Stephen Volz

Dr Volz has more than 30 years of professional experience in aerospace. As the head of NESDIS, he sets the strategic vision and implementation objectives for the Nation’s civilian operational earth observing satellite fleet. Within NOAA he serves as the Co-Chair of the NOAA Observing Systems Council and is a member of the NOAA Executive Council. He is a leader in the international Earth observation community, serving as the NOAA Principal to the Committee on Earth Observation Satellites (CEOS) and to the Coordination Group for Meteorological Satellites (CGMS). He has also served as the NOAA and US Principal to the Executive Committee (ExCom) of the international Group on Earth Observations (GEO). In each of these roles Dr. Volz leads efforts to coordinate global satellite-based observations among international space agency partners and interested users of remote sensing earth observation data to further the development of a Global Earth Observation System of Systems, and to meet the global weather and environmental monitoring and forecasting efforts..
Prior to coming to NOAA, Dr. Volz served as the Associate Director for Flight Programs in the Earth Science Division of NASA’s Science Mission Directorate where he managed all of NASA’s Earth Science flight missions in operation, development, and conception, and the ground and data systems to support them. Prior to serving as the Flight Program Director, Dr Volz was the Earth Science program executive for a series of Earth Science missions, including EO-3 GIFTS, CloudSat, CALIPSO, and ICESat, and he led the Senior Review for the Earth Science operating missions. Dr Volz worked in industry at Ball Aerospace and Technologies Corporation from 1997–2002, where he was the Project Manager for the Space Infrared Telescope Facility superfluid helium cryostat and other flight projects. From 1986–1997 Dr Volz worked for NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center as an instrument manager, an IT Manager, a systems engineer, and a cryogenic systems engineer on missions and instruments including the Cosmic Background Explorer (COBE), among others.
Dr Volz is a member of numerous professional societies, including the American Physical Society (M’82), the American Astronomical Society (M’87), the American Geophysical Union (M’02), and the American Meteorological Society (M’08). He is a senior member of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), an active member of and participant in the Geoscience and Remote Sensing Society (GRSS), and served as a member of the GRSS Administration Committee (AdCom) for the period of 2013–2015.
Dr Volz has a doctorate in Experimental Condensed Matter Physics from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (1986), a master’s in Physics from Illinois (1981), and a bachelor’s in Physics from the University of Virginia (1980). He has more than 20 publications in peer- reviewed journals.