SPD Education and Public Outreach Committee

Ignacio Ugarte-Urra
SPD EPO Chair
Naval Research Laboratory
iugarte (at) ssd5.nrl.navy.mil
Ignacio, a.k.a. Iñaki, is a solar physicist based in Washington DC. Originally from Spain, he left his sunny home country to go and study the Sun in the beautiful, but cloudy, Northern Ireland. Not a shortfall though, as his main research is done using space satellites, like the Japanese Hinode mission, in which he has been actively involved in the past few years. He studies the complex atmosphere over Sunspots and tries to understand the origin of solar eruptions. In his free time he loves playing sports, soccer most of all, rocking at concerts and taking photographs of almost anything.

Zoe Frank
SPD EPO Vice-Chair
Lockheed Martin Solar Astrophysics Laboratory
zoe (at) lmsal.com
Zoe Frank spends most of her days helping to produce beautiful image of the Sun to stimulate the imagination of kids of all ages. Zoe works with the gurus of the Lockheed Martin Solar and Astrophysics Lab in Palo Alto, CA and rubs elbows with the great minds of Stanford University. She spends her off hours basking in the sunlight in her backyard. You can read about her adventures at http://www.lmsal.com.

David McKenzie
SPD EPO Committee
Montana State University
mckenzie (at) mithra.physics.montana.edu
David McKenzie specializes in observing the Sun's corona in extreme ultraviolet and X-radiation, with the goal of understanding how magnetic million-degree plasmas do the voodoo they do. As a member of the Yohkoh, TRACE, Hinode, and SDO/AIA teams, Dr. McKenzie is one of a handful of people to see 5 solar eclipses in a single day. For a short time, he even had a solar feature named after him ("McKenzie blobs"), but it didn't stick. McKenzie is committed to sharing the excitement and mystery of the Sun with everyone who enjoys its warmth. His sound track ("Every hero's got to have some theme music") is classic punk, P-funk, and tango nuevo.

Claire Raftery
SPD EPO Committee
Space Science Lab, UC Berkeley
claire (at) ssl.berkeley.edu
Claire is originally from Dublin, Ireland where she studied for her PhD in solar physics (using satellite data, since there is no sun in Ireland!). Now she is a researcher at the Space Sciences Lab at UC Berkeley and is enjoying the much sunnier climate of California. Her main scientific interest is in solar flares and their connection to coronal mass ejections, mostly using extreme ultraviolet and X-ray telescopes. Her other interest is in science education, specifically helping people from underserved communities reach their full potential, and developing alternative learning techniques for students with dyslexia and other learning difficulties. In what little spare time she has, Claire plays the bagpipes with a local pipe band, and is learning to play the acoustic guitar. You can read more about Claire at http://www.ssl.berkeley.edu/~claire/.

Deborah Scherrer
SPD EPO Committee
Stanford University
dscherrer (at) solar.stanford.edu
Deborah Scherrer is the director and founder of the Stanford Solar Center, the Education and Public Outreach arm of the Solar Observatories Group at Stanford. She's been involved with NASA's SDO/HMI, SOHO/MDI, and IRIS missions. Her most favorite activity is to teach science to students and teachers in developing countries. In her, ah, copious free time she plays with her 3 horses, 2 donkeys, 3 goats, and 2 miniature horses at her ranch in Kelseyville.

Martha Wawro
SPD EPO Committee
NASA Goddard Space Flight Center
martha.l.wawro (at) nasa.gov
Martha Wawro is the Deputy Education and Public Outreach Lead for the Solar Dynamics Observatory at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center. She has organized and supported a number of programs both at Goddard and around the country focused on creating fun informal settings for the public to interact with science in a meaningful way. She is interested in the design and evaluation of informal educational programs. Martha's educational background is in science and foreign languages and her professional background is in project management, training and education. In her free-time Martha enjoys learning obscure Eastern European languages, travelling with a rubber chicken, and shopping for hot sauce.

Henry "Trae" Winter III
SPD EPO Committee
Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics - Solar-Stellar X-ray Group
hwinter (at) cfa.harvard.edu
Trae Winter is an astrophysicist who focuses on thorny numerical problems, primarily the interaction of thermal and non-thermal particles as it applies to solar flares. Trae has been involved mentoring undergraduate and high-school students in solar physics research projects for the last six years, primarily as part of the NSF's REU program. All of his former students have been accepted into graduate or undergraduate physics or engineering programs. Trae also co-managed the Montana Space Grant Consortium's Space Public Outreach Team (SPOT) for two years, teaching undergraduate students to give lectures on current NASA projects to K-12 classrooms. While Trae considers his true home to be the Boston-Cambridge area, he never forgets his southern, Memphis, TN, roots as he shows "yankees" what true Memphis style Barbeque tastes like and tries to convince them that biscuits and gravy is a true delicacy. His house is filled with Doctor Who memorabilia, dogs, cats, and friends.