Management
Abundant Planet is overseen by its Board of Directors with the guiding support of a Board of Advisors.
Board of Directors
The Directors meet twice a year to review and establish strategic goals for the organization.
William BC Crandall, MBA
BC Crandall founded Abundant Planet in 2005. Shortly thereafter, he entered the MBA program at California Polytechnic, San Luis Obispo, to study the economic and commercial feasibility of extraterrestrial resource development. He graduated from the program in 2008.
Before founding Abundant Planet, Crandall worked in the software industry as a writer, editor, and programmer, on both coasts of the United States, and in Germany. In 1990, he co-founded Prime Arithmetics, Inc., with Dr. Jack Le Tourneau, a mathematician from the University of California, Berkeley. The company secured four patents for its innovative technology, which executes certain tree-oriented operations (e.g., in XML) four orders of magnitude faster than standard algorithms. This intellectual property is currently licensed to Skyler Technology.
Crandall edited two of the first books on nanotechnology, published by The MIT Press. The first, Nanotechnology: Research and Perspectives (1992), was described by Xerox Principal Scientist David Biegelsen as, “A very readable and thought-provoking overview of a seminal vision and its nurturing environment.” It includes Bill Joy’s pre-Wired article essay on the future prospects of molecular machines. The second, Nanotechnology: Molecular Speculations on Global Abundance (1996), includes Brian Wowk’s account of phased array optics and Josh Hall’s account of utility fog. In a review of the second book, E.O. Wilson wrote, “In clear and compelling language, Nanotechnology describes the ideas and techniques that are creating a new domain of science and technology.” That book remained in Amazon’s “Top Ten” best sellers for nanotechnology through 2005.
Larry Gorman, Ph.D.
Dr. Larry Gorman is Associate Professor of Finance at California Polytechnic, San Luis Obispo, where he has been recognized as the most outstanding faculty member in the finance department every year, since 2003. He received a B.S. in Mechanical Engineering from Washington State University, an MBA in Finance from Western Washington University, and a Ph.D in Finance from the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University. Dr. Gorman’s research interests include asset pricing, hedge funds, and international finance. He recently founded Analytical Finance, an online analysis and financial consulting service.
Peter Howard, Ph.D.
Dr. Peter Howard is a senior scientist at Exelixis, Inc., in South San Francisco. He received his B.S. in Genetics from the University of California, Berkeley, and his Ph.D. in Molecular Genetics from the University of California, San Diego. Following a three-year postdoctoral fellowship at the Salk Institute, funded by the American Cancer Society, he began his career in the biotech industry. In 2000, he became a research scientist at Exelixis, where he works today.
Board of Advisors
Advisors recommend strategic goals and priorities for the organization.
Frans von der Dunk, Ph.D.
Dr. Frans von der Dunk is a Professor of Space Law in the College of Law at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. He recently hosted a conference on potentially hazardous near-Earth objects, offered a video commentary on space junk, and discussed several key topics in space law on David Livingston’s Space Show. Prior to his assignment at UNL, Dr. von der Dunk was the first co-director, and then director, of space law research at the International Institute of Air and Space Law at Leiden University, The Netherlands. Among other accomplishments, Dr. von der Dunk has authored over a hundred publications on space law, and currently serves as series editor for Studies in Space Law and as an editorial board member for Space Policy. He is a member of the International Law Association, the European Centre for Space Law, and the International Institute of Space Law. He recently founded Black Holes, which offers space development consulting services.
Martin Elvis, Ph.D.
