Mark Simons named JPL's new Chief Scientist
Dr. Simons is a Professor of Geophysics in the Seismological Laboratory within the Division of Geological and Planetary Sciences at Caltech.He received his B.S. in Geophysics and Space Physics from UCLA in 1989 and his Ph.D. in Geophysics from MIT in 1996. He joined Caltech as a Postdoctoral Scholar in 1995 and has been a full Professor there since 2007.
Mark's relationship with JPL started in 1990 as a graduate student working with gravity and SAR imagery data of Venus from the Magellan mission. Since then, his research has focused on advancing the ability of space geodesy – using technologies such as interferometric synthetic aperture radar (InSAR) and global navigation satellite system (GNSS) – to measure deformation of Earth's surface.
In collaboration with JPL, Mark currently serves as Caltech's Co-Principal Scientist for the Advanced Rapid Imaging and Analysis (ARIA) Project and is the solid earth science co-lead for the NISAR science definition team.