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Carolyn is the Director of the Cassini Imaging Central Laboratory for Operations (CICLOPS) at the Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colorado, where Cassini images are collected, processed and released to the public, and an Adjunct Professor at both the University of Colorado and the University of Arizona. She is also the CEO of Diamond Sky Productions, a small company devoted to the scientific, as well as artful, use of planetary images and computer graphics for the presentation of science to the public. Carolyn has made numerous appearances on radio and television explaining science to the layperson, including the MacNeil/Lehrer Newshour, CBS' "60 Minutes", Peter Jennings' "The Century", CNN, and many TV documentaries on planetary exploration such as "Cosmic Journey: The Voyager Interstellar Mission and Message" on A&E, and "The Planets" on The Discovery Channel. She participated in a series of panel discussions at Warner Brothers studio in Hollywood in 1999 to discuss `Creating Network Television About Scientists and Engineers' and `Portraying Real Science and Technology in the Movies'. She is the creator/editor of the CICLOPS website (ciclops.org) and writes the site's home page opening greeting to the public.
Carolyn has been an active participant in guiding the American planetary exploration program over the last 15 years through membership on a host of NASA advisory committees, and in 2001/2002 was the Vice Chairperson for the Steering Group of the Solar System Decadal Survey, sponsored by the National Academy of Sciences and NASA. She was responsible for the proposal to honor the late reknowned planetary geologist, Eugene Shoemaker, by sending his cremains to the Moon aboard the Lunar Prospector spacecraft launched from Cape Canaveral. In late 1999, Carolyn was selected by the Sunday London Times as one of 18 scientific leaders of the 21st century and by Industrial Week magazine as "50 R&D Stars to Watch". Her contributions to the exploration of the outer solar system have been recognized with the naming of Asteroid (7231) Porco. Bibliography:
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Carolyn Porco is the leader of the Imaging Science Team on the Cassini mission presently orbiting Saturn, and a lead imaging scientist on the New Horizons Pluto/Kuiper Belt mission to be launched in early 2006. She is a veteran imaging scientist of the Voyager mission to the outer solar system in the 1980's. She received her PhD in 1983 from the California Institute of Technology. 