Guest Lecture: The Importance of Space and The Armstrong Chair

Dr. John Horack, Teledyne Brown Engineering

All dates for this event occur in the past.

E525 Scott Lab
E525 Scott Lab
201 W. 19th Ave.
Columbus, OH 43210
United States

Dr. Horack will discuss the importance of space research and where we are headed, especially as these ideas connect to Ohio State’s Discovery Themes and to the inaugural Neil Armstrong Chair in Aerospace Policy. A joint appointment from the College of Engineering and John Glenn College of Public Affairs, the chair will be a preeminent scholar or practitioner and embody the leadership qualities of Neil Armstrong and John Glenn. The chair will be a thought leader in aerospace public policy and team builder who will educate the next generation of explorers, pioneers, leaders and innovators in flight and aerospace.

About the Speaker

Since receiving his Ph.D. in Physics from the University of Alabama, Dr. Horack has been involved with the space program. He joined the George C. Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville early in his career as a research scientist, where he led experimental and theoretical research on high energy astrophysics. He then served as Assistant Mission Scientist and was responsible for optimizing the Astro-2 Space Shuttle mission return. He moved on at NASA to the Space Sciences Laboratory as Assistant Director for Science Communications. There he developed processes to communicate research to non-scientific audiences. His next position at NASA was as Manager of Space and Mission Systems office where he was responsible for advanced space flight hardware development, overseeing a yearly budget of $300M and over 300 people.

Dr. Horack left NASA in 2009 to assume the position of Vice President for Research at the University of Alabama in Huntsville. He helped grow the research enterprise to over $85M and built a strong cooperative alliance with DOD. In 2012, he moved to Teledyne Brown Engineering as Vice President of Space Systems and Vice President of Global Commercial Space. He is leading the international space effort in commercial space. Dr. Horack has served on a multitude of scientific boards and belongs to several professional societies.

Hosted by Dr. Mike Benzakein