CSA’s Board of Technical Directors, at a meeting held during the Applied Superconductivity Conference in Denver CO, certified results from the society’s recent elections.

Society members chose Peter Shirron, from NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, as the new President-Elect. He will assume that role on Jan. 1, 2017, replacing Melora Lason, of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, who will then begin her term as CSA President. Shirron earned his PhD in low temperature physics at the University of Illinois, Champaign-Urbana in 1989, and since then has been working at NASA Goddard in the field of aerospace cryogenics. During this period he has divided his time between supporting space cryogenic missions and conducting R&D, mainly in cryogenic detectors and adiabatic demagnetization refrigeration. He is currently a CSA Director and a columnist for CSA’s Cold Facts magazine. Previously, he served the society as organizer and director of the 2005 Space Cryogenics Workshop and as a co-instructor for the CSA course on Cryogenics at Glenn Research Center in 2010 and 2012.

Elected to the position of Director were Scott Courts, Lake Shore Cryotronics, Inc.; Richard Dausman, Cryomech, Inc.; Peter Knudsen, Facility for Rare Isotope Beams, MSU; and Mark Zagarola, Creare LLC. The board also appointed Christopher Rey, from Energy to Power Solutions, as the replacement for outgoing director Joe Snyder. The new directors will all take office on Jan. 1, 2017.

Scott Courts has been active in the field of cryogenics for over 30 years. He received a PhD in experimental solid state physics from The Ohio State University in 1988, where he studied the transition to superfluid turbulence in two-fluid flow of helium II. In 1989, Courts joined Lake Shore Cryotronics, Inc. as a senior scientist in its Sensor R&D Division and in 2013 joined the company’s product development group where he now serves as a metrologist/scientist with current goals of developing an off-the-shelf cryogenic temperature sensor qualified for use in aerospace applications, developing a 10mK easy-to-use resistance thermometer and implementation of a dry cryogenic system for performing thermometer calibrations from below 1.2 K to above 330 K.



Richard Dausman is currently the Chief Operating Officer at Cryomech, Inc. He joined the company in 1976 and has held a number of positions with the company over the past 37 years. Dausman has been a key contributor in fostering the steady growth and development of Cryomech into a leading manufacturer of cryogenic systems. Prior to his current position, Dausman was Vice President Engineering, where his activities focused on the design, development and manufacture of the company’s broad product line. He has extensive experience in a wide range of cryogenic techniques, applications and systems integration. He is currently CSA Treasurer.





Peter Knudsen began his career 25 years ago at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center where he was responsible for the engineering and design of high pressure gas, cryogenic and specialty fluid systems used for Space Shuttle ground support systems. It was there that he was first immersed into helium cryogenics and was a lead engineer on large projects, performing detailed engineering design, analysis and testing as well as technical project oversight. Knudsen served as senior staff engineer at the Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility, where he worked spent 16 years in the Cryogenic Group. He was responsible for supporting cryogenic plant operations and the detailed process and engineering of helium cryogenic systems—both designing new and modifying existing systems.



Christopher Rey is the President and founder of Energy to Power Solutions (E2P). From 2004 to 2012, Rey was a distinguished scientist at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory. While at ORNL, he was the Central Solenoid Systems Manager responsible for the design, fabrication and testing of the central solenoid for the large scale ITER tokomak reactor. Prior to joining ORNL in August of 2004, Rey was the product manager for HTS magnet technology at DuPont in Wilmington DE. At DuPont, Rey served as both Program Manager and Principal Investigator for two separate DOE sponsored Superconductivity Partnership Initiative programs to develop HTS magnet separator systems. In 1996, Rey was selected as the first ever recipient of the Cryogenic Society of America’s Roger W. Boom Award for outstanding contributions to Applied Superconductivity and was the 2014 recipient of the Carl H. Rosner Entrepreneurship Award.

Mark Zagarola is a recognized expert in the fields of fluid mechanics and cryogenics. He was identified by CSA in its “Young Faces in Cryogenics” feature and was previously nominated for the AIAA Lawrence Sperry Awards given to a young investigator for notable achievement in the advancement of aeronautics and astronautics. Since joining Creare, Zagarola has focused his efforts on the development of turbo Brayton cryocoolers and advanced space-flight hardware. He currently leads Creare’s turbo Brayton business area. His accomplishments include directing the development of a two-stage flight cryocooler, directing the testing of a cryocooler developed for the Hubble Space Telescope; directing the development of an advanced high capacity 35 K turboalternator; directing the development of a low power, Brayton power system; and leading the development of a 6 K turbo Brayton cryocooler.