Charles Camarda was born in Queens, New York and received his undergraduate degree in Aerospace Engineering from the Polytechnic Institute of Brooklyn in 1974. Upon graduation, he began work at NASA’s Langley Research Center (LaRC), received his M.S. from GW in Mechanical Engineering in 1980 and a Ph.D. in Aerospace Engineering from VPI in 1990.He was Head of the Thermal Structures Branch at LaRC and led the structures and materials efforts of two programs: The National Aero-Space Plane (NASP) and the Single-Stage-to Orbit Program. He was selected to be an Astronaut in 1996 and flew on the return-to-flight mission of Space Shuttle following the Columbia Accident, STS-114, in 2005. He was selected Director of Engineering at JSC in December 2005 and is now the Sr. Advisor for Engineering development at NASA’s Langley Research Center.