HAMPTON, Va. – Joel Levine, a senior research scientist at NASA Langley Research Center in Hampton, Va., will be honored with a Distinguished Alumnus Award and will be the keynote speaker at the 2011 commencement at Brooklyn College in Brooklyn, N.Y., on June 1.
Levine will serve as the keynote speaker for the master’s ceremony.
He serves as chief scientist and principal investigator for the proposed ARES (Aerial Regional-scale Environmental Surveyor) Mars Airplane, a robotic, rocket-powered aerial vehicle that NASA will use to search for life on Mars.
In 2010, his unique expertise also led NASA officials to appoint him to the agency’s Trapped Chilean Miners Rescue Team, which assisted in the successful rescue of 33 miners trapped a half mile below the surface of earth. Levine will also receive a Distinguished Alumni award.
Levine and Rudolf Schild, of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge, Mass., are co-editors of the recently published book, “The Human Mission to Mars: Colonizing the Red Planet.” Levine has also edited four books on planetary atmosphere and global climate change.
From 2007 to 2008, Levine served as Mars Scout program scientist for the Mars Exploration Program, NASA Headquarters, Washington, D.C.
Among many honors and awards, Levine has received the NASA Medal for Exceptional Scientific Achievement, the NASA Outstanding Leadership Medal, the New York Academy of Science Halpern Award in Photochemistry, and was selected as Virginia’s Outstanding Scientist.
An image of Levine with the Mars Airplane is at http://www.nasa.gov/centers/langley/multimedia/iotw-levine-ares.html
After graduation from Brooklyn College, Levine received a Master of Science degree in atmospheric science from New York University and a Master of Science in aeronomy and planetary atmospheres, and a Ph.D. in atmospheric science, both from the University of Michigan.
To see Levine’s biography, go to http://www.brooklyn.cuny.edu/pub/levine.htm
For more information about Langley go to http://www.nasa.gov/langley
