Roger Hunter, a UGA alumnus and associate director for programs at the NASA Ames Research Center, will deliver the university’s undergraduate Commencement address Dec. 19 in Stegeman Coliseum. The ceremony will begin at 9:30 a.m. with the graduate ceremony to follow at 2:30 p.m.
The university’s graduate Commencement will feature Gregory H. Robinson, the UGA Foundation Distinguished Professor of Chemistry.
Tickets are not required for the graduate exercise. For the undergraduate ceremony, commencement candidates are allowed six tickets per student, with additional tickets available on a first-come, first-served basis from the Office of the Registrar, www.reg.uga.edu, Nov. 17-21.
In his current capacity, Hunter leads the center’s small spacecraft mission and technology development programs as well as the NASA Ames Small Spacecraft Integrated Project Team. He also is a technical lead for the Defense Advanced Research Project Agency’s PHOENIX program.
“We are excited to welcome Roger Hunter back to campus,” said UGA President Jere W. Morehead. “His extensive and distinguished service to this country and to the world’s scientific community provides an important example of the opportunities and responsibilities conveyed by a degree from the University of Georgia. Our graduating seniors will benefit greatly from his message.”
Previously, Hunter served almost six years as the project manager for the Kepler Mission, NASA’s first mission capable of finding Earth-size planets around other stars in the Milky Way galaxy. The scientific objective of Kepler is to determine the frequency of earth-size inhabitable planets in our galaxy.
The graduate ceremony will include a Commencement address from Robinson. Over the past 25 years, Robinson and his research team have published a series of fundamental findings that have reshaped how scientists view chemical bonding in many inorganic compounds.
Robinson joined the Franklin College of Arts and Sciences faculty in 1995 and was named Distinguished Research Professor in 2000, Franklin Professor in 2005 and UGA Foundation Distinguished Professor in 2013. He teaches a range of courses in chemistry, including large introductory chemistry classes, upper-division inorganic chemistry courses and graduate-level seminars. He has taught several First-Year Odyssey Seminars and has supervised more than 30 undergraduates conducting research in his lab. He has served as major professor for 15 doctoral-level students and sponsored a number of post-doctoral fellows.
The ceremonies will be broadcast at http://www.ctl.uga.edu/ctlcable.
