In Brief

At a ceremony in February in Washington, DC, the National Academy of Engineering awarded the 2003 Charles Stark Draper Prize, one of engineering’s top honors, jointly to Ivan Getting and Bradford Parkinson for “pioneering the concept and development of a Global Positioning System that, with incredible precision, tells you where you are and helps you get to where you want to be.” Getting, president emeritus of the California-based Aerospace Corp, and Parkinson, emeritus professor of aeronautics and astronautics at Stanford University, will share the $500 000 cash prize.

Roger-Maurice Bonnet took a new post as executive director of the International Space Science Institute in Bern, Switzerland, this past January. He previously was deputy director general of science at CNES, France’s space agency. Before that, Bonnet served for 18 years as science program director of the European Space Agency.