Dr. Sally Ride, President and CEO, Sally Ride Science; Professor of Physics, University of California, San Diego;
and Former NASA Astronaut
Dr. Neal Lane, Senior Fellow in Science and Technology, the Baker Institute for Public Policy, Rice University
Annell R. Bay, Vice President, Exploration Americas, Shell Exploration & Production
Dr. Sallie Keller-McNulty, Professor of Statistics and Dean, George R. Brown School of Engineering, Rice University
Dr. Elizabeth Long, Associate Professor of Sociology and Department Chair, Rice University

Sally K. Ride, Ph.D., a former NASA Astronaut and the first American woman in space, is currently the President and CEO of Imaginary Lines, Inc. and a Professor of Physics at the University of California, San Diego. Imaginary Lines is a company devoted to supporting and encouraging girls interested in math, science and technology. The company creates events, programs, and publications that will nurture their interest at a critical time in their lives. Dr. Ride was raised in Los Angeles, California and attended Stanford University where she received her B.S. in Physics and B.A in English in 1973, and her M.S. and Ph.D. in Physics in 1975 and 1978, respectively. Shortly thereafter, she was selected for NASA’s astronaut corps. Her first space flight was aboard the Space Shuttle Challenger in 1983; her second was also aboard Challenger, in 1984. During those flights, she deployed communications satellites, operated the robot arm, and conducted experiments in materials, pharmaceuticals, and Earth remote-sensing. Training for her third spaceflight was interrupted by the Space Shuttle Challenger accident. Dr. Ride served as a member of the Presidential Commission investigating the accident, and chaired its subcommittee on Operations. She then served as NASA’s first director of Strategic Planning, producing a report entitled “Leadership and America’s Future in Space.” She also created, and was the first Director of, NASA’s Office of Exploration. In 1989, Dr. Ride joined the faculty at UCSD as a Professor of Physics and Director of the University of California’s California Space Institute. In 2001 she founded her own company, Imaginary Lines, to pursue her long-time passion: motivating girls and young women to pursue careers in science, math and technology. Long an advocate for improved science education, Dr Ride has written five science books for children: To Space and Back, Voyager, The Third Planet, The Mystery of Mars, and Exploring Our Solar System. She has also initiated and directed education projects designed to fuel middle school students’ fascination with science. Dr. Ride has been a member of the President’s Committee of Advisors on Science and Technology and the National Research Council’s Space Studies Board, and has served on the Boards of the Congressional Office of Technology Assessment, the Carnegie Institution of Washington, and the NCAA Foundation. She is a member of the Corporate Directors’ Forum, and has served on the Boards of Veridian and the Mitre Corporation. Dr. Ride is a Fellow of the American Physical Society, a member of the Pacific Council on International Policy, and currently serves on the Boards of the Aerospace Corporation and of the California  Institute of Technology. She is the only person to have served on the Commissions investigating both the Space Shuttle Challenger and Columbia accidents. Dr. Ride has been inducted into the National Women’s Hall of Fame, the Astronaut Hall of Fame and has received numerous honors and awards, including the Jefferson Award for Public Service, the von Braun Award, the Lindbergh Eagle, and the NCAA’s Theodore Roosevelt Award. She has twice been awarded the National Spaceflight Medal.

Neal Lane, PhD, Moderator, is the Malcolm Gillis University Professor at Rice University. He also holds appointments as Senior Fellow in Science and Technology at the Baker Institute and in the Department of Physics and Astronomy. Prior to returning to Rice University, Lane served in the federal government as assistant to the president for science and technology and director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, from August 1998 to January 2001, and as director of the National Science Foundation (NSF) and member (ex officio) of the National Science Board, from October 1993 to August 1998. Before becoming the NSF director, Lane was provost and professor of physics at Rice University, a position he had held since 1986. He first came to Rice in 1966, when he joined the Department of Physics as an assistant professor.

In 1972, he became professor of physics and space physics and astronomy. He left Rice from mid-1984 to 1986 to serve as chancellor of the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs. In addition, from 1979 to 1980, while on leave from Rice, he worked at the NSF as director of the Division of Physics. Widely regarded as a distinguished scientist and educator, Lane’s many writings and presentations include topics in theoretical atomic and molecular physics and science and technology policy. Early in his career he received the W. Alton Jones Graduate Fellowship and held an NSF Doctoral Fellowship (University of Oklahoma), an NSF Post-Doctoral Fellowship (while in residence at Queen’s University, Belfast, Northern Ireland) and an Alfred P. Sloan Foundation Fellowship (at Rice University and on research leave at Oxford University). He earned Phi Beta Kappa honors in 1960 and was inducted into Sigma Xi National Research Society in 1964, serving as its national president in 1993. He served as visiting fellow at the Joint Institute for Laboratory Astrophysics from 1965 to 1966 and 1975 to 1976. While a professor at Rice, he was two-time recipient of the University’s George R. Brown Prize for Superior Teaching. Lane earned his BS, MS, and PhD degrees in physics from the University of Oklahoma.

