EXPERTS | Shifted Space

Uniting three schools at UT Austin, Shifted Space advocates space environmentalism to help protect the authenticity of the skies around us.

Collaborating creatively with professors, peers, and mentors alike, our end goal is to drive awareness.

MEET THE TEAM

Expert / Producer

Moriba Jah

Moriba Jah is an Associate Professor of Aerospace Engineering and Engineering Mechanics at The University of Texas at Austin where he holds the Mrs. Pearlie Dashiell Henderson Centennial Fellowship in Engineering. Jah is the director for Computational Astronautical Sciences and Technologies (CAST), a group within the Oden Institute for Computational Engineering and Sciences, and the Lead for the Space Security and Safety Program at the Robert Strauss Center for International Security and Law. Moriba came to UT Austin by way of the Air Force Research Laboratory and NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory prior to that, where he was a Spacecraft Navigator on a handful of Mars missions. Moriba is a Fellow of multiple organizations: TED, American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA), American Astronautical Society (AAS), International Association for the Advancement of Space Safety (IAASS), Royal Astronomical Society (RAS), and the Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL). He has served on the US delegation to the United Nations Committee On Peaceful Uses of Outer Space (UN-COPUOS), is an elected Academician of the International Academy of Astronautics (IAA), and has testified to congress on his work as related to Space Situational Awareness and Space Traffic Management. He’s an Associate Editor of the Elsevier Advances in Space Research journal, and serves on multiple committees: IAA Space Debris, AIAA Astrodynamics, IAF Astrodynamics, and IAF Space Security. You can find Moriba's podcast series and more information here: bit.ly/moribasvoxpopuli bit.ly/jahniverse

Erin Reilly

Executive Creative Producer

Erin Reilly is the inaugural Director of Innovation and Entrepreneurship for Moody College. Erin is an entrepreneur, educator and strategist with 20 years of experience inventing new approaches, products, services and experiences about storytelling, engagement and learning through emergent technology. Erin is Board President of NAMLE (National Association for Media Literacy Education), and serves on the Executive Committee of the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences Interactive Media Peer Group, as well as advisory boards, such as Disney Junior and PBS Emmy-award winning Sci Girls. As an educator, Erin currently is Professor of Practice and Director of Innovation & Entrepreneurship for Moody College of Communication at University of Texas at Austin. In her roles, she designs and teaches courses on the future of media and entertainment, builds university-wide initiatives and fosters relationships with other academic institutions and industry partners. She has authored both academic and industry publications including Headspace VR on Medium, Fan Favorites in Strategy + Business, T is for Transmedia: Learning through Transmedia Play, and co-author of the book, Reading in a Participatory Culture.As an entrepreneur, Erin founded ReillyWorks to creatively build connected experiences for families to get active and play together. Erin was a founding member of the University of Southern California’s Annenberg Innovation Lab holding the positions of Managing Creative Director and Research Fellow. Before that, she was Research Director for Project New Media Literacies at MIT and also has conducted classes as a Visiting Lecturer at MIT’s Comparative Media Studies and Harvard University’s Project Zero Summer Institute. She is a graduate of Emerson College and has her Master of Fine Arts degree from Maine Media Workshops + College.

Producer

Valerie Salinas-Davis

Cofounder, WasteLessWednesday, The Nonprofit Organization; Lecturer, School of Advertising and PR, University of Texas at Austin; Author of upcoming book, Green-ish: How To Protect the Environment Without Hugging A Tree. Former magazine editor, Huffington Post contributor, and environmental and public health ad/PR agency owner with 35 years of experience. Valerie has spent her career breaking down complex environmental issues into fun, profound campaigns that sometimes win awards but always take creative risks and get results. She synthesized her decades of environmental communications experience into her book, Green-ish: How To Protect the Environment Without Hugging A Tree. When she is not working on Green-ish (which she is writing entirely outdoors in places like Yucatán, Mexico; Big Bend National Park, Texas; Echo Park, Colorado; and my own screened-in porch at her “enviro-hacienda” south of Austin, Texas), she is writing and consulting via Salinas-Davis LLC. Together with some of her favorite creative minds, she launched WasteLessWednesday in 2021 as a nonprofit organization. She began lecturing at the University of Texas in Fall 2020 with Integrated Communication Management classes, and in Spring 2021 created a new class called Environmental Communication which provides credit to students in the colleges of Communication, Liberal Arts and Fine Arts.

Research Director

Lucy Atkinson

Lucy Atkinson (PhD, University of Wisconsin – Madison) is an associate professor in the Stan Richards School of Advertising & PR in the Moody College of Communication at the University of Texas at Austin. Her research looks at communication in the context of sustainability and the environment. She focuses on the ways message components (like visual elements, argument frames, source factors) in environmental communication campaigns influence environmental attitudes, beliefs and behaviors. She has received research funding from the Department of Energy, the Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology, the Waterhouse Family Institute for the Study of Communication and Society, and the Arthur W. Page Center at Penn State. Atkinson’s work has appeared in top-ranked flagship journals, like the Journal of Advertising, International Journal of Communication, Environmental Communication and Science Communication. Outside of academia, her work has been covered in international and national news media, including the Guardian (UK) newspaper, and National Public Radio’s Weekend Edition and On Point with Tom Ashbrook. Atkinson is a senior faculty research affiliate with the UT Center for Media Engagement in the Moody College of Communication and a faculty affiliate with the Environmental Science Institute, the Center for Health Communication, the Center for Women's & Gender Studies and the RGK Center for Philanthropy and Community Service. She teaches classes on advertising history, environmental communication, integrated communication campaigns and consumer psychology. In 2016 she was named a recipient of the UT System Regent’s Outstanding Teaching Award and in 2017 was named a Provost Teaching Fellow. Before pursuing her doctorate, Atkinson worked for several years as a newspaper reporter in New York. Atkinson completed her M.A. at New York University and her B.A. at McGill University.