Garfield A. Creary

Garfield A. Creary joined NASA Langley Research Center in 2002 when he was hired into the Mechanical Systems Branch in the Engineering Directorate.  In his first leadership role in 2009, he served as Systems Engineer and Project Manager for the Doppler Aerosol Wind Lidar (DAWN-Air) technology development project, leading instrument development, and integration onto a NASA research aircraft for participation in a multi-agency field campaign.  Garfield gained extensive space flight hardware development experience leading the development of the Stratospheric Aerosol Gas Experiment (SAGE III) Nadir Viewing Platform and serving as the project’s Lead Mechanical Engineer.  He subsequently served in technical leadership roles as Chief Engineer for the Climate Absolute Radiance and Refractivity Observatory (CLARREO) Pathfinder project and the Radiation Budget Instrument (RBI) project.  His organizational leadership roles include serving as Assistant Branch Head and Branch Head for the Mechanical Systems Branch in the Engineering Directorate, Branch Head for the Lidar Science Branch in the Science Directorate, Branch Head for the Structural and Thermal Systems Branch and most recently Associate Director for Science both in the Engineering Directorate.   

Garfield, a veteran of the United States Navy, earned B.S. and M.S. degrees in Mechanical Engineering at the Old Dominion University.  Among his various accomplishments, Garfield received the NASA Silver Snoopy Award for “Leading the development of spaceflight hardware for the SAGE III project” and the Silver Achievement Medal for “Leadership while serving as interim Branch Head in the Science Directorate”.