Frankie Edwards (Virginia Tech)
Virginia Department of Behavioral Health and Developmental Services, Division of the Chief Clinical Officer

Alissa Ganser (Virginia Tech)
Office of Senator Jennifer McClellan

Xu Han (George Mason University)
Virginia Department of Behavioral Health and Developmental Services, Office of Recovery Services

Nathan Holland (Old Dominion University)
Virginia Port Authority

Alie Lepp (University of Virginia)
Virginia Marine Resources Commission

Kyle Mason (Virginia Commonwealth University)
Office of Senator Ghazala Hashmi

Elena Meyer (Virginia Commonwealth University)
Virginia Department of Environmental Quality

Nick Minster (George Mason University)
Virginia Biotechnology Association

Lacee Savage (Norfolk State University)
Virginia Department of Transportation

Casie Slaybaugh (Virginia Commonwealth University)
Virginia Board for People with Disabilities

Hazel Sun (University of Virginia)
Virginia Department of Forestry

Yezi Yang (Virginia Tech)
Office of Delegate Sally Hudson

 

Virginia Academy Member Wins Soldier-Citizen Award

 
There are good reasons that few young girls in the 1970s set their sights on becoming astronauts. Until NASA introduced its first astronauts to the public in 1959, there had simply been no such occupation. More importantly, there were no role models for women—every one of the Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo astronauts were male—and girls were not encouraged to study science or engineering.
 
But Pamela Melroy not only decided at age 11 to become an astronaut, but she also succeeded. Melroy piloted Space Shuttle flights in 2000 and 2002, played a critical role in the investigation of the Columbia disaster, and, in 2007, became the second woman to command a Space Shuttle mission. All told, she logged over 38 days in space. After leadership roles at Lockheed Martin, the Federal Aviation Administration, and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), she returned to NASA in 2021 as deputy administrator. That same year, she was elected to the National Academy of Engineering.
 
Good Fortune and Fortitude
 
In many ways, Melroy was fortunate. Her father’s enthusiasm for the space program was contagious. On active duty in the Air Force, he assembled the whole family to watch the Moon landing in 1969 and recorded the broadcast audio on a reel-to-reel tape recorder so that they could listen to it whenever they wanted. “Within a year of that first landing mission, I was telling everyone I wanted to be an astronaut,” Melroy recalls. “For me, the idea of exploration, of going somewhere no one had gone before, was compelling.”
 
Both her parents fully supported her aspirations, giving her the confidence to proceed. And as Melroy notes, timing was in her favor. “Women were finally allowed to fly in the Air Force when I was in high school. I was very fortunate to be born at a time when doors kept opening ahead of me.”
 
Equally important, Melroy has the temperament and intellect that enabled her to accomplish what she set out to do. She is disciplined and tenacious, a planner who envisioned the milestones she needed to reach to become an astronaut. And her love of learning—the excitement and deep satisfaction she feels encountering and mastering new fields—smoothed her path to those milestones. No wonder Melroy is fond of an adage attached to the wall at DARPA: “The best way to predict the future is to create it.”
 
Combining Planning and Follow-Through
 
Melroy’s approach to her college career is an early example of the care and thoughtfulness of her planning. Noting that almost every astronaut in the first three spaceflight programs had been a test pilot, she secured an Air Force scholarship to attend Wellesley, making flight school a possibility. She majored in physics and astronomy, thinking “maybe I should know something about the place I’m going to visit.”
 
But practical considerations were not her only motivation. She loved astronomy. “At the urging of my advisor, I wrote an astronaut asking him advice on selecting a major,” she says. “He told me I should pick any STEM field that inspired me. He reasoned that if I were doing something I really loved, I would work harder and more likely become good at it whether I made it into the Astronaut Office or not.” She used the year between graduation and flight training to pursue her interests further, earning a master’s in Earth and planetary science from MIT.
 
“In truth, I wasn’t initially sure about flying, but when I lifted off from the runway for the first time, I knew this was for me,” she says. Up until this point, Melroy had focused on academics. Now, she had to master an operational skillset. “As a pilot, you have to make good decisions in fairly short periods of time,” she says. “You have to be highly observational, pragmatic about what you are seeing, and able to compartmentalize your emotions when something goes wrong. It was an incredible challenge.”
 
Melroy not only successfully completed her flight training, but she also progressed through a series of rigorous assessments that culminated in her being selected as a test pilot. Before retiring from the Air Force in 2007, Melroy had logged more than 6,000 flight hours in more than 50 different aircraft. She is a veteran of Operation Desert Shield/Desert Storm in Kuwait and Operation Just Cause in Panama, with more than 200 combat and combat support hours.
 
Making Discoveries that Save Lives.
 
