Jamaican Professor John-Paul Clarke has been appointed as one of the new members of NASA Advisory Council (NAC).
The announcement was made by NASA Administrator Bill Nelson on Wednesday. Clarke is one of four new members of the advisory council who Nelson says, “will provide leadership counsel and advice on agency programs and priorities.”
“I am incredibly proud of the accomplishments and progress we’ve made to date, and these new additions to the NAC will bring new ideas and solutions to complex problems we face. We are in the midst of another banner year at the agency, and I look forward to hearing from and working with an exceptional NAC,” Nelson added.
Dr. John-Paul Clarke who will serve as Chair of the NAC Aeronautics Committee is a Calabar High School Old Boy and a past student of Vaz Preparatory School in Kingston, Jamaica.
He is currently a professor of aerospace engineering and engineering mechanics at The University of Texas at Austin, where he holds the Ernest Cockrell Jr. memorial chair in engineering. He is also a former researcher at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California.
The University of Texas notes that Clarke “is a leading expert in aircraft trajectory prediction and optimization.”
As indicated in his 2018 testimony to the Science Committee of the U.S. House of Representatives, he is particularly interested in leveraging his expertise to enable increasingly autonomous aircraft-enabled mobility, especially in urban and regional settings.
Clarke received his bachelors, masters and doctorate degrees in aeronautics and astronautics from MIT. His research and contributions to aerospace have earned him many honors, including the 1999 AIAA/AAAE/ACC Jay Hollingsworth Speas Airport Award, the 2003 FAA Excellence in Aviation Award, the 2006 National Academy of Engineering Gilbreth Lectureship, and the 2012 AIAA/SAE William Littlewood Lectureship.
He has also co-founded multiple companies, most recently Universal Hydrogen – a company dedicated to the development of a comprehensive carbon-free solution for aviation.
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