Dana Ulery
Encyclopedia
Dr. Dana Ulery is an American computer scientist
Computer scientist
A computer scientist is a scientist who has acquired knowledge of computer science, the study of the theoretical foundations of information and computation and their application in computer systems....

  and pioneer in scientific computing
Computational science
Computational science is the field of study concerned with constructing mathematical models and quantitative analysis techniques and using computers to analyze and solve scientific problems...

 applications. She began her career in 1961 as the first woman engineer at the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory
Jet Propulsion Laboratory
Jet Propulsion Laboratory is a federally funded research and development center and NASA field center located in the San Gabriel Valley area of Los Angeles County, California, United States. The facility is headquartered in the city of Pasadena on the border of La Cañada Flintridge and Pasadena...

 (Pasadena, CA), designing and developing algorithms to model NASA’s Deep Space Network
Deep Space Network
The Deep Space Network, or DSN, is a world-wide network of large antennas and communication facilities that supports interplanetary spacecraft missions. It also performs radio and radar astronomy observations for the exploration of the solar system and the universe, and supports selected...

 capabilities and automating real-time tracking systems for the Ranger
Ranger program
The Ranger program was a series of unmanned space missions by the United States in the 1960s whose objective was to obtain the first close-up images of the surface of the Moon. The Ranger spacecraft were designed to take images of the lunar surface, returning those images until they were destroyed...

 and Mariner
Mariner program
The Mariner program was a program conducted by the American space agency NASA that launched a series of robotic interplanetary probes designed to investigate Mars, Venus and Mercury from 1963 to 1973...

 space missions using a North American Aviation Recomp II, 40-bit word size computer. Over the course of her career, she has held positions as an applied science and technology researcher and manager in industry, academia, and government. In 2007, she retired from her position as Chief Scientist of the Computational and Information Sciences Directorate at the United States Army Research Laboratory(ARL).
Ulery was among the first group of female managers at the US Army Research Laboratory. In these positions, she was also appointed Chair of the US Army Materiel Command
United States Army Materiel Command
The U.S. Army Materiel Command is the primary provider of materiel to the United States Army.The Command's mission includes the research & development of weapons systems as well as maintenance and parts distribution....

 Knowledge Management Council, and in 2002 was awarded the Army Knowledge Award for Best Transformation Initiative. She is listed in American Men and Women of Science
American Men and Women of Science
American Men and Women of Science is a biographical reference on leading scientists in the United States and Canada published as a series of books and online by Gale, a unit of Cengage Learning. Gale acquired the title from Information Today, Inc. in 2001....

, Who’s Who of American Women, Who’s Who in the East, Who’s Who in the World, and Who’s Who in America
Marquis Who's Who
Marquis Who's Who, a subsidiary of News Communications, Inc., is the American publisher of a number of directories containing short biographies...

.

Ulery received her BA from Grinnell College
Grinnell College
Grinnell College is a private liberal arts college in Grinnell, Iowa, U.S. known for its strong tradition of social activism. It was founded in 1846, when a group of pioneer New England Congregationalists established the Trustees of Iowa College....

 in 1959, with a double major in English Literature and Mathematics. She earned her MS and PhD in Computer Science from the University of Delaware
University of Delaware
The university is organized into seven colleges:* College of Agriculture and Natural Resources* College of Arts and Sciences* Alfred Lerner College of Business and Economics* College of Earth, Ocean and Environment* College of Education and Human Development...

, in 1972 and 1975 respectively. In 1976, she accepted visiting faculty appointments at Cairo University in Egypt
Cairo University
Cairo University is a public university located in Giza, Egypt.The university was founded on December 21, 1908, as the result of an effort to establish a national center for educational thought...

 and the American University in Cairo
American University in Cairo
The American University in Cairo is an independent, non-profit, apolitical, secular institution of higher learning located in Cairo, Egypt...

. On her return to the U.S., she joined the Engineering Services Division of the DuPont Company, where she worked as a computer scientist and technical manager. In the early 1980s, Ulery led initiatives to develop and deploy enterprise-wide process manufacturing systems to evaluate and control product quality at DuPont sites, and for these achievements was awarded the DuPont Engineering Award for Leadership of Corporate Quality Computer Systems. Specifically, she played an active role in establishment of EDI standards, international standards for electronically exchanging technical information used by business and government which ultimately led to the . She initiated and led multidisciplinary programs at ARL to advance research in multi-source information fusion
Information integration
Information integration is the merging of information from disparate sources with differing conceptual, contextual and typographical representations. It is used in data mining and consolidation of data from unstructured or semi-structured resources...

 and situational understanding
Situation awareness
Situation awareness, situational awareness, or SA, is the perception of environmental elements with respect to time and/or space, the comprehension of their meaning, and the projection of their status after some variable has changed, such as time...

 applied to non-traditional battle environments and homeland defense.

In the 1990s, Ulery served for many years as Pan American Delegate to the United Nations Electronic Data Interchange for Administration, Commerce, and Trade (UN/EDIFACT
EDIFACT
United Nations/Electronic Data Interchange For Administration, Commerce and Transport is the international EDI standard developed under the United Nations...

). She was Chair of the UN/EDIFACT Multimedia Objects Working Group and Chair of the UN/EDIFACT Product Data Working Group, leading early international development of standards for electronic commerce
Electronic commerce
Electronic commerce, commonly known as e-commerce, eCommerce or e-comm, refers to the buying and selling of products or services over electronic systems such as the Internet and other computer networks. However, the term may refer to more than just buying and selling products online...

.

External links

Works by Dana Ulery in Worldcat libraries http://worldcat.org/identities/lccn-n93-84658
US Army Research Laboratory http://www.arl.army.mil/www/default.cfm
NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/
Electronic Commerce standards http://www.x12.org/
The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.  The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.
 
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