8/7/03

Jim Killian, 334/844-4218

AUBURN ASTRONAUT DAVIS HONORED FOR ENGINEERING COMMUNICATIONS

JAN DAVIS

AUBURN -- Three-time Space Shuttle astronaut and engineer Jan Davis, a 1977 graduate of Auburn University, has won the American Association of Engineering Societies' Norm Augustine Award for Outstanding Achievement in Engineering Communications.

The award cited Davis for her communication of the excitement and wonders of space exploration and engineering.

As director of the Flight Projects Directorate at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala., Davis leads a team of engineers and scientists pioneering science operations onboard the International Space Station and other space projects.

The Augustine Award, established in 1998, honors Norm Augustine, who was the first president of Lockheed Martin Corp., when it was formed in 1995. He later became CEO, vice chairman, and chairman of the firm.

Davis, who oversees more than 1,400 civil service and contract workers, leads a directorate responsible for payload and science operations for the Space Station, training crews to operate Space Station science experiments and operating the control center for those experiments.

A Huntsville native, Davis began her career at the Marshall Center in 1979 as an aerospace engineer. She worked on several major NASA programs and projects, including Hubble Space Telescope and its later servicing mission, the Chandra X-ray Observatory, and the Shuttle. Selected to join the astronaut corps in 1987, she spent more than 670 hours in space during her three Shuttle flights.

In 1998, Davis became director of the Human Exploration and Development of Space Independent Assurance Office for NASA Headquarters, in Washington, D.C., providing safety oversight for all human space flight programs. She returned to Marshall in 1999 as deputy director of the Flight Projects Directorate and was named director of the directorate in January 2001.

Davis earned a bachelor's degree in applied biology in 1975 from Georgia Tech and a bachelor's degree in mechanical engineering in 1977 from AU. She earned her master's and doctoral degrees in mechanical engineering in 1983 and 1985, respectively, from the University of Alabama in Huntsville. In 2001, she was elected to the Alabama Aviation Hall of Fame and the Alabama Engineering Hall of Fame.

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