Tony Rice

Tony grew up in Southern California in the path of space shuttle orbiters landing at Edwards Air Force Base and has been looking up ever since. As a high school student in Virginia, he was a “Bob Ryan Weather Watcher” phoning in highs and lows along with rainfall and snowfall totals every day after school for WRC in Washington D.C.

Today he brings weather and space together to communicate the excitement of space exploration and promote a greater appreciation for Earth sciences.

His articles on Mars weather have appeared in Weatherwise magazine. Tony’s @MarsWxReport twitter account has automatically tweeted high and low temperature along with atmospheric pressure readings from Gale Crater near Mars’ equator since the Curiosity rover landed there in 2012.

Tony earned a Bachelor of Science degree in Computer Science from Virginia Tech. His day job is as a senior information security engineer at Cisco in Research Triangle Park, North Carolina. He’s spoken on information security topics at technology conferences in Asia, North America, and Europe.

He volunteers in the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory’s Solar System Ambassador program where he speaks on solar system exploration in schools, libraries, museums and planetaria in the Raleigh area and beyond.

Tony has also served on NASA panels representing informal education and contributes to JPL educational websites and applications.

Tony also maintains an email list of nearly 200 broadcast meteorologists providing weekly updates on naked eye astronomy events to share with viewers online and on-air. He has spoken at National Weather Association and American Meteorological Society conferences on incorporating astronomy into weather segments and meteorologists role as station scientist.

In the few remaining minutes of free time, Tony volunteers, along with his wife, with their son’s high school marching band with everything from video editing to driving the trucks.