Rack named executive director of ANDRILL Science Management Office
Released on 08/01/2006, at 2:00 AM
Office of University Communications
University of Nebraska–Lincoln
A geologist with extensive management and scientific experience in ocean drilling programs has been named executive director of the Science Management Office of the ANDRILL Antarctic research program.
Frank Rack, a researcher and administrator at Joint Oceanographic Institutions Inc. in Washington, D.C., since 1998, joins ANDRILL Aug. 1. He will also have an appointment as associate professor of geosciences at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, home of the ANDRILL Science Management Office.
Rack will have primary responsibility for overall program management and specifically for implementing the U.S. ANDRILL program, including Science Management Office operations and strategic planning. ANDRILL is a multinational collaboration involving 150 scientists from Germany, Italy, New Zealand and the United States to recover core samples from the McMurdo Sound region of Antarctica to develop a detailed history of the Antarctic climate and the expansion and contraction of the Ross Sea area's ice sheets over the past 20 million years. It is backed by more than $30 million in total funding, including a $13 million National Science Foundation grant announced last year.
Joint Oceanographic Institutions is a consortium of 29 premier oceanographic research institutions (including UNL) that serves the U.S. scientific community by leading large-scale, global research programs in scientific ocean drilling and ocean observing.
Rack served in a number of capacities at JOI, the last three years as director of Ocean Drilling Program and Department of Energy programs related to methane hydrates. Prior to his work at JOI, he was a researcher with the Ocean Drilling Program at College Station, Texas, (1984-93) and the University of New Brunswick (1993-98). Rack earned his bachelor's degree at the University of Rhode Island (1978) and his doctorate at Texas A&M University (1992).
CONTACT: David Harwood, Research Director, ANDRILL Science Management Office, (402) 472-6723