James Vladimir Taranik (April 23, 1940 – June 21, 2011)[5][6] was an American scientist and educator who worked in the area of earth-observation satellite remote sensing.
He was Chief of NASA's Non-Renewable Resources Branch and Program Scientist of the Space Shuttle's first scientific flights with cargo[9][10] that included experiments related to geology, atmospheric chemistry, meteorology, marine biology, and plant physiology in the earth and life sciences.
He also held various positions in the Nevada System of Higher Education, including the Desert Research Institute and the Mackay School of Earth Sciences and Engineering.
[7][11] He served as Staff Geologist for two years in 1966–1967 for the U.S. Army Engineer Command Headquarters in Vietnam, during which time he was awarded the Bronze Star Medal.
[4] He was the great-great-grandson of Sergeant Patrick Gass, an officer of the 1804-1806 Lewis and Clark Expedition, established to explore and map the newly acquired western half of the United States.
[18] He next served as Principal Remote Sensing Scientist at the EROS Data Center in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, under the auspices of the United States Geological Survey (USGS), from 1975 to 1979.
[5] Taranik established the Strategic Materials Research, Education and Policy Center and the Cooperative Institute for Aerospace Science and Terrestrial Applications (CIASTA).
[3] During this time, Taranik also served as a technical advisor to the Naval Research Laboratory's Hyperspectral Digital Imagery Collection Experiment (HYDICE).
[5][14] In 2000, Taranik became the founding director of the Great Basin Center for Geothermal Energy[2][8] and the Arthur Brant Laboratory for Exploration Geophysics at UNR.
[5][2] The following year, he became MSESE's first Director, a position he would hold until 2009, when he stepped down to focus on teaching as part of the Department of Geological Sciences and Engineering faculty.