Steve Goodman
NASA Marshall Space Flight Center
Leadership Results Statement
Developmental Program Year 2003-2004

Dr. Steve Goodman is a senior research scientist in the Earth Science Department at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center and a university adjunct Professor, whose personal and professional interest in understanding the complex and powerful forces of nature is often combined with adventure. His adventures included tornado chasing to document and understand the destructive nature of storms, scuba diving in quarries, lakes and oceans to explore sunken wrecks, ice diving to observe fish habitats in the winter, and learning how to transform shapeless molten glass into beautiful sculptures and objects of art. At NASA he continued his avid interest in adventure, exploration, learning, and the natural world through experiments and missions to develop new space remote sensing technologies and their applications to improve our Nation’s ability to predict and monitor natural disasters, climate change, and the Earth’s fragile environment. Enabled through NASA developed technologies, the Nation’s environmental prediction and monitoring capability will save lives, travel in the national airspace will become more efficient, manned and unmanned space launch operations will be safer, and the Nations economy will reap billions of dollars in annual benefits. An internationally recognized expert with over 50 peer reviewed publications on thunderstorm physics, lightning, and severe storms, Dr. Goodman received the NASA Exceptional Scientific Achievement Medal in 2001.

As Deputy Project Scientist for the Lightning Imaging Sensor and Optical Transient Detector (LIS/OTD) Earth Observing System (EOS) instrument team since the early 1990s, Dr. Goodman led the development of algorithms and managed the scientific computing facility, while also serving as the team’s liaison with nearly 200 scientists and students in over 20 countries. The NASA science team produced the most accurate determination of the global distribution of lightning on Earth from these data, leading to revisions of the science textbooks and enabling the completion of over 40 graduate student theses and dissertations in the U.S. and abroad, with some of these U.S. and international students mentored by Dr. Goodman. As a principal investigator and Project Manager for NASA’s Short Term Prediction Research and Transition Center since its inception in 2001, Dr. Goodman is also leading a national alliance and multi-institutional team in executing NASA’s Weather Science Focus Area strategy. Dr. Goodman’s principal focus has been to accelerate the infusion of NASA earth science observations and modeling research into the Nation’s forecast operations and decision support systems.

In 2003 Dr. Goodman had the opportunity through the NASA Leadership Development Program fellowship to stretch his leadership through a six month primary assignment as a Program Manager with the Office of Earth Science at NASA Headquarters and a four month collateral assignment in industry with the business development office of Teledyne Brown Engineering, a systems engineering, advanced technology, and manufacturing company with interests in space, defense, environment, and homeland security. At NASA Headquarters he was involved in developing the U.S. framework document and 10-year plan for global Earth observations in collaboration with 15 other agencies as a member of the planning and integration team of the ad-hoc Interagency Working Group on Earth Observations (IWGEO). Dr. Goodman facilitated the development of the criteria for the earth observing system priorities and was a contributing author to the chapters on natural disasters and weather. The IWGEO was created under the direction of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy’s Committee on Earth and Natural Resources to parallel the structure of the international Group on Earth Observations (GEO) formed during the First Earth Summit held in Washington, D.C. in July 2003. The second Earth Observations Summit was held in Tokyo April 25, where the 44 member countries of GEO adopted an international framework. Through the cooperation among the NASA Centers and other national and international partners, Dr. Goodman continues to facilitate our collective ability to observe, monitor, understand, and protect the planet. At Teledyne Brown Engineering Dr. Goodman participated with multiple tiger teams in identifying new business opportunities and market penetration strategies, and in the process developed a much deeper understanding of market research, bid and proposal best practices and lessons learned that he can transfer from industry to NASA. As a result of his participation in Source Evaluation Board training with industry representatives and follow-on discussions with company executives and NASA, Dr. Goodman facilitated the development of new procedures that are under consideration by the MSFC procurement office to improve its request for and evaluation of proposals, and to improve the communication and interaction between NASA and industry.