Dr. Moustafa T. Chahine has been appointed to the position of Chief Scientist at JPL, Laboratory Director Dr. Lew Allen has announced.
Dr. Chahine will assume his new position on Sept. 1, 1984, when current Chief Scientist Dr. Arden Albee returns to his faculty position in the Division of Geological and Planetary Sciences at Caltech.
Dr. Chahine joined JPL in 1960 as senior scientist specializing in atmospheric studies. He is currently Manager of JPL's Earth and Space Sciences Division.
As Chief Scientist, Dr. Chahine will serve as the focal point for scientists at the Laboratory and for outside scientists involved in JPL research efforts. He will give particular emphasis to interactions between the Caltech campus and the Laboratory. In addition, Dr. Chahine will be member of the JPL Executive Council and the management subcommittee. Concurrently, he will continue his personal research activities in atmospheric science.
Dr. Chahine will be JPL's third chief scientist since the position was established in 1977; his assignment is expected to be of three to four years' duration.
In addition to his faculty duties, Dr. Albee will continue in his role as Project Scientist for the proposed Mars Geoscience/Climatology Observer (MGCO) mission scheduled for launch in 1990. He is also the principal investigator on the scanning electron microscope particle analyzer (SEMPA) experiment on the mission.
"In common with his distinguished predecessors, Professor Rochus Vogt (Caltech physicist) and Arden Albee, Dr. Chahine is an active scientist of international reputation," said Dr. Allen. "His 23 years of experience at JPL provide great breadth of knowledge of our work and of the NASA space programs."
Dr. Chahine was born in Beirut, Lebanon, in 1935. He received B.S. in aeronautical engineering from the University of Washington in 1956, and Ph.D. in fluid physics from the University of California at Berkeley in 1960.
From 1969 to 1970 he was Visiting Scientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Department of Meteorology, and from 1971 to 1972 he was Visiting Professor at the American University of Beirut.
As staff scientist from 1972 to 1975, Chahine did research in cloud radiation and developed theory for the remote sounding of cloudy (inhomogeneous) atmospheres.
In 1975 he was named Manager of the Planetary Atmospheres Section in the Earth and Space Sciences Division. He was subsequently appointed manager of the division in 1978.
Dr. Chahine was awarded the NASA Medal for Exceptional Achievement in 1969 for the discovery of technique to determine the composition and temperature of an atmosphere from remote sounding observations.
He is member of Sigma Xi, and Fellow of the American Physical Society.
He is married to the former Marina Bendak. They have two sons, Tony and Steve, and reside in La Canada, California.
818-354-5011