[IGPP Everyone] EPSS Technical Staff/Researcher 2019 retirements

[Brown, Carlene]

Dear Everyone,

Please join me in congratulating three longtime EPSS employees upon their retirement from UCLA next week. Between them, Todd King, Louise Lee, and Zhengkang Shen represent more than 100 years of service to the University - with almost all of it in this department! We wish them well in their future endeavors, or in simply enjoying a long break from work (should they so choose). Below is a brief summary of their career trajectory.
Todd King (Programmer/Analyst Supervisor) - Todd arrived at UCLA as a transfer student in 1983 to pursue a degree in Applied Geophysics (B.S., 1985). As a student worker, he was hired by Prof. Bob McPherron to set up and operate a geophysics computing lab. Upon graduation he was offered a full-time position with the space physics group (in IGPP). During his 30+ years in this department Todd has guided IT efforts for IGPP - including helping to establish the Internet in Physical Sciences, participating in campus "green" technology goals, creating websites, and developing services for the research groups. Early on he became part of the pilot NASA Planetary Data System (PDS) project. He also was a member of the Galileo magnetometer team, developing software to help perform scientific analysis of the data. In 1998 he became a founding member of the Space Physics Archive Search and Extract (SPASE) group, and in 2018 was a founding member of the International Heliophysics Data Environment Alliance (IHDEA). Todd has almost 130 publications to his credit, as well as a book, Dynamic Data Structures (1992).

Upon retirement, Todd likely will return to UCLA as a recalled employee, and he also may pursue other IT-related ventures off campus.


Louise Lee (Programmer/Analyst) - Louise began her UCLA career as an undergraduate student and earned her Bachelor of Science degree in Cybernetics in 1986. As a student she worked at the Registrar's office and also worked for Rocketdyne collecting data for the space shuttle engine. Next she worked for Atmospheric Sciences and Science Challenge, and in 1995 was the recipient of a Computerworld Smithsonian Award. Also that year, Louise began working on the CASSINI mission decoding spacecraft data. She joined IGPP in 1996 and has continued with the Prof. Chris Russell group since then, forming the backbone of Prof. Russell's programming team. Most recently she has been working on modernizing the CASSINI data server to Python, WSGI, and Docker.

Louise may be retiring from UCLA but she already has been recruited for another project - to develop software for atmospheric rivers and weather forecasting in southern California.


Zhengkang Shen (Researcher) - Zhengkang got his start at UCLA as a graduate student, and earned his Ph.D degree in 1991 under advisor Prof. Dave Jackson. He continued at UCLA with a postdoc appointment in this department and then became a researcher, primarily working on projects for the newly founded Southern California Earthquake Center (SCEC). One significant accomplishment in the early years was production of a series of SoCal crustal motion maps to aid in understanding of seismo-tectonic processes in the region. During the last two decades Zhengkang has worked with Chinese colleagues on seismo-tectonic problems in China. Their research is widely cited there and includes mapping of several significant earthquake faults in northern China and Tibet. He and his colleagues also studied the 2008 Wenchuan earthquake extensively, with some of their findings published in Nature Geoscience.  Most recently he served as a rotator program director for the NSF Geophysics Program in 2013-15.

For Zhengkang, retirement will mean a slower pace but the research will continue. There are so many scientific questions still to be answered.


Carlene Brown
CAO, Earth, Planetary, and Space Sciences
Phone: 310-825-9784
Fax: 310-825-2779

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