Charles J. Camarda, Ph.D. - NASA ENGINEERING & SAFETY CENTER, NASA JOHNSON SPACE CENTER - Upon completing his B.S. degree from the Polytechnic Institute of Brooklyn, Camarda began work for NASA’s Langley Research Center, Hampton, Virginia, in 1974. He was a research scientist in the Thermal Structures Branch of the Structures and Materials Division and was responsible for demonstrating the feasibility of a heat-pipe-cooled leading edge for Space Shuttle by analysis, laboratory experiments, and aerothermal testing in Langley’s 8-foot High Temperature Tunnel. He conducted analytical and experimental research in heat pipes, structural mechanics and dynamics, heat transfer, and numerical optimization for aircraft, spacecraft, and space launch vehicles. While at Langley, Camarda earned his masters’ degree from George Washington University in Engineering Science with emphasis on mechanics of composite structures at elevated temperature and his doctorate degree from Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University with emphasis on the development of advanced modal methods for efficiently predicting transient thermal and structural performance. In 1989, Camarda was selected to lead the Structures and Materials Technology Maturation Team for the National Aero-Space Plane (NASP) program, which was responsible for maturing materials and structures technologies necessary to enable the development of an airbreathing hypersonic vehicle capable of horizontal take-off to orbit. Camarda was selected to head the Thermal Structures Branch (TSB) in 1994 with responsibility for a research engineering staff, two major focused programs (the high-speed research ( HSR) and reusable launch vehicle (RLV) programs), and several structural test facilities including the Thermal Structures Laboratory. Some of the primary responsibilities of the TSB are the development of durable, lightweight metallic thermal protection systems (TPS), advanced leading edges for hypersonic vehicles using carbon carbon material and heat pipes, reusable cryogenic tank systems, and graphite-composite primary structure for RLV. Camarda has received over 21 NASA awards for technical innovations and accomplishments. He also received a Research and Development 100 award from Industrial Research Magazine for one of the top 100 technical innovations of 1983 entitled “Heat-Pipe-Cooled Sandwich Panel.” He holds 7 patents and one patent pending. Dr. Camarda flew as MS-5 on the Return to Flight mission STS-114 Discovery (July 26-August 9, 2005), and has logged over 333 hours in space. He also served as Director, Engineering, Johnson Space Center. Dr. Camarda is currently assigned to the NASA Engineering and Safety Center (NESC). Through the NESC, Dr. Camarda will use his technical expertise to evaluate problems and supplement safety and engineering activities for Agency programs.

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Dr. William F. Dunn, Associate Professor of Medicine, has served on staff at Mayo Clinic Rochester since 1989. An  intensivist and pulmonologist, he  served as the director (or co-director) of the Mayo Multidisciplinary Critical Care Fellowship for fifteen years, between 1992 and 2006, and has also served as co-director of the Mayo Pulmonary-Critical Care Fellowship.  As an active educationalist and Harvard Macy Scholar, he has spearheaded innovation within the Critical Care training environment at Mayo, in a multidisciplinary setting.  He has been a recipient of multiple awards for excellence both within and outside Mayo, including Fellowship in the American Colleges of Critical Care Medicine and Chest Physicians, the Mayo Karis Award (clinical excellence), the Mayo Excellence in Teamwork Award, and the Mayo Dept of Medicine Excellence in Innovation Award. Dr. Dunn embraces the concept of simulation as a transformational change in the way many aspects of medical education need to occur in the coming decades, especially given the mandate of both improved medical education and patient safety. He has worked closely with many leaders of the national simulation "movement" and greatly admires the contributions of the pioneers in this field. He has served (since its inception) on the Board of Directors and Editorial Board of the Society for Simulation in Healthcare (http://ssih.org).  As a member of the board of this society, he co-chaired the 2005 International Meeting on Medical Simulation. He is current the president of this organization of over 2000 members.

Dr. Dunn has thus led an aggressive charge toward opening the "eyes and minds" of the Critical Care community toward embracing simulation-based education as a standard component of Critical Care training. He embraces the concept of simulation as a transformational change in the way many aspects of medical education need to occur in the coming decades, and is a recognized leader internationally in this realm. He has chaired and participated in multiple patient safety and quality courses and panels, focusing especially in simulation-based applications. These events have occurred within the Society for Technology in Anesthesia (STA), American College of Chest Physicians (ACCP), and the Society of Critical Care Medicine (SCCM), among others. He served as editor on the book “Simulators in Critical Care and Beyond,” published by SCCM Press (2004).  This work focused on bringing the messages of the non-critical care simulation community into focus for the critical care community, as an outgrowth of an SCCM-sponsored postgraduate course of the same topic. Dr. Dunn has led a multidisciplinary group of Mayo educators (representing the multiple departments and Mayo Clinic School of Medicine) to the establishment of the Mayo Clinic Multidisciplinary Simulation Center, which opened in October 2005 (http://www.mayo.edu/simulationcenter/).  This center serves as an international model of experiential education in healthcare, and is utilized by many clinical specialties at Mayo, working collaboratively.  Initial utilization of the center both quantitatively and qualitatively has been judged by independent observers as unprecedented for a US academic medical institution. Nationally, his efforts have included Congressional lobbying thru the organization AIMS (Advances In Medical Simulation), leadership through his position within the Executive Committee of the Society for Simulation in Healthcare, and via his editor’s position on three academic journals.

Dr. Dunn has always been, and remains, an active clinician.  In addition to caring for pulmonary outpatients, 50% of his professional time is spent staffing Critical Care Units, making him among the most active clinical intensivists at Mayo. Former duties have also included staffing the pulmonary function laboratory, being Medical Co-director of the Rochester Methodist Hospital Multidisciplinary Intensive Care Unit, and directing the Mayo Pulmonary Outreach Consultation Program, among others. Pro bono work has included various efforts (medical and humanitarian) in Honduras, El Salvador, Alaska, and Nigeria.

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Dr. Alexander Kott earned his PhD in 1989 from the University of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, where his research focused on applications of artificial intelligence for innovative engineering design. Later he directed R&D organizations at technology companies including Carnegie Group, Honeywell, and BBN. Much of his research focused on automation in command and control, particularly in planning and management of air and ground combat.
Dr. Kott's affiliation with DARPA included serving as the chief architect of DARPA's Joint Forces Air Component Commander (JFACC) program, and recently managing the Advanced ISR Management (AIM) program as well as the Mixed Initiative Control of Automa-teams (MICA) program. He initiated the Real-time Adversarial Intelligence and Decision-making (RAID) program focused on the automation of Red Force predictive analysis. He also manages the DARPA program called Multicell and Dismounted Command and Control (M&D C2). Dr. Kott's research interests include dynamic planning in resource-, time- and space-constrained problems, in dynamically changing, uncertain, and adversarial environments. Such complex, multi-faceted problems require effective integration with scheduling, spatial routing, effects estimation, adversarial intent identification, and negotiation. His past research explored several of these challenges in the context of planning Army and Air Force battles, and in transportation systems. A related area of Dr. Kott's research involved dynamic, unstable, and "pathological" phenomena that can be of critical importance in distributed decision-making systems that consist of human and computer-based decision makers, such as military command and control. His recent work has explored tools and techniques that can model, predict and control the dynamics of a decision-making network. Dr. Kott has published over 50 technical papers and served as the editor of a recently published book on Advanced Technology Concepts in Command and Control. A book focused on Adversarial Reasoning will be published in 2006, and a volume titled Information Warfare and Organizational Performance is to appear in 2007.

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