Dr. Susan L. Ustin acts as manager for the Center for Spatial Technologies and Remote Sensing (CSTARS) laboratory. She has served on a wide range of state and federal panels and committees, most recently an NRC review of 50 years of NASA Earth Science Research and NPOESS Science Advisory Board for Northrup-Grumman. Susan's interest in remote sensing stems from her research as a post-doctoral fellow when she had the opportunity to participate in the first stage of development for imaging spectroscopy at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Since then, her research has focused on developing and testing methods for retrieving ecological information from remote sensing data at spatial scales from microscopic to global and encompasses both theoretical and applied research. Susan received a Ph.D. in Botany, specifically plant physiological ecology, from the University of California Davis in 1983.