Annell R. Bay was appointed Vice President Exploration, EP Americas for Shell Exploration & Production in May, 2004. She joined Shell from Kerr-McGee Oil and Gas Corporation where she was Vice President Worldwide Exploration. Her career in oil and gas exploration of 25 years has included assignments in exploration play and prospect generation, exploration drilling and operations, worldwide planning and exploration management. Annell began her career after receiving a Masters of Degree in Geology from The University of Texas at Austin in 1980. She worked in her early career as an exploration geologist for Shell, Chevron, and Sohio/BP before joining Oryx Energy in 1988. Oryx merged with Kerr-McGee in 1999. Her worldwide experience includes exploration ventures in onshore US, Ecuador, Russia, Australia, SE Asia and Kazakhstan. With Oryx, she was also a representative for South East Asia, based in Jakarta, Indonesia. Other recent roles in Kerr-McGee include Vice President North America Exploration, Exploration Manager US Onshore and Director of International Exploration. She is a member of the Advisory Council for Geology Foundation at The University of Texas at Austin, the Corporate Advisory Committee to the Bureau of Economic Geology, The University of Texas at Austin, the Corporate Advisory Committee for the American Association of Petroleum Geologists, the American Geological Institute, and the Houston Geological Society.

Sallie Keller-McNulty, Ph.D., was named dean of Rice University’s George R. Brown School of Engineeringin July 2005. Prior to her appointment, Keller-McNulty was the group leader fro the Statistical Sciences Group at Los Alamos National Laboratory since 1998. There, she not only helped the size of the Statistical Sciences Group increase from 13 staff members to more than 40, but she also aided in quadrupling the budget. Before joining Los Alamos, Keller-McNulty was professor and director of graduate  studies in the Department of Statistics at Kansas State University. She also served as director of the Statistical Design and Analysis Unit for the KSU Institute of Social and Behavioral Research from 1990 to 1998 and was an adjunct professor in the Computer and Information Sciences Department from 1989 to 1995. Before beginning at KSU in 1985, Keller-McNulty was an assistant professor in the mathematics department of the University of North Carolina- Greensboro from 1983 to1985. From 1996 to 1997, Keller-McNulty held a joint research fellowship of the American Statistical Association, National Science Foundation and Bureau of Labor Statistics and served as program director for Statistics and Probability in the Division of Mathematical Sciences of the NSF from 1994 to 1996. She has chaired the National Academy of Sciences’ Committee on Applied and Theoretical Statistics and has recently served on three other National Research Council committees including the Board of Mathematical Sciences and their Application, the National Research Council panel reviewing the Information Technology Laboratory of the National Institute of Standards and Technology, and the Committee on National Statistics on the Research on Future Census Methods. Keller-McNulty is the author of more than 60 statistical science publications and her areas of research are uncertainty quantification, computational and graphical statistics and related software and modeling techniques, and data access and confidentiality. Currently the chair of a National Academy panel study on modeling and simulation for defense transformation, Keller-McNulty is also a recipient of the American Statistical Association (ASA) Founders Award and has recently been elected president of the ASA. She is an associate editor of Statistical Science and has served as associate editor of the Journal of Computational and Graphical Statistics and the Journal of the American Statistical Association. She serves on several national advisory committees. Keller-McNulty received her B.A. and M.A. in mathematics from the University of South Florida and her Ph.D. in statistics from Iowa Sate University.

Elizabeth Long, Ph.D., is Associate Professor of Sociology at Rice University. Before this position, Long served as Assistant Professor, Sociology at Rice University, first joining Rice in 1978. While completing graduate school, she taught Women’s Studies and did administrative work at Wellesley College and M.I.T. Before entering graduate school, Long worked for several years in publishing for Simon & Schuster and Alfred A. Knopf, Inc. in New York City. She has served on several Editorial Boards, including Communication Review, Book Research Quarterly, and Socialist Review. She has also served as Chair of the Culture Section of the American Sociological Association, and on the Program Committee for the American Sociological Association and the American Studies Association. At Rice University, she has won several teaching awards, including the George R. Brown Award for Excellence in Teaching and the Julia Miles Chance Award for teaching excellence and gender sensitivity. Professor Long has published in the fields of cultural sociology, sociology of gender, the sociology of knowledge, qualitative sociology, and contemporary sociological theory, as well as in the interdisciplinary fields of American Studies, cultural studies, and women’s studies. Her research has been funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities. Long’s ongoing projects include: an article about an African American women’s book club associated with the N.A.A.C.P. that met in Houston from 1949 into the 1970’s; a study of the uses of field research and the concept of culture in the Chicago School of Sociology; a study of the varieties of women’s activism in the late 20th and early 21st century; and a piece on Merleau Ponty’s relevance for feminist rethinking of the body. Long received her B.A. in history at Stanford University, and her M.A. and Ph.D. in sociology from Brandeis University.