Ronald Anthony Parise (May 24, 1951 – May 9, 2008) was an Italian American scientist who flew aboard two NASA Space Shuttle missions as a payload specialist.

[3][4] Upon graduation in 1979, Parise accepted a position at Operations Research Inc. (ORI) where he was involved in developing avionics requirements definitions and performing failure mode analyses for several NASA missions.

In 1981 he began work on the development of a new Spacelab experiment called the Ultraviolet Imaging Telescope (UIT).

His responsibilities involved flight hardware and software development, electronic system design, and mission planning activities for the UIT project.

In 1984 he was selected by NASA as a payload specialist in support of the newly formed Astro mission series.

He was also involved with projects in the Advanced Architectures and Automation Branch that developed the use of standard Internet Protocols (IP) in space data transmission applications.

Parise was instrumental in bringing amateur radio equipment to the Shuttle and operated on the air during his own missions.