Profile of Charles Elachi (1947-)

Charles Elachi was born in Lebanon and received a bachelor's degree in physics from the University of Grenoble, France, and a diploma in engineering from the Polytechnic Institute, Grenoble (both in 1968). He received a master's degree (1969) and doctorate (1971) in electrical sciences from Caltech. He also earned a master's in business administration (1978) from USC and a master's in geology (1983) from UCLA.

Elachi taught at Caltech, has served in a variety of research and management positions at JPL since 1971, specializing in remote sensing, and became the Director of JPL in May 2001. Since then, the Genesis and Jason 1 spacecraft have both been launched.