Dr Stamatios Krimigis

Brief biography

Stamatios Krimigis is Emeritus Head of the Space Exploration Sector of the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory (APL), occupies the Chair of Science of Space at the Academy of Athens, is Principal Investigator (PI) on NASA’s Voyagers 1, 2, and PI Emeritus on the Cassini-Huygens mission, among others. He received B. Phys. from the University of Minnesota (1961), his Ph.D in Physics from the University of Iowa (1965) under J.A. Van Allen, served on the faculty, moved to APL in 1968, became Chief Scientist (1980), Space Department Head (1991) and Emeritus in 2004. He has built and/or participated in instruments that have flown to all nine classical planets beginning with Mariner 4 to Mars in 1965. He has published over 600 papers in peer-reviewed journals and books with over 21,000 citations. He is a three-time recipient (1981, 1986, 2014) of NASA’s Exceptional Scientific Achievement Medal. In 1999 the International Astronomical Union named asteroid 1979 UH as 8323 Krimigis. He is a Fellow of the American Physical Society (APS), the American Geophysical Union (AGU), the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) and the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA).  More recent awards include the Council of European Aerospace Societies CEAS Gold Medal in 2011, the European Geophysical Union Jean Dominique Cassini Medal (2014), the AIAA Van Allen Space Environments Award (2014), the National Air and Space Museum (NASM) Trophy for Lifetime Achievement (2015), the International Academy of Astronautics (IAA) Laurels Award for the MESSENGER Team (2015), the American Astronautical Society Space Flight Award, the NASM Trophy for Current Achievement (New Horizons Team), and the NASA Distinguished Public Service Medal, all in 2016, the IAA Theodore von Karman Award (2017), was elected member of the Academia Europaea (2017), and honored by the U. S. Senate for exceptional contributions to space science (2018).