John Thomas Riley is the chief designer for The Big Moon Dig. From 1989-2014, he worked at NASA, Goddard Space Flight Center as Contamination Control Engineer on 1) Hubble Space Telescope Servicing Mission 4 (HST SM-4); 2) Mercury Laser Altimeter (MLA). From 1979-1981, he worked at Multiple Mirror Telescope Observatory as a System Engineer. The Multiple Mirror Telescope Observatory was at the time the third-largest ground based astronomical telescope on Earth. He has a Master’s degree in Engineering Management from George Washington University and a BS in Electrical Engineering from the University of Houston.
Luisa dall’Acqua is a senior cognitive scientist. She is an author, reviewer, and editor for several international scientific journals and book editions, and was a committee member for international Workshops/Conferences. Since 1990 she performed teaching activities, training students, teachers in service, headmasters and professionals; and since 2003 she was a member of international projects and research teams (USA, Europe, Asia). After an MSc in Philosophy, Luisa received a Ph.D. in Sociology of Legal Institutions and Policies, and a second Ph.D. in Psychological and Social Sciences. The main field of research is an engineering and social-cognitive approach to the intelligence and problem solving, and in particular to the decision-making process under risk, stress, conflict, and unpredictability, ranging from individual, collective, institutional intelligence applications to computational intelligence. The new risk scenarios, which she is working on, are cyber-intelligence and cyber-criminal profiling. Currently, she is a permanent teacher at the TCO Scientific Lyceum (Italy) and an adjunct professor at the University of Bologna.