Dr. Anita Cochran is the assistant director of McDonald Observatory and a senior research scientist of The University of Texas at Austin. She earned her Ph.D. in astronomy from the university in 1982. She has served as the chair of the Division for Planetary Sciences of the American Astronomical Society, as a Councilor of the American Astronomical Society, and as a member of the U.S. National Committee of the International Astronomical Union. She has served on numerous committees of the National Research Council including the Committee on Planetary and Lunar Exploration (COMPLEX). Cochran served as a member of NASA's Comet Rendezvous/Asteroid Flyby Imaging Science Team and was a co-investigator of the NASA CONTOUR mission. She is currently a member of the National Optical Astronomy Observatory's Observatory Council.