NASA Administrator Names Senior Advisors

NASA Administrator Michael Griffin today announced two new senior advisors for his management team. Lisa J. Porter, Ph.D., joins NASA as senior advisor for aeronautics in the Office of Administrator and Michael P. Ralsky joins the agency as senior advisor to the NASA deputy administrator.

Before joining NASA, Porter was senior scientist in the Advanced Technology Office of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) in Arlington, Va., where she was program manager for projects that focused on applications of advanced computational fluid dynamics, including the design of quieter and more efficient helicopter rotor blades and research on friction drag reduction for Naval platforms.

Porter has a bachelor’s degree in nuclear engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge and a doctorate in applied physics from Stanford University in California. She has authored more than 25 publications in diverse areas such as nuclear engineering, astrophysics, computational materials modeling and ballistic missile defense.

Ralsky will work with Deputy Administrator Frederick Gregory managing day-to-day agency operations, initiatives and affiliations. Ralsky joins NASA after serving as an associate director for the White House Office of Presidential Personnel, where he was responsible for identifying, evaluating, recruiting and recommending candidates for presidential appointment to the Cabinet and to senior executive positions at federal agencies.

Before joining the Administration, Ralsky spent more than six years on Capitol Hill. He served as a legislative assistant for U.S. Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison of Texas and for U.S. Senator Tim Hutchinson of Arkansas. He was a Legislative Aide for the Senate Governmental Affairs Subcommittee on International Security, Proliferation, and Federal Services, and at the Pentagon was Special Assistant for Budget and Transformation in the Secretary’s legislative affairs office. Ralsky holds a bachelor’s degree in government and politics from the University of Maryland, College Park, Md.