NAME

POSITION

EMAIL

PHONE

Mr. Sonntag joined NSRC in January 2021 as Program Director.  Mr. Sonntag is responsible for science operations support for several NASA research aircraft, including the DC-8, P-3 and C-130. John received an M.S. in Aerospace Engineering from The University of Texas, and a B.S. in Aerospace Engineering from Texas A&M University.  Prior to joining NSRC, he served as Mission Scientist for NASA’s Operation IceBridge (OIB) for its entire 12-year duration, and as Research and Development Scientist with NASA’s Airborne Topographic Mapper (ATM) team since 1993.  John drew on his background in satellite geodesy and aeronautical engineering to provide precise, long-baseline GNSS analysis to ATM and OIB, to develop and operate precise aircraft navigation systems and integrate and test fly them on various NASA, other U.S. Government, and commercial aircraft, and to serve as the primary liaison with the cryospheric science community for OIB and ATM.  John also served as project meteorologist for OIB.

Mr. Van Gilst joined NSRC in October of 2007 as the DC-8 Airborne Laboratory Network and Satcom Engineer before moving to his current role of Lead Systems Engineer. David is the team lead for the data systems personnel at NSRC, providing satcom, networking and other data system support to several aircraft programs at NASA, including the DC-8, P-3, C-130s, ER-2 and Global Hawk. In addition to providing operational support to over 30 aircraft campaigns and flight activities since 2007, David has designed and implemented much of the data systems infrastructure in use aboard the aircraft supported by NSRC, including software development, design of onboard systems and build-up of groundside telemetry interfaces. David received a B.S. in Computer Science from the University of North Dakota. Prior to joining NSRC, David worded as a Unix Systems Engineer in the Scientific Computer Center at the University of North Dakota. 

Mr. Bennett joined NSRC in February of 2017 as Data Manager. Ryan ensures   that quality-checked preliminary and final aircraft datasets are provided for the NSRC-managed meteorological and aircraft parameters, and that they are properly archived for use by the scientific community. He is responsible for the development of new software code for data retrieval, reduction, analysis, quality control, and archival. Ryan interacts with science teams on day-to-day activities providing all of the necessary support needed to ensure that the data obtained through NSRC data systems are of high precision and accuracy required for scientific analysis. Ryan also provides support for the Student Airborne Research Program (SARP) as the Mission Meteorologist on an annual basis, where he assists students with aviation forecasting and airborne data analysis. Ryan is completing his M.S. in Meteorology from Florida State University (Spring 2019), and received his B.S. in Meteorology from Florida State University.

Mr. Finch joined NSRC in 2017 as a IT Systems Engineer responsible for maintenance of the Ames-based Airborne Science IT infrastructure including the development and maintenance of the ASP archive infrastructure, primarily for navigation and video data.  Pat is also responsible for the development of the next generation infrastructure in support of the MTS and NSRC subsystems, and the development of an Iridium based communications systems using RUDICS. In addition to this, Pat is a Certified System Administrator which allows him to maintain multiple workstations and instrument controllers of various operating systems in a heterogeneous computing environment. Pat received his B.S. as a triple major in Environmental Science Technology and Policy (ESTP), Computer Science and Information Technology (CSIT) and Mathematics. Prior to joining NSRC, Pat supported the NASA Airborne Science Program through BAERI as an independent consultant, working on items such as the Implementation, testing and benchmarking of various delay tolerant networking protocols for data and command/control use during long duration and/or over the horizon unmanned science flights.

Dr. Emily Schaller joined NSRC in January 2011, where she coordinates science and educational outreach programs for the NASA Airborne Science Program. She is the project manager for the NASA Student Airborne Research Program (SARP) summer internship. Dr. Schaller received a Ph.D. from Caltech in Planetary Sciences in 2008, an M.S. in Planetary Sciences from Caltech in 2004, and a B.A. in Physics and Earth Sciences from Dartmouth College in 2002. In 2002, she flew on the DC-8 taking spectra of Leonid Meteors at 40,000 feet. Prior to working for NSRC, Dr. Schaller was a Hubble Postdoctoral Fellow (2008-2011) studying the surfaces and atmospheres of the moons and small bodies in our solar system using telescopes all over the world. Her discovery of tropical clouds on Saturn’s moon Titan was featured in Nature and was chosen as one of the Top 100 Stories of 2009 by Discover Magazine.