B612 Board of Directors

Ed Lu is a former NASA astronaut who flew three space missions including 6 months on the International Space Station. From 2007 to 2010, he led the Advanced Projects group at Google, where his teams developed imaging technology for Google Earth/Maps, Google Street View, and energy information products including Google PowerMeter.He is the co-inventor of the Gravity Tractor, a spacecraft able to controllably alter the orbit of an asteroid.He has published scientific articles on high-energy astrophysics, solar physics, plasma physics, cosmology, and statistical physics.He holds a PhD in astrophysics from Stanford University, and a Bachelors degree in Electrical Engineering from Cornell University.

Rusty Schweickart was the Lunar Module Pilot on the Apollo 9 mission, March 3-13, 1969. From 1977-1979 Schweickart was Governor Jerry Brown’s Assistant for Science and Technology. From 1979-1983 he was Chairman of the California Energy Commission.In 1985 he founded the Association of Space Explorers and served as President of ASE-USA until 1989.Subsequently, Schweickart was founder and CEO of several space and Internet startups. He co-founded and served as Chairman of B612 Foundation from 2001-2011.In 2005 Schweickart founded and chaired the ASE-NEO Committee which, with its international Panel on Asteroid Threat Mitigation produced and submitted to the United Nations Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space (COPUOS) the seminal report Asteroid Threats: A Call for Global Response (www.space-explorers.org/ATACGR.pdf). Schweickart also co-chaired, along with astronaut Tom Jones, the NASA Advisory Council’s Task Force on Planetary Defense.

Clark Chapman is a planetary scientist whose research has specialized in studies of asteroids and cratering of planetary surfaces, using telescopes, spacecraft, and computers.He is a past Chair of the Division for Planetary Sciences (DPS) of the American Astronomical Society and was the first editor of the “Journal of Geophysical Research – Planets.”He is a winner of the DPS’s Carl Sagan Award for Excellence in Public Communication in Planetary Sciences. He has been on the science teams of the Galileo, Near-Earth Asteroid Rendezvous (NEAR-Shoemaker), and MESSENGER missions.He has undergraduate, Master’s, and PhD degrees from Harvard (astronomy), M.I.T. (meteorology), and M.I.T. (planetary science), respectively. For many years he was at the Planetary Science Institute (SAIC) in Tucson and has been at Southwest Research Institute in Boulder since 1996.

Geoff Baehr is a partner at USVP, and an advisor to the Skolkovo Foundation and Almaz Capital. He also is a technical advisor to numerous companies. Previously, he was Chief Network Officer at Sun Microsystems, responsible for technical and strategic network directors.Geoff holds 13 patents in networking, security and RF engineering. He founded the ATM Forum, and has served on numerous technical and advisory boards for both industry and government. In the 1980’s, he designed large networks for government clients for TRW Information Networks Division. At USVP, Geoff serves on the board of Vivato. When he’s not helping entrepreneurs think ‘out of the box,’ he’s looking through a box. Geoff practices large format nature photography using the historical wooden view cameras. Geoff also volunteers with the San Mateo County Sheriff’s office and works with the Cliff Rescue/Dive/Marine Unit as Head Diver.

Piet is a professor of Astrophysics at the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton University, where he is also the head of the Program for Interdisciplinary Studies.While his main specialization is in stellar and planetary dynamics, many of his more than two hundred articles are written in collaboration with colleagues from different fields, ranging from particle physics, geophysics and paleontology to computer science, cognitive psychology and philosophy

Dr. Durda is the Principal Scientist in the Southwest Research Institute’s (SwRI) Dept. of Space Studies in Boulder, Colorado. He has more than 20 years experience researching the collisional and dynamical evolution of main-belt and near-Earth asteroids, Vulcanoids, Kuiper belt comets, and interplanetary dust.He is an active pilot, with time logged in over a dozen types of aircraft including the F/A-18 Hornet and the F-104 Starfighter, and was a 2004 NASA astronaut selection finalist.Durda is one of three SwRI payload specialists who will fly on multiple suborbital spaceflights on Virgin Galactic’s Enterprise and XCOR Aerospace’s Lynx