Paul Racette

Biographical Sketch

As an adventurous adolescent, Paul grew up chasing severe thunderstorms across the plains of Kansas. And so he was quite excited after joining the Goddard Space Flight Center in July 1990 to learn that his first assignment was to prepare and install a suite of sensors on a DC-8 aircraft for an experiment to study typhoons. That fall while stationed at Kadena Airbase in Okinawa, Japan, he flew for the first time through the eye of a category 5 typhoon. That experience was the beginning of an exciting and fruitful career developing and deploying microwave remote sensors for studying Earth's environment. Since then, Paul has been the principal engineer responsible for the overall instrument concept, development and deployment for five highly-innovative remote sensing instruments. Each of these instruments has produced unique, scientifically rich data. Paul has participated in more than fifteen major field experiments around the world pioneering techniques to observe the Earth. As a member of the senior technical staff at Goddard, he has initiated technology developments, research projects, and international collaborations that have advanced the state of the art in microwave remote sensing and instrument calibration. For these efforts and accomplishments Paul received the NASA Medal for Exceptional Service and was the first recipient of Goddard's Engineering Achievement Award established to publicly recognize Goddard's highest achieving engineers. In 2005 he completed the requirements for his Doctor of Science in electrical engineering from The George Washington University. Recognizing the critical needs in education and a desire to seek new adventures, Paul applied and was accepted into the NASA Administrator's Fellowship Program. As a NAFP fellow he returned to his home state to serve as a guest faculty at the Haskell Indian Nations University during the 2005 - 2006 academic year. Paul recently competed the second year of his fellowship working at NASA Headquarters as Special Assistant to the Deputy Assistant Administrator in the Office of Education.

Paul is highly commited to serving the public through professional activities. Paul has served the IEEE in many capacities including secretary of the University of Kansas IEEE student chapter, the Geoscience and Remote Sensing Socieity's New Technology Directions Committee Representative, Chair of the Instrumentation and Future Technologies Committee, and Professional Activities Committee for Engineers Representative. He now serves as Editor-In-Chief for Earthzine.