Our Team
Thomas H. Painter, PhD
FOUNDER AND CHIEF EXECUTIVE OFFICER
Tom Painter is a snow hydrologist and remote sensing specialist. He was recruited to the Jet Propulsion Laboratory/Caltech in 2010 to create what became the NASA Airborne Snow Observatory. In 2018, he was awarded the NASA Exceptional Technology Achievement Medal and the Bureau of Reclamation’s John W. Keys III Award, both for his team’s work on ASO. In 2019, he was elected as Fellow of the American Geophysical Union. In 2019, he departed NASA/JPL to pursue the technology transfer of ASO to the operational commercial world to make true the vision of providing quantitative snow measurements and accurate snowmelt runoff forecasting around Planet Earth.
Joseph W. Boardman, PhD
CO-FOUNDER AND CHIEF TECHNICAL OFFICER-SOFTWARE
Joe Boardman is a remote sensing geophysicist specializing in algorithm invention and the mission-critical middle ground between sophisticated sensor hardware and end-user application success. Noteworthy items during his 30-plus-year career include: owning and developing the industry-standard ENVI software package; playing a key role in discovering water on the Moon for NASA and ISRO; developing numerous critical imaging spectroscopy analysis tools including the Pixel Purity Index and Mixture Tuned Matched Filtering; and being a key player in dozens of airborne and three space missions for NASA, DoD and commercial clients. He holds three degrees in Geophysics, from the University of Oklahoma, the Colorado School of Mines and the University of Colorado.
Jeffrey S. Deems, PhD
CO-FOUNDER AND CHIEF TECHNICAL OFFICER-HARDWARE
Jeffrey Deems has helped pioneer the use of lidar snow depth mapping in support of hydrologic science, water management, and avalanche mitigation. As a founding member of the NASA JPL Airborne Snow Observatory Science Team, he helped develop the lidar mapping and data fusion workflows while fostering connections with hydrologic forecasting and management entities. His interests and expertise in avalanche and snow hydrology research combine field data collection, modeling, and remote sensing in midlatitude mountain locations in the western US and around the globe, and actively further connections between science and management applications.
Kat Bormann, PhD
Lead Scientist
Kat Bormann moved to the US from Australia to join the NASA JPL Airborne Snow Observatory Team after being awarded a NASA Postdoctoral Fellowship at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory/Caltech in 2013. Kat is a recognized expert in remote sensing of snow and snow density dynamics in the snow research community and is an active contributor to peer reviewed science. She has become an integral part of the team drawing from broad experience across all facets of the ASO program, in particular, in-situ field measurements and snow retrieval algorithm development from a variety of remote sensing data. In 2020, Kat left her NASA Scientist position at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory to pursue the expansion of the ASO program and to help unleash the scientific contributions that the unique ASO snow products can bring to the field of snow hydrology across the globe.
Liz Carey
Lead of Flight Operations
Liz Carey has a background in astrophysics and experimental planetary science and joined the NASA/Caltech Jet Propulsion Laboratory to conduct experimental research on extraterrestrial ices. In 2016 she joined the NASA Airborne Snow Observatory flight team as a flight operator. She has since flown hundreds of hours of snow surveys for the ASO program. In addition, Liz is a member of the ASO SUPER Team that processes the data sets from each snow survey. In early 2020 she joined the Airborne Snow Observatories, Inc. as the Flight Operations Lead to oversee the data collection operations and continues to participate in data processing. She also oversees the ASO, Inc. Student Internship and Educational Outreach programs.
Pat Hayes, PE
CO-FOUNDER AND CHIEF BUSINESS OFFICER
Pat has over 40 years of professional experience in the water field. He is a registered civil engineer in California, Arizona and Nevada. Pat has worked in the private and public sector both nationally and internationally. Most recently he was General Manager of the Mammoth Community Water District. Mammoth was among those agencies to first use ASO technology to better manage its water resources. Pat has experience working with technology startups in the water field which include remote data gathering, data analytics and improved water management. He has considerable background in running growing companies and managing people.
Evan Burgess, PhD
Lead Data Scientist
Evan Burgess is a software developer and data scientist with an academic background in glaciology. Evan has worked with radar and lidar data, UAVs, atmospheric and land surface models, in-situ data, and more. Through this work, Evan has developed innovative software, visualization tools, and cloud computing solutions that can accelerate data-driven discovery. Evan’s PhD used synthetic aperture radar to discover widespread interactions between wintertime glacier flow speeds and climate. His postdoc distilled decades-worth of airborne lidar data to understand glacier mass loss in Alaska in ways that were not possible previously. As ASO's Lead Data Scientist, Evan works to advance ASO's processing pipelines, data analytics, and decision support systems. Evan holds a BA from University of Colorado, and a MS/PhD from University of Utah.
Cristina M. De Cesare
Lead Engineer
After earning her Computer Science B.S. at age 19, Cristina spent a few years doing web development at e-commerce companies Chegg, Inc. and AXS.com. She then spent 5 years at the NASA/Caltech Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), where she eventually became Compute Team Lead for the JPL Airborne Snow Observatory project. At JPL, Cristina was also Mission Interface Lead for the Planetary Data System (PDS) Imaging Node. For PDS, Cristina helped science teams design & produce archival metadata, to ensure usability of image data captured by missions including Juno, InSight, MER, and MSL. At ASO, Inc., Cristina’s web development background and her experience with science data management systems enable her to wear many hats, including: software developer, database admin, systems admin, and data engineer.