Julie Ziffer is a professor of Physics at the University of Southern Maine and is on temporary assignment as a Program Officer for the Planetary Science Division within the Science Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters in Washington. For the PDCO, she leads the Yearly Opportunities for Research in Planetary Defense (YORPD) call, which solicits proposals to advance state-of-the-art planetary defense research and investigations. She also serves as the program scientist for NASA’s Infrared Telescope Facility in Hawai’i. She holds a Ph.D. in physics from the University of Central Florida.