Stanford Hosts NASA Innovative Advanced Concepts Symposium

Stanford University's Jen-Hsun Huang Engineering Center in Palo Alto, Calif., will be the site of the NASA Innovative Advanced Concepts (NIAC) Symposium Feb. 4-6.NIAC supports early studies of visionary concepts, which may one day enable new missions or transformative advances in future aerospace capabilities.

During the symposium NIAC fellows will present and discuss the progress of all current studies. Keynote speakers will include Jamie Hyneman, host of the television show "Mythbusters"; Peter Norvig, director of research at Google Inc.; and Seth Shostak, senior astronomer at the SETI Institute. Other speakers include Charbel Farhat, chairman of the Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics at Stanford University in California; Pete Worden, director of NASA's Ames Research Center; and Gary Hudson, president of the Space Studies Institute in Mojave, Calif. The event also will include a Stanford student poster session.

NIAC is part of NASA's Space Technology Mission Directorate, which is innovating, developing, testing and flying hardware for use in NASA's future missions. NIAC awardees come from academia, the private sector and government research labs.

To attend the conference, reporters must register online, listing their media outlet under "affiliation," at:

http://tinyurl.com/n3al9ll

Journalists seeking interviews with NASA or other conference participants should contact Sharon Lozano at 650-604-2989 orSharon.K.Lozano@nasa.gov. The symposium is free and open to the public, but all attendees must preregister because of limited meeting space.

The conference will be streamed live via Livestream at:

http://www.livestream.com/niac2014

For more information about NASA's NIAC program and the agency's Space Technology Mission Directorate, visit:

http://www.nasa.gov/spacetech

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David E. Steitz
Headquarters, Washington
202-358-1730
david.steitz@nasa.gov

Sharon Lozano
Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, Calif.
650-604-2989
sharon.k.lozano@nasa.gov

Tom Abate/Marco Pavone
Stanford University School of Engineering, Palo Alto, Calif.
650-736-2245 / 650-723-4432
tabate@stanford.edu / pavone@stanford.edu