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Mark Buesing confesses that he is not a teacher. At least that's not what he started out as. Mr. Buesing graduated with honors in Electrical Engineering from the University of Illinois - Urbana. He worked at both Hughes Aircraft in the Missile Development Division and Motorola in the Cellular Subscriber Division.
In college Mr. Buesing started bicycle racing. As he began receiving wider recognition as a bicycle racer, he accepted an offer to race full time and left Motorola on good terms. While racing, he was selected to train at the Olympic Training Center, was twice the Illinois Rider of the Year, and rode in the 1992 Olympic Trials.
During an off-season from cycling, a physics teacher at a local high school quit. A friend called and asked Mr. Buesing if he could fill in until the school could find a "real" teacher. Mr. Buesing loved engineering, but after a few days in the classroom, felt a calling to be a teacher; he had accidentally discovered what he was meant to do. After retiring from cycling Mr. Buesing completed a Master's in Education and embarked on a teaching career.
"Mr. Mark," as his students call him, teaches Physics and AP Physics at Libertyville High School. He is the head cross country coach and coaches the school's academic decathlon team. He lives in Bristol, WI with his wife, two children, and a dog.
George Hale is Operation IceBridge's education and public outreach coordinator and has interests in communicating science to the public and student involvement in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) disciplines.
Michael Studinger is the Project Scientist for NASA's Operation IceBridge. He received a PhD in Geophysics from the University of Bremen and the Alfred Wegener Institute for Polar and Marine Research, Germany, in 1998. He has been a research scientist for over a decade at Columbia University's Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory in New York. In 2010, he joined the Cryospheric Sciences Laboratory at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center. Michael's research interests include physical processes in polar regions linking subglacial environments, ice sheet dynamics, and life in extreme environments, such as subglacial lakes. He is using integrated sets of aerogeophysical data, including gravity, magnetics, ice-penetrating radar, and laser altimeter measurements, to answer key questions in glaciology. His main research projects focus on the role of subglacial environments in a global framework.
Christy Hansen is Operation IceBridge's Project Manager, and handles all phases of IceBridge from planning and mission operations, to managing data product delivery and meeting all of the project's requirements. She works with all branches of IceBridge, including the aircraft offices, instrument teams, logistics teams, science teams, data center and education/outreach teams. Christy's experience comes from more than 10 years of training astronauts as an instructor in the extra-vehicular activity group and as a flight controller in the Mission Operations Directorate at Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas. In her career with NASA, Christy has worked with the Space Shuttle, International Space Station, and Hubble Space Telescope programs.