Jim Pass, Ph.D., Chief Executive Officer / Senior Research Scientist

Dr. Pass received his doctorate from the University of Southern California in 1991.  Long seeking to combine his passion for space exploration with his professional training in sociology, he finally moved ahead with his long-term dream in 2003 when inspired by a paper on the internet by Dr. Allen Tough called Positive Consequences of SETI Before Detection that mentioned the term "astrosociology" (see the Virtual Library page).  Dr. Pass refined the definition and scope of the new field over the next seven months until uploading the first site dedicated exclusively to astrosociology, Astrosociology.com, in July 2003.

Since August 2004, when Dr. Pass met with Dr. Marilyn Dudley-Flores and Thomas Gangale at the American Sociology Association (ASA) meeting in San Francisco, the development of astrosociology carried forward.  They brought the field to the American Institute of Aerosnautic and Astronautics (AIAA) and Dr. Pass was instrumental in establishing the Symposium on Astrosociology as part of the Space Propulsion and Energy Sciences International Forum (SPESIF) in 2007.  In May 2008, these three founding officers formed the Astrosociology Research Institute.  Dr. Simone Caroti and Christopher Hearsey joined ARI in 2010.

Simone Caroti, Ph.D., Director of Public and Educational Outreach / Senior Research Scientist

Simone Caroti is Director of Public and Educational Outreach and a member of the board of the Astrosociology Research Institute. In this role, he aims at expanding ARI's membership base and at establishing a set of templates for introducing astrosociological education in schools and colleges across the country. Mr. Caroti is also co-chair of the Astrosociology Symposium at Space Propulsion & Energy Sciences International Forum.

Dr. Caroti received his BA in Anglo-American literature at the University of Trieste, Italy, in February of 2002, and in the summer of the same year moved to Purdue University, Indiana, to conduct his graduate studies in the Comparative Literature program. He received his MA in 2004, and his Ph.D. in 2009 with a dissertation on the history of the generation starship concept in science fiction. This dissertation is now in the process of becoming a book to be published in the near future.

Dr. Caroti has dedicated his graduate years to the study of science fiction (SF), both as a literary mode in its own right and as a reflection on the variables inherent in the human adventure in space. Specifically, his work for ARI focuses on building conceptual and procedural bridges linking science fiction to the larger field of astrosociology, so as to make it possible to conduct astrosociological studies both of individual SF stories and of entire sub-genres within science fiction. He has published articles for the American Institute of Physics and a book chapter for Purdue University. He is currently an adjunct professor in the English Department at Purdue,
teaching introductory composition and professional writing.

Board of Advisors

Lynn E. Baroff, M.S.

Lynn Baroff is Executive Director of the California Space Education and Workforce Institute (CSEWI), a non-profit agency established by the State of California. The institute’s purpose is to integrate the efforts of that state’s educational establishment and its huge space enterprise, in maintaining and growing the workforce needed for the world’s largest space economy.

He comes to the Institute after 16 years at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), where he most recently worked as Human-Systems Integration lead with NASA’s Constellation Program, America’s next generation program for human space flight. He continues his association with NASA as a Senior Research Scientist at NASA Ames Research Center, leading an agency-wide team in developing a standard for automated and robotic systems that support long duration human space missions. His views on the importance of Astrosociology to the space program stem from his work in developing the social and work process patterns that will support new and long duration space missions to the moon, Mars, and beyond.  Mr. Baroff began his NASA career as chief of management training at JPL, where he was an internal consultant to senior management on critical organizational issues. He worked on project formulation and systems engineering teams for JPL’s Dawn mission, the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, New Millennium Deep Space 2, and Stardust mission. He also served as JPL’s special liaison to the United States Air Force space program, located at the Space and Missile Systems Center in El Segundo.

Before NASA, Mr. Baroff was a management consultant specializing in work systems analysis, strategic planning, and human resources management. He worked with such clients as Toshiba America, Xerox, Rockwell, and the Country of Los Angeles, creating employee and management educational programs. He has also been a commercial television producer, director and station executive, creating over 3,000 television programs and over 750 commercials.

He holds a Master of Science in Engineering Management, Bachelor of Arts in Communication, and has completed graduate work in Instructional Design and Behavioral Science. Additionally he holds a Certification in Systems Engineering from the California Institute of Technology, and several certifications from NASA. He has been an adjunct faculty member in the USC School of Public Administration, and is currently adjunct faculty at UCLA, teaching Systems Engineering in the Graduate Extension program.

