SPD Education and Public Outreach Committee

Mitzi Adams
SPD EPO Committee
NASA Marshall Spaceflight Center
mitzi.adams (at) nasa.gov
Ms. Adams is originally from Atlanta, Georgia, where she was able to volunteer at Fernbank Science Center as a high-school observatory/planetarium assistant. Mitzi's research interests involve the magnetic fields associated with sunspots and the mechanisms that drive solar erputions. Also fascinated with archaeoastronomy, Mitzi has studied the Inca civilization of Peru in South America and has taught many sessions of an honors class, "Theories of the Universe," at the University of Alabama in Huntsville. Mitzi also enjoys solar eclipses, journeying to South Georgia (March 1970), Chile (November 1994), Romania (August 1999), and Africa (June 2001). Ms. Adams has six cats, ranging in age from one year to 21 years.

Camilo Buitraga-Casas
University of California, Berkeley
milo (at) ssl.berkeley.edu
Milo is an enthusiastic and passionate student of science, originally from Bogotá, Colombia. Milo has astronomy interests in the origins of stars, the size of the universe, and the instrumentation that detects solar X-ray radiation. Research interests have led Milo to the University of California, Berkeley, where he is currently a Ph.D. student, but his outreach activities began while still a middle-school student.

Zoe Frank
SPD EPO Vice-Chair
Lockheed Martin Solar Astrophysics Laboratory
zoe (at) lmsal.com
Zoe Frank spends most of her days helping to produce beautiful image of the Sun to stimulate the imagination of kids of all ages. Zoe works with the gurus of the Lockheed Martin Solar and Astrophysics Lab in Palo Alto, CA and rubs elbows with the great minds of Stanford University. She spends her off hours basking in the sunlight in her backyard. You can read about her adventures at http://www.lmsal.com.

Claire Raftery
SPD EPO Committee
Space Science Lab, UC Berkeley
claire (at) ssl.berkeley.edu
Claire is originally from Dublin, Ireland where she studied for her PhD in solar physics (using satellite data, since there is no sun in Ireland!). Now she is a researcher at the Space Sciences Lab at UC Berkeley and is enjoying the much sunnier climate of California. Her main scientific interest is in solar flares and their connection to coronal mass ejections, mostly using extreme ultraviolet and X-ray telescopes. Her other interest is in science education, specifically helping people from underserved communities reach their full potential, and developing alternative learning techniques for students with dyslexia and other learning difficulties. In what little spare time she has, Claire plays the bagpipes with a local pipe band, and is learning to play the acoustic guitar. You can read more about Claire at http://www.ssl.berkeley.edu/~claire/.

Henry "Trae" Winter III
SPD EPO Committee
Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics - Solar-Stellar X-ray Group
hwinter (at) cfa.harvard.edu
Trae Winter is an astrophysicist who focuses on thorny numerical problems, primarily the interaction of thermal and non-thermal particles as it applies to solar flares. Trae has been involved mentoring undergraduate and high-school students in solar physics research projects for the last six years, primarily as part of the NSF's REU program. All of his former students have been accepted into graduate or undergraduate physics or engineering programs. Trae also co-managed the Montana Space Grant Consortium's Space Public Outreach Team (SPOT) for two years, teaching undergraduate students to give lectures on current NASA projects to K-12 classrooms. While Trae considers his true home to be the Boston-Cambridge area, he never forgets his southern, Memphis, TN, roots as he shows "yankees" what true Memphis style Barbeque tastes like and tries to convince them that biscuits and gravy is a true delicacy. His house is filled with Doctor Who memorabilia, dogs, cats, and friends.