STAMATIOS M. KRIMIGIS has been Head of the Space Department (01/1991-04/2004)
of The Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory (JHU/APL),
and Emeritus Head and Principal Staff Scientist since then. He
had also served as Chief Scientist (1980-1990), and Supervisor
for Space Physics and Instrumentation (1968-79). As Head of the
Space Department (now renamed Space Exploration Sector), he directed the
activities of over 600 scientists, engineers, and other technical and
supporting staff. The Space Department's principal areas of work include the design,
construction, test, and launch into space of entire satellites, and of scientific
instruments that perform measurements on a large variety of
earth-orbiting and interplanetary missions. The Department has combined
excellence in space engineering together with in-depth science
capability in designing and executing some 63-satellite missions and
well over 175 instruments since 1959 with sponsorship by NASA and
other government agencies. After stepping down as Department Head in 2004 he
resumed his science work full time. He was elected in 2004 to the Chair of “Science
of Space and Applications” in the Academy of Athens, and
has served as Greece’s Alternate Head Delegate to the ESA Council (12/06-09/10).
He served as Chair of the National Council of Research and Technology of
Greece (9/2010 - 12/2013), and is Senior Advisor to the Minister of
Digital Governance of Greece (2019-present).
Dr.
Krimigis graduated from the Gymnasium of Chios, Greece, the University of
Minnesota (B. Phys., 1961) and the University of Iowa (M.S., 1963; Ph.D., 1965,
both in physics). As a student of J. A. Van Allen and later on
the Physics and Astronomy Dept. faculty, he built instruments for Mariners
3, 4 (Mars), Injun 4, 5 (Earth), OGO-4 (Earth), Mariner-5 (Venus),
and Explorers 33 and 35 (Moon, Anchored IMP), ie 8
instruments in 5 years. He joined JHU/APL in
1968.
Dr.
Krimigis' research interests include the Earth's environment, its
magnetosphere, the sun, the interplanetary medium, and the magnetospheres of
the planets. As Principal Investigator or Co-Investigator,
he has designed, built, flown and analyzed data from 21 instruments on
NASA/ESA space science missions, including the Low Energy Charged
Particle (LECP) Experiment on Voyagers 1 and 2, and the Active Magnetospheric
Particle Tracer Explorers (AMPTE), a collaborative U.S.-German-U.K. program
that created the first artificial comet in space on December
27, 1984. Together with five other scientists, he was invited to the White
House for lunch to brief President Reagan on both of these
projects on March 26, 1986. He was one of the Group of American intellectuals
from World of Arts, Sciences, and Politics invited to meet with President
Gorbachev during his first visit to Washington, D.C. in December 1987.
He also participated in a briefing of President Bush in the
Oval Office on July 7, 1990, following the successful Voyager 2 encounter with
Neptune. He is a Principal Investigator (PI) on Voyager since its inception
in 1971; he was PI on the Cassini/Huygens mission to
Saturn and Titan, a Co-Investigator on the Ulysses, ACE and MESSENGER missions
and Collaborating scientist on the New Horizons mission to
Pluto and the Kuiper belt. He is also Co-investigator on the JUICE mission to Jupiter, and the NASA
Parker Solar Probe ISOIS experiment, launched in 2018.
Dr. Krimigis
spearheaded the establishment of NASA's Discovery program for
low-cost planetary missions. The first such mission, NEAR, was
developed at APL, launched in 1996, orbited asteroid Eros for
a year, and landed on February 12, 2001. The NEAR team has been the recipient
of numerous prestigious awards, including the Smithsonian Air and
Space Museum Trophy for Achievement in 2001. Together with two other
colleagues, he was recognized for"Laurels" in Space for
the NEAR achievement by Aviation Week & Space Technology magazine
in 1997, and again in 2001. He was also recognized in 2001 with “Laurels” for
his role in resurrecting the mission to Pluto, New Horizons,
launched on January 19, 2006. He was member of the teams that were awarded the Smithsonian
Collier Trophy for Voyager (1980) and the Air and Space Museum
Trophy for NASA’s missions Voyager (1989), NEAR (2001), Cassini (2012),
and New Horizons (2016). Dr. Krimigis has built instruments that have
flown to all nine classical planets, the only scientist to do so, including
the New Horizons mission that encountered Pluto (the
ninth planet until 2007) in 2015 and Arrokoth (2019).
Dr. Krimigis has published more than 630
papers (37 in Science, 13 in Nature) in journals and books, is co-editor of
the book Saturn from Cassini-Huygens (Springer, 2009); has
been awarded the NASA Medal for Exceptional Scientific Achievement in
1981, 1986, and 2014, over forty NASA Group Achievement Awards for
Voyager, AMPTE, Galileo, NEAR, Cassini, MESSENGER, ACE, etc, the ESA group
awards for Ulysses and Cassini-Huygens, has been a member of the National
Academy of Sciences' Space Science Board, Chairman of the Board's Committee
on Solar and Space Physics (1983-1986), member of NASA's Space Science
and Applications Advisory Committee, Fellow of the American
Geophysical Union (AGU), the American Physical Society APS),
the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), the American
Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA), and Trustee and
Chair of Basic Sciences section (2001-2014) of the International
Academy of Astronautics (IAA). He received the IAA Basic
Sciences Award in 1994. At the World Space Congress (2002) he was
presented with the COSPAR Space Science Award, and in November 2004
he received the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory Lifetime
Achievement Award. He has participated as member or Chairman in many
national and international conferences in space science and space
systems management, and has lectured in major conferences and National
Academies in all five continents. The International Astronomical Union in
1999 named asteroid "8323 Krimigis" (previously 1979
UH) in his honor. The President of the Hellenic Republic has awarded him the Gold
Cross "Commandeur de l' Ordre du Phoénix" in 1997. He was
awarded Honorary Doctorates from the University of the Aegean (12/2009, Financial and Management
Engineering), the University of Athens (05/2010
Department of Physics), the Hellenic
International University (5/19/11, Science of Engineering), Frederic
University of Cyprus, and the 2013
Alumni Fellow from the University of
Iowa. The Council of European Aerospace Societies (CEAS) awarded
Dr. Krimigis its 2010 Gold Medal. On September 2012 he received the 2012
IAA Laurels Award for Team Achievement for NASA’s MESSENGER
mission to Mercury. The European Geosciences Union awarded
him the Jean Dominique Cassini Medal and Honorary
Membership, and the AIAA
the James A. Van Allen
Space Environments Award, both for 2014. He received the
Trophy for Lifetime Achievement by
the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum (NASM) in 2015, the American Astronautical Society (AAS) Space Flight Award (2016), the NASM Trophy for Current Achievement (New
Horizons Team-2016) and the NASA
Distinguished Public Service Medal, also in 2016. Also, as member of NASA’s New Horizons mission he received
the 2016 IAA Laurels Award for Team
Achievement. In 2017 he was awarded the IAA Theodore von
Karman Award (2017), and elected member of Academia Europaea,
and in 2018 was honored by a special resolution of the U. S. Senate
"for exceptional contributions to space science".
Citations: There are over 23,000 citations (Google
Scholar) to the work of S. M. Krimigis. An interview with Thompson-Reuters on
recent citations can be found at http://sciencewatch.com/ana/st/planet/11sepPlanetKrim/. The complete CV including the list of publications through 2020 can be
accessed on-line at SMK_BriefBioamp_amp_Publ_updated_12-31-20.pdf