Presenter Profiles

Dr. Robert Harriss is the Director of the Science Division in the Office of Mission to Planet Earth at NASA Headquarters in Washington, DC. His research and teaching interests include: global environmental research and policy, remote sensing, integrated resource planning, and environmental dispute resolution. Bob earned his undergraduate degree at Florida State University and his masters and doctorate degrees at Rice University. He has served as an assistant professor of geochemistry and limnology at McMaster University in Hamilton, Canada; as professor of oceanography at Florida State University; and as professor of Earth system science and natural resources at the University of New Hampshire. Additionally, Bob was a mission and project scientist on NASA's Global Tropospheric Experiment. The recipient of numerous fellowships and awards, he has published more than 160 research papers and abstracts in scientific journals.

Dr. Pete Robertson is a Space Scientist at NASA Marshall Space Flight Center in Alabama. His professional interests focus on the role of water-related processes in determining the nature and variability of atmospheric behavior on scales ranging from individual storms to climate. He holds M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in Atmospheric Science from Purdue University. As lead investigator on a joint EOS interdisciplinary investigation ("The Global Water Cycle: Extension Across the Earth Sciences") with Penn State, he researches climate model simulations of hydrologic anomalies, and the synthesis of a global moisture analysis. Additionally, Pete has studied the parameterization of convection and clouds in weather prediction models. He has chaired a panel which assists in developing a hydrometeorology project over the Mississippi Basin which will use satellite data to construct an interactive model of atmospheric and land/vegetation controls on the water balance of that re-gion.

Camille Moody Jennings is the NASA Education Videoconference Producer and is series moderator for On the Cutting Edge. Camille earned a B.A. in math from the University of Texas at Austin and an M.A. in Education from UT San Antonio. Before obtaining secondary level teaching certification in math and physics, she mar-keted personal computers for IBM. Camille has taught high school math and physics in the classroom and for TI-IN Network. She has produced and moderated science programs for national distance-learning networks, including the NASA Langley atmospheric science series Mission Earth Bound–a New York Festivals medal-winner. Camille serves on the National Advisory Board of the NSF/NASA-sponsored Passport to Knowledge project and has moderated PBS electronic field trips for the project, including the Live From Antarctica series.

Lisa Ostendorf manages the education and external communication program for NASA’s Office of Mission to Planet Earth (MTPE) at headquarters in Washington, DC. Her challenge is to communicate the excitement of NASA's Earth observation programs to the education community and to the public by coordinating successful outreach activities at each of the NASA field centers and supervising the development of print, video, and on-line MTPE materials. Prior to her current assignment, she worked for the Space Station Freedom Program Office. Lisa earned her undergraduate degree in business management at the University of Texas at Austin. She has been deeply involved in developing the Global Learning and Observations to Benefit the Environment (GLOBE) program. Lisa will co-moderate "The Whole World In Your Hands."

Dr. Jim Harris is the Program Manager for High Performance Computing in the Office of Mission to Planet Earth at NASA Headquarters. He earned a B.S. in Mathematics from Virginia State College; an M.S. in Applied Math from the College of William and Mary; and an M.S. in Administration (Information Technology) from George Washington University. Jim served Headquarters previously as the Program Manager for Scientific Computing in the Office of Space Science and Applications. He has also worked as the Assistant Head of the Computer Management Branch at Langley Research Center in Virginia . Jim's early experience included working as a mathematician and data analyst at Langley where he performed programming and design tasks, explored the early use of interactive environments, and performed capacity experiments and queuing analysis of processing systems in the central computer complex.

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