Jonathan I. Katz received his Ph.D. degrees from Cornell University. He was a Member of the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, Associate Professor in the Department of Astronomy and the Institute for Geophysics and Planetary Physics at UCLA, and then Associate Professor and Professor in the Department of Physics and McDonnell Center for the Space Sciences at Washington University, St. Louis. His research began in plasma physics and high energy astrophysics, and broadened to a variety of subjects in pure and applied physics, including materials, geophysics, hydrodynamics, biophysics and national security studies. He has consulted for a variety of organizations, including private sector corporations, FFRDC and National Laboratories. At present he consults for the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and the Los Alamos National Laboratory, and has been a member of JASON since 1975.