Although Melroy cherishes her hours flying doors-off in a Piper Cub, she feels the most interesting airplanes are not those that are easiest to fly but that best accomplish their missions. And for her, the Space Shuttle stands out: “When you are coming back through the atmosphere, you have the sense that you are flying in the highest, fastest airplane ever built, which of course you are. It’s thrilling.”
 
After her first two shuttle flights as pilot, Melroy was named to the Columbia Reconstruction Team as the lead for the crew module and served as deputy project manager for the Columbia crew survival investigation team. “It was very difficult for everyone on the project,” she says. “Essentially, we were reliving the last five to 10 minutes of people who were friends.”
 
Two things helped her. The first was the emotional compartmentalization she learned from her experience as a pilot. And the second was her desire to master the array of disciplines required for her to lead her team and make a difference. “Looking back at that now, the work we did on that project was as close as I have ever gotten in my career to doing foundational work that would qualify for a PhD,” she says. “It was an amazing experience to be discovering things that would help people stay alive in the future.” When she was selected to command STS—120, she tailored her crew’s training to the lessons she learned. “I had done an incredible deep dive, and I was determined to apply the insights we gained to keeping my crew alive,” Melroy says.
 
Envisioning the Future
 
Now back at NASA as the agency’s second in command, Melroy has a broad mandate. In 2021, she devoted a large portion of her time to refining the agency’s Moon to Mars strategy, consulting with stakeholders, articulating its framework, and communicating it clearly. She is also working with the NASA chief scientist and chief climate advisor on NASA’s climate strategy. Among other initiatives, the agency has almost forty Earth-observing satellites in orbit or being planned.
 
In addition, Melroy is concentrating on workforce issues. “The industry is changing rapidly,” she says. “We want to make sure we are prepared for the exciting work we will be doing over the next 10, 20, 30 years. We are very focused on investments we need to make in our workforce.” This includes making the agency more welcoming to women and underrepresented groups. “I succeeded as a woman in the sciences, in the Air Force, and at NASA, in part, because of my intensity, but you shouldn’t have to be that single-minded to be successful,” she says.
 
One the lessons she learned as a pilot and mission commander from talking to other crews was the importance of diversity. Over and over, her colleagues stressed that diversity of thought was critical when solving problems that no one anticipated—and that having crew members with different backgrounds as well as different technical skills was essential. “We need to make sure that NASA is not simply diverse but inclusive,” she says, “so that everyone feels free to speak up when they have a contribution to make,” she says.
 
Melroy’s approach to leading the agency is as finely tuned and carefully curated as her technical skills. Leadership has been an integral part of her education since her early days as an Air Force officer. Although she is an avid reader of foundational books in the field, she considers it a discipline that must be practiced to get better. She believes that operational and organizational leadership provide the critical foundation for the longer-term strategic leadership that is especially important for a future-oriented organization like NASA. “I’ve spent my whole life thinking at least five years ahead, and I love doing that,” she says. “There’s nothing like the excitement of envisioning the future and then driving toward it.”

Dr. John L. Anderson
 

Dr. Clancy is a senior vice president at MITRE where he serves as general manager of MITRE Labs and chief futurist.  He leads a world-class team of over 4,200 researchers and is responsible for sparking innovative disruption, accelerating risk-taking and discovery, and delivering real-time technology capabilities and execution through the company’s laboratories, solution platforms, and MITRE Fellows program.

Before joining MITRE in 2019, Dr. Clancy served as the Bradley Distinguished Professor in Cybersecurity at Virginia Tech and executive director of the Hume Center for National Security and Technology. There, he led Virginia Tech’s research and experiential learning programs in defense and intelligence.  He started his career at the National Security Agency, filling a variety of research, engineering, and operations roles, with a focus on wireless communications.

With Dr. Clancy industrial and academy experience, he has been a major advocate for a new national-level effort on science and technology innovation.  In one of his white papers, entitled “A Horizon Strategy for Science and Technology Innovation,” Dr. Clancy advocated for a new national-level effort to create synergy between government, industry, and academic activities to holistically address the nation’s most critical science and technology priorities – while safeguarding the intellectual property, privacy rights, and autonomy of all participants and stakeholders.

Dr. Clancy holds a doctorate in computer science from the University of Maryland, College Park.  Dr. Clancy is an IEEE Fellow.

Dr. Ronald D. Fricker. Jr.

Dr. Fricker is the Vice Provost for Faculty Affairs at Virginia Tech and a Professor of Statistics.  He joined Virginia Tech in 2015 as the Head of the Department of Statistics and served as the Interim Dean of the College of Science.  Prior to Virginia Tech, he was a faculty member in the Operations Research Department of the Naval Postgraduate School.


