Douglas Isbell

Headquarters, Washington, DC January 19, 1996

(Phone: 202/358-1753)

Brian Dunbar
Headquarters, Washington, DC
(Phone: 202/358-1600)

RELEASE: 96-9

MISSION TO PLANET EARTH ADMINISTRATOR TO RETURN TO UCLA

Dr. Charles F. Kennel, NASA Associate Administrator for

the Office of Mission to Planet Earth, will leave the space
agency by late spring to return to the University of
California, Los Angeles, NASA Administrator Daniel Goldin
announced today.

Kennel has been appointed by the University of

California Board of Regents as the new executive vice
chancellor and chief academic officer of UCLA. He started
work at NASA in January 1994 under a two-year appointment
from his post as a professor in the UCLA Department of Physics.

"Under the leadership of Charlie Kennel, the Mission to

Planet Earth program has made significant progress in helping
improve our understanding of our changing planet," Goldin
said. "Dr. Kennel has been instrumental in putting the
program on a sound budgetary footing while emphasizing its
solid science focus. He has also led development of a
coordinated educational program that will help increase
students' understanding of Earth's environment."

Key agency accomplishments during Kennel's tenure as

associate administrator include the restructuring of NASA's
Earth Observing System, increasing usage of advanced
technology in the agency's future Earth science missions, the
definition of the first steps toward an integrated global
observing strategy, and the launch of the first next-
generation GOES weather satellite.

"I am extraordinarily grateful to NASA, and especially

to Dan Goldin, for giving me the opportunity to work on such
a fascinating program, which deals with issues of importance
to the whole world," Kennel said. "I've met and worked with
some of the most creative and dedicated people I have ever
known. It is especially satisfying that I will now be able
to apply what I learned from them on behalf of my home
institution, UCLA."

Kennel received an A.B. from Harvard College in 1959 and

a Ph.D. in Astrophysical Sciences from Princeton University
in 1964. He has been a tenured member of the UCLA Department
of Physics since 1967, and was its chairman from 1983 to
1986. He is the author or co-author of more than 225
experimental and theoretical publications in plasma physics,
space plasma physics, planetary science, astrophysics, and
nonlinear science.
 Dr. Kennel has been a Fulbright scholar, a Guggenheim
scholar, and a Fairchild Professor at the California
Institute of Technology. He is a fellow of the American
Geophysical Union, the American Physical Society, the
American Association for the Advancement of Science, and a
member of the International Academy of Astronautics and the
U.S. National Academy of Sciences.

-end-

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