J. W. SKILES is a Research Scientist at NASA Ames Research Center.  He has worked in terrestrial ecosystem modeling, world grasslands, Arctic, arid, and semiarid ecosystems, African grazinglands and operations research.  He received a B.S. in biology from the University of Redlands, an M.S. in botany from the University of Idaho, and a Ph.D. in ecology and evolutionary biology from the University of California, Irvine.  He has taught courses in 'Fundamental Ecology' at UC Irvine, 'Man and the Environment' at the California State University at Los Angeles, 'Systems Ecology' in the College of Natural Resources at Colorado State University, and 'Image Processing Applied to Classroom Teaching' at Foothill College, Los Altos Hills, California.  He has served as a consultant in Systems Ecology to the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) in Nairobi, Kenya.  He was a Research Associate in the Department of Agricultural Engineering, University of Idaho and a Systems Ecologist with the Agricultural Research Service, U.S.D.A. in Boise where he was the project modeler for the rangeland modeling project called SPUR – the Simulation of Production and Utilization of Rangelands.  He also has worked modeling the effects of elevated atmospheric carbon dioxide on ecosystems and modeling perturbations of Arctic ecosystems.  He is studying terrestrial plant responses to increased ultraviolet radiation in the polar regions of the earth and the effects of low intensity microwave fields on vascular plants.  He has also used supercomputers to do ecosystem modeling.  He is an Associate Program Manager for Ecological Forecasting in the Applied Sciences Program at NASA Headquarters where he currently manages eight projects for ASP.