Dr. Fricker’s research is focused on studying the performance of various statistical methods for use in disease surveillance and statistical process control methodologies more generally.  He is the author of two books: Introduction to Statistical Methods for Biosurveillance published by Cambridge University Press and, most recently, he co-authored a book published at the outset of the coronavirus pandemic entitled Monitoring the Health of Populations by Tracking Disease Outbreaks: Saving Humanity from the Next Plague. This book served as the discussion topic at the Virginia Bar Association annual Baliles Luncheon in July sponsored by the Virginia Academy.

Dr. Fricker is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, a Fellow of the American Statistical Association, and an Elected Member of the International Statistical Institute.  He is also member of the National Academies’ Board on Mathematical Sciences and Analytics.

Dr. Fricker holds a Ph.D. from The George Washington University.

Dr. Magnus is the Principal at AstroPlanetview, LLC and a part-time Professor of the Practice at the Georgia Institute of Technology, Prior to joining Georgia Tech, she was the Deputy Director of Engineering in the Office of the Secretary of Defense Research and Engineering. She also served as the Executive Director of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA), the world’s largest technical society dedicated to the global aerospace profession for five and a half years.

Selected to the NASA Astronaut Corps in April 1996, Dr. Magnus flew in space in 2002, and on the final shuttle flight in 2011. In addition, she flew to the International Space Station in 2008, served as flight engineer and science officer on Expedition 18, and spent four and a half months on one flight on the Space Station. Following her assignment on Station, she served at NASA Headquarters in the Exploration Systems Mission Directorate.

Throughout her career, Sandy has always led by example and created opportunities for others while breaking barriers herself,” says Dr. Kate Drowne, dean of the College of Arts, Sciences, and Business, where Magnus earned her undergraduate degree in physics. “Her induction into the National Academy of Engineering represents a wonderful acknowledgment of her accomplishments and shows our students how much they can achieve in their own lives and careers.”

Dr. Magnus holds a Ph.D in materials science and engineering from the Georgia Institute of Technology.  Dr. Magnus was elected as a member of the 2022 class of the National Academy of Engineering.

Dr. Scully is the Charles Henderson Endowed Chaired Professor of Materials Science and Engineering, a Co-director of the Center for Electrochemical Science and Engineering and MSE Department Chair at the University of Virginia. Before joining the UVA faculty, Dr. Scully worked at the Sandia National Laboratories, the David Taylor Naval Research and Development Center and AT&T Bell Laboratories.

Dr. Scully conducts research and education on the topic of corrosion of engineered materials and systems, a problem that costs lives and destroys billions of dollars of infrastructure every year. He focuses on the effects of material structure, composition, and environment on degradation of novel advanced materials, coatings, and legacy materials. Electrochemistry, surface science and material science are frequently integrated in his research to advance fundamental scientific understanding and engineering of corrosion issues.

He is a Fellow of the Electrochemical Society, the National Association of Corrosion Engineers, The British Corrosion Institute, and the American Society for Metals. Among his numerous awards are the A.B. Campbell, H.H. Uhlig, W.R. Whitney, and T.J. Hull Awards from NACE, the T.P. Hoar and U.R. Evans Awards from the British Corrosion Institute, and the Lee Hsun Lecture Award from the Chinese National Academy of Science. He is currently the Chief Technical Editor of CORROSION, The Journal of Science and Engineering.

Professor Scully received a Ph.D. from The Johns Hopkins University.

Dr. Smith is an environmental engineer holding the Henry L. Kinnier Chair of Civil Engineering in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the University of Virginia. He has served as the UPS Foundation Visiting Professor of Environmental Engineering at Stanford University and as the William R. Kenan Visiting Professor for Distinguished Teaching at Princeton University.

His recent research interests include sustainable point-of-use water treatment technologies for the developing world and their impact on human health, and low-impact development (LID) technologies for stormwater runoff. To support this research, he was selected as a Fulbright Research Fellow and conducted research during Fall 2017 in Limpopo Province, South Africa at the University of Venda.

Dr. Smith is the inventor of the MadiDrop+, a silver-embedded porous ceramic tablet for purification of household drinking water and the founder of Silivhere Technologies, Inc. based in Charlottesville, VA. Silivhere Technologies is currently producing and selling MadiDrops+ around the world to improve water quality, human health, and quality of life.

Dr. Smith is a Fellow of the American Society of Civil Engineers, a Diplomate of the American Academy of Water Resources, and was elected by Eminence to the American Academy of Environmental Engineers.  He is a recipient of the Wesley W. Horner Award and the Rudolph Hering Medal for the best papers of the year in an ASCE Water Journal.  He is a recipient of the 2015 Edlich-Henderson Innovator of the Year Award at the University of Virginia.

He received his Ph.D. in Civil Engineering from Princeton University in 1992.