Dr. Martin Elvis is a Senior Astrophysicist at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. He has been affiliated with the Chandra X-ray Observatory, NASA’s flagship mission for X-ray astronomy, since the 1980s. The Chandra Observatory is used to image supernova remnants and other large objects. Dr. Elvis led the Chandra team that defined new software tools for analyzing and interpreting the observatory’s three- and four-dimensional images and spectra. Dr. Elvis, and other members of the Chandra Education and Public Outreach group, received the 2007 Pirelli International award for Internet multimedia in physics. During his doctoral studies, at the University of Leicester (UK), he discovered the brightest X-ray source ever seen in the sky, apart from the sun, A0620-00. His “Atlas of Quasar Energy Distributions,” has served as a standard since its publication in 1994. Dr. Elvis is also the author of “A Structure for Quasars,” a particularly long-lived model, which unites into a simple picture much of the 10,000 papers on the emission and absorption features of quasar spectra. Dr. Elvis has published over 200 papers in refereed journals, and is one of the 250 most highly cited researchers in astronomy and space physics, as determined by Thomson ISI. Dr. Elvis’s interest in asteroid mining is to enable a new generation of very large space-based telescopes.
Dante Lauretta, Ph.D.
Dr. Dante Lauretta is an Associate Professor of Planetary Sciences at the University of Arizona, and Founder and Director of the Southwest Meteorite Center. He was Deputy Principal Investigator for the OSIRIS NEA sample-return mission, which received development funding from NASA in 2006. He is currently Chief Scientist on the Astrobotic team competing for the Google Lunar X PRIZE. His presentation, “Asteroid sample return and the path to exploration of near-Earth space,” delivered at the 2008 Annual Convention of the American Association of Petroleum Geologist, Search and Discovery, outlined the key components of a first asteroid mining mission. Dr. Lauretta is the co-editor of Meteorites and the Early Solar System II (2006), the author or co-author of over 30 peer-reviewed papers, and the 2002 recipient of the Meteoritical Society’s Nier Prize. Dr. Lauretta received a B.S. in Physics and Mathematics, and a B.A. in Oriental Studies, both Cum Laude, from the University of Arizona, and a Ph.D. in Earth and Planetary Sciences, from Washington University.
Jordi Puig-Suari, Ph.D.
Dr. Jordi Puig-Suari is a Professor of Aerospace Engineering at California Polytechnic, San Luis Obispo. He received a B.S. and an M.S. in Aeronautical and Astronautical Engineering, and a Ph.D. in Aeronautics and Astronautics, all from Purdue University. After teaching for a year at Purdue, and for four years at Arizona State University, he joining the Cal Poly Aerospace Engineering Department. He served as Chair of the Department from 2004 to 2008. Dr. Puig-Suari has been a leader in the CubeSat program, which continues to engage active technical and research communities. He recently presented a video overview of the CubeSat program with fellow picosatellite innovator, Stanford professor Bob Twiggs.
Hon. Andrea Seastrand
The Honorable Andrea Seastrand, former U.S. Congresswoman, is Founder and Executive Director of the California Space Authority (CSA), California’s official spaceport authority. In 2006, under Mrs. Seastrand’s direction, the CSA received a $15 million Workforce Innovation in Regional Economic Development (WIRED) grant from the U.S. Department of Labor. In 2007, Mrs. Seastrand was appointed Chair of California’s Aerospace Advisory Committee, reporting to Lt. Governor John Garamendi’s Commission on Economic Development. Mrs. Seastrand is a member of Women in Aerospace, the Air Force Association, and the Navy League.
Mark Sonter, MAppSc
Mark Sonter is an independent consultant in the Australian mining and metallurgical industries. He studied asteroid mining at the University of Arizona, Lunar and Planetary Laboratory, in 1995. He presented a synopsis of his thesis, “Technical and economic feasibility of mining the near-Earth asteroids,” at the 49th International Astronautical Federation Congress, in 1998. In 2001, Sonter published “Near earth objects as resources for space industrialization,” which articulates a robust technique for “comparing the financial and technical feasibility of competing space mining project proposals.” His research has been funded by the Foundation for International Non-governmental Development of Space. Sonter received his BSc in Physics and Geology from the University of New South Wales, in 1968, and his MAppSc in Medical Physics from the Queensland University of Technology, in 1978.