Welcome!

Southwest Research Institute is proud to announce its third national conference on export and licensing requirements for space-based programs. This year's keynote speaker is Dr. John Mather, winner of the 2006 Nobel Prize in Physics.

Conference content includes advanced issues related to export & licensing requirements for space-based programs, and may be reviewed in the Agenda section of this website. This conference will benefit export compliance managers and staff, empowered officials, project managers, and technical staff. In past years, conference attendees representing industry, government, and university research have convened to share knowledge and discuss current issues surrounding this dynamic topic. We urge you to attend and take part, as 2008 should be no exception!

Our two-day conference will be held at the Fairmont Hotel in Washington, DC, on Monday, March 31st and Tuesday, April 1st, 2008. Prospective attendees are encouraged to sign up early, as enrollment is limited to 125 attendees. This limit ensures an ideal atmosphere for Q&A, discussion, and business networking. The cost of the conference is $600. If four people from the same company register, the fifth person may attend free of charge. Please direct your questions to conference chairperson Ms. Debbie Shaffer, via telephone at (210)-522-6689, or email at deborah.shaffer@swri.org.

Keynote Speaker

Born in Roanoke, Virginia in 1946, Dr. Mather was captivated by science from an early age. His mother, a schoolteacher, and his father, a researcher in dairy cattle genetics, read science-related books aloud to him including biographies of Galileo and Darwin. A 1954 visit to the Museum of Natural History in New York and its planetarium ignited an interest in astronomy. His family purchased a telescope in order to observe the close approach of Mars in that year and young Mather was hooked.

While pursuing a doctorate in physics at the University of California, Berkeley, Mather put aside an interest in high-energy particle physics in order to pursue his fascination with infrared astronomy. He led the initial COBE proposal effort while a post-doctoral fellow at Columbia University's Goddard Institute for Space Studies in 1974-76. His mission proposal was for a spacecraft that would make definitive measurements of cosmic microwave radiation and cosmic infrared background radiation.

Dr. Mather was the Principal Investigator for the Far IR Absolute Spectrophotometer (FIRAS) on COBE. Data from COBE instrumentation confirmed in the first nine minutes of observation the detailed "blackbody" spectrum predicted by cosmologists. He showed that the cosmic microwave background radiation has a blackbody spectrum within 50 parts per million, confirming the Big Bang theory to extraordinary accuracy. When the data was presented at the January 1990 meeting of the American Astronomical Society, Mather received a standing ovation.

Dr. Mather won the 2005 Society of Photo-Optical Instrumentation Engineers George W. Goddard award. NASA's Michael G. Hauser wrote in his letter of support for the award: "The COBE mission accomplished all of its prime objectives spectacularly well, and yielded major cosmological discoveries from all three instruments. From inception to final publication, John Mather's initiative, commitment, scientific and techncial brilliance, and leadership were essential."

Since 1995 Dr. Mather has been the Senior Project Scientist for the James Webb Space Telescope, scheduled for launch in 2013. He leads the science team, and represents scientific interests within the project management. Mather describes his role as "making sure that this grand engineering project really delivers the science that it promises." Dr. Mather is also Chief Scientist of the Science Mission Directorate (SMD) at NASA Headquarters, where he provides independent scientific advice on all aspects of the NASA science program.