G. Scott Hubbard

G Scott Hubbard has been recognized as an innovator and leader in science, technology, and management for more than 30 years-including 20 years with NASA. Hubbard currently is a Professor in the Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics at Stanford University. From 2002 to 2006 Scott Hubbard was the director of NASA’s Ames Research Center in the heart of California’s Silicon Valley with an operating budget of $700 million and responsibility for 2,600 people. Ames is a multidisciplinary Center that conducts basic and applied research in space science, aeronautics, information systems and advanced technology as well as developing selected flight missions.

Known for his innovative approach to collaborations between government academia, and the private sector, Hubbard developed the award winning NASA Research Park, including unprecedented R&D collaborations with Google, Intel and SGI.

Scott Hubbard recently chaired the Blue Ribbon Task Force on Nanotechnology for California. Hubbard has served on National Academy of Science panels and sits on the California Council of Science and Technology, the state level equivalent of the National Research Council. In 2003 Scott served full time as the sole NASA representative on the Columbia Accident Investigation Board, where he directed impact testing that demonstrated physical cause for the loss of Columbia. In 2000 Hubbard served as NASA’s first Mars program director and successfully restructured the entire Mars program in the wake of mission failures. He became known as NASA’s Mars Czar.

G Scott Hubbard is the founder of NASA’s astrobiology Institute, establishing it in 1998. He conceived the Mars Pathfinder mission with its airbag landing and was the manager for NASA’s highly successful Lunar Prospector Mission. Earlier in his career Hubbard led a small start-up high technology company in the San Francisco Bay area and was a staff scientist at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. For his service to NASA Hubbard has been awarded seven NASA medals including NASA’s highest honor, the Distinguished Service Medal for the Columbia Accident Investigation and was name Presidential Meritorious Rank Senior Executive.

Mr. Hubbard has been awarded laurels by Aviation Week three times, was elected to the International Academy of Aeronautics and is a recipient of their Engineering Science Award. Scott is a fellow of the American Institute of Aeronautics and astronautics recipient of the Von Karman medal in Astronautics from the AIAA and was awarded a Doctor Honoris Causa by the Polytechnic University of Madrid. Scott Hubbard most recently was awarded the 2006 Carl Sagan Memorial Award by the American Astronautical Society and The Planetary Society and the Challenger Learning Center Distinguished Achievement Award. He has authored more than 50 scientific papers on research and technology.

Hubbard received his undergraduate in physics and astronomy at Vanderbilt University ad his graduate education in solid state and semiconductor physics at the University of California Berkeley. Scott Hubbard continues his 40-year interest in music by regularly playing guitar in a jazz group.