Mr. Baroff is a founding member of spacearchitect.org, a member of the American Institute for Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA), a member of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society (HFES), and a Board member of the International Council on Systems Engineering (INCOSE). His publications include many peer-reviewed papers and conference presentations on topics as diverse as program-level Systems Engineering, Human Factors issues in mission assurance, human-rating for robotic and automated systems used in human space flight, and role-focused competency-based approaches to human resource development in the American workforce.

Sheryl Bishop, Ph.D.

Dr. Sheryl Bishop, Ph.D. is an Associate Professor, and Social Psychologist at the University of Texas Medical Branch, Galveston, Texas. She currently serves as Senior Biostatistician for the School of Nursing. From 2001-2007, she served as the curriculum director for UTMB’s Space Life Sciences Ph.D. curriculum. In addition, Dr. Bishop is a faculty at the International Space University, Strasbourg, France, and has contributed yearly to ISU’s Space Science Program since 1994. She served as the co-Chair and Chair for the International Space University’s (ISU) Affiliate Campuses from 1999-2001 and 2006-2008. For the last 20 years, Dr. Bishop has investigated human performance and group dynamics in teams in extreme environments, including deep cavers, mountain climbers, desert survival groups, polar expeditioners and Antarctic winter-over groups and various field simulations of isolated, confined environments for space. She routinely presents her research at numerous scientific conferences, is published in both the medical and psychological fields on topics as diverse as psychometric assessment, research methodology, outcomes research, psychosocial group dynamics and human performance in extreme environments. She has participated in various television documentaries on space and extreme environments by Discovery Channel, BBC, 60 Minutes and the History Channel. Dr. Bishop is a founding member and Board of Trustee member of the Society of Human Performance in Extreme Environments and Senior Editor for the HPEE Journal. She joined the Board of Advisors of the Astrosociology Research Institute (ARI) in June of 2009. Dr. Bishop has served as a grants reviewer for the Canadian Space Agency, Contributing Editor for Life Sciences for Habitation (formerly the Journal of Life Support and Biospheric Sciences) and Review Editor for the Journal of Aviation, Space and Environmental Medicine. Through her extensive work in analog environments into the social psychological and behavioral issues pertinent to long duration space missions, she has strongly supported the emergence of the field of astrosociology as critical to the inclusion of the most essential element of human factors, the interpersonal human, at every level of consideration for successful transition to a space culture.

Albert A. Harrison, Ph.D.

Albert A. Harrison received his BA and MA in Psychology from the University of California, Santa Barbara, and his Ph.D. in Social Psychology from the University of Michigan.  In 1967, he joined the faculty of the Department of Psychology at the University of California, Davis, and in 1979 he advanced to Professor.  Now Professor Emeritus, he is the author or co-author of approximately 100 papers in a wide range of journals, and his books include Living Aloft: Human Requirements for Extended Spaceflight (with Mary Connors and Faren Akins, NASA, 1985), From Antarctica to Outer Space: Life in Isolation and Confinement (with Yvonne A. Clearwater and Christopher P. McKay, Springer-Verlag, 1991), After Contact: The Human Response to Extraterrestrial Life (Plenum, 1997) and, Spacefaring: The Human Dimension (University of California Press, 2001).  His most recent book, Starstruck: Cosmic Visions in Science Religion and Folklore (Berghahn, 2007) describes how rapidly accumulating scientific findings about our place in the universe are encouraging people to seek new answers to old existential questions.

Dr. Harrison was a member of NASA's Space Human Factors Engineering Science and Technology Working Group and of the Permanent SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) Committee of the International Academy of Astronautics. In December, 2003, he was principal investigator of a NASA-sponsored conference on new directions in behavioral health, and edited a special supplement on this topic for Aviation, Space & Environmental Medicine (June, 2005). He is currently involved in planetary defense (protecting the Earth from asteroids and comets) and is heavily involved in the International Academy of Astronautics' Space Architecture Study Group, seeking new approaches to human-centered design.

A former deputy US editor of Systems Research and Behavioral Science, he may be reached at the Department of Psychology, One Shields Avenue, University of California at Davis, Davis, CA 95616 USA.

ARI Research Team*