S.Alan Stern

Alan Stern is the Associate Vice President of the Space Science and Engineering Division at the Southwest Research Institute. He is the principal investigator of the New Horizons mission to Pluto. Alan earned a doctorate in astrophysics and planetary science from the University of Colorado, Boulder. He has been involved in 24 suborbital, orbital, and planetary space missions, including eight for which he was the mission principal investigator. Alan has also developed eight scientific instruments for planetary and near-space research missions and has been a guest observer on numerous NASA satellite observatories. He was the Associate Administrator of NASA's Science Mission Directorate in 2007.