MOFFETT FIELD, Calif. – NASA has presented its Quality and Safety Achievement Recognition, or QASAR, award to Donovan Mathias of Mountain View, Calif., and John Livacich of Sunnyvale, Calif.

The QASAR award recognizes individual government and contractor employees who have demonstrated exemplary performance in contributing to the quality or safety of products, services, processes or management programs and activities.

Mathias, who leads the Engineering Risk Assessment efforts at the NASA Advanced Supercomputing Division at NASA’s Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, Calif., received the 2010 QASAR award for his innovative approach to risk assessment, which improved the agency’s ability to evaluate launch risks for the Ares I rocket. Mathias organized and led a team that raised NASA crew safety to a higher level by employing in-depth simulations to identify potential rocket failures that could impede an Orion spacecraft abort.

A NASA contractor employee of Lockheed Martin Corp., of Bethesda, Md., Livacich received the 2011 QASAR award for proactive and innovative safety and mission assurance support to Ames. Livacich chairs the Ames Safety Committee, which monitors and addresses environmental safety and health issues at the research center. In this role, he developed a new safety Voluntary Protection Program Star inspection process to improve safety awareness in Ames’ shops and laboratories. He also identified a simple, inexpensive text messaging system which NASA Headquarters adopted for its emergency communications. The vehicular and pedestrian traffic improvements at Ames can be traced to Livacich, who has demonstrated throughout the center the benefits of adopting the Manual on Uniform Traffic Control Devices standard.

Mathias and Livacich were recognized along with four other recipients Feb. 10 at the agency’s eighth annual Project Management Challenge in Long Beach, Calif.

“I am pleased that NASA is awarding its Quality and Safety Achievement Recognition award to Donovan Mathias for his innovative approach to engineering risk assessment, and to John Livacich for his proactive and innovative safety and mission assurance support to the center,” said S. Pete Worden, director, NASA Ames Research Center. “Both awards are well deserved.”

For additional information about the Quality and Safety Achievement Recognition award program, visit: http://www.hq.nasa.gov/office/codeq/qasar/