KWI Board of Directors

Bob Cronk is a member of the Board of Directors for KWI, and is Chair of the Development Committee of the Board of Directors. He holds graduate (Information Science) and undergraduate (Physics) degrees from Georgia Tech, and conducted additional graduate work at the University of South Florida. He is a Fellow of the National Speleological Society, a member of the Cave Diving Section of the NSS, and a Partner with the Williams Canyon Project. He was Co-Director of the Romania Speleological Expeditions Project and a recipient of the NSS International Partnership Grant. Bob's career has ranged from academic to research in telecommunications. He has been chairman of a high-school math department and a faculty instructor at DeVry University. Bob's main area of interest was Artificial Intelligence (AI), and he has served as a research staff member of the AI Lab of the Computer Science Department at Carnegie-Mellon University. He continued his AI work as a Senior Research Computer Scientist for the Federal Judicial Center (United States Supreme Court) and as a Distinguished Member of Technical Staff for Bell Laboratories. He was a Director for MCI International, working for five years in Haiti helping build that nation's first wireless phone provider. Bob is currently a Senior Engineering Consultant for Verizon. He has numerous publications in karst-related activities and in the AI field, including Guest Editor of IEEE Network Magazine's Special Issue on Artificial Intelligence and Session Chair on Standards for the Western Communications Forum.

Dan is a member of the Board of Directors.

John “Jack” W. Hess has served on the KWI Board of Directors 1991-2000, 2002-2005, and 2008 to present. He was Board Chair 1992-2000 and 2002-2005. He holds a bachelors and doctorate in geology from The Pennsylvania State University. Jack is a Fellow of the Geological Society of America, the National Speleological Society, and the Cave Research Foundation. He is the Executive Director of the Geological Society of America (GSA). Prior to joining GSA in 2001, Jack was Executive Director of the Division of Hydrologic Sciences and Vice President for Academic Affairs at the Desert Research Institute in Nevada. In 2000-2001, he served as a Congressional Science Fellow in the office of Senator Harry Reid (D-NV). Jack is also serving on the Board of the National Cave and Karst Research Institute, Association of Earth Science Editors, and Longs Peak Council of the Boy Scouts of America.

William “Bill” K. Jones is the Chairman of the Board of Directors for KWI, and has served continuously on the KWI Board since it inception. Bill holds a BSF degree in Forest Management from West Virginia University and an MS degree in Environmental Science (Hydrology) from the University of Virginia. He was an adjunct professor of hydrology at the American University, Washington, D.C. He is a Fellow of the National Speleological Society. He studies physical hydrology of surface and ground-water resources with an emphasis on areas underlain by carbonate (karst) aquifers. He has studied karst areas across North America, France, Eastern Europe, China and Southeast Asia. Bill is the author of over twenty papers on karst hydrology and water tracing. He is the author of the "Karst Hydrology Atlas of West Virginia" (1997) and served as the guest editor for a special issue of the National Speleological Society Bulletin on water tracing using fluorescent tracers (1984). He wrote the chapter on water tracing for the “Encyclopedia of Caves” (2005). He is the first author of “Recommendations and Guidelines for Managing Caves on Protected Lands” (2003), prepared for the U.S. Department of the Interior. He is a consultant to the US Army Environmental Center on the remediation of hazardous wastes in karst aquifers on military bases. He also studies ground-water movement in fractured aquifers and statistical characterization of water resources. Current research projects include the problems of instrumenting small catchments for measuring precipitation and flows for water balance studies. He and his wife Lee Elliott reside in Chimney Run Farm in Bath County, Virginia, where he runs his own hydrology consulting firm, Environmental Data.

Paul Joseph "PJ" Moore is a member of the Board of Directors of KWI. He holds a PhD from the University of Florida, where he worked on understanding how caves develop in Florida and the Bahamas. His research interests span karst geology, carbonate geochemistry, and carbonate reservoir characterization. He has been a member of the NSS since 2000. PJ is an exploration geologist at ExxonMobil in Houston, TX.

Ira Sasowsky is a member of the Board of Directors and is the Vice Chairman of the Board for KWI. He served as Vice President for Communications from 1994 to 2009, during which time he developed and provided oversight for the website and special publications programs. Ira earned his B.S. degree in Geology from the University of Delaware, and completed M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in Geology from The Pennsylvania State University under the direction of William B. White. He specializes in the paleomagnetic interpretation of clastic sediments in cave systems, with a geographic emphasis in the Appalachians. Ira was the Earth Sciences editor of the Journal of Cave and Karst Studies for 15 years, and has received the honor of election to Fellow in the Geological Society of America and the National Speleological Society. He co-edits the journal Environmental and Engineering Geoscience. Ira is Professor of Geology and Environmental Science at the University of Akron (Ohio). Courses in groundwater hydrology, petroleum geology, geoscience information, and karst topics are part of his teaching. He also oversees graduate student research that focuses on near-surface processes in limestone terranes, including geochemistry, water quality, and landscape evolution.

Steve is a member of the Board of Directors.

William B. 'Will' White has been a member of the KWI Board since the its formation, and has served as the Vice President for Research and is the Executive Vice President. Will holds a BS degree (Chemistry) from Juniata College and a PhD (Geochemistry) from Penn State. Will’s research interest span a range of topics in materials science and geoscience. The former includes crystal chemistry, infrared and Raman spectroscopy, structure and properties of glass, and phosphors and other optical materials. The geosciences include application of condensed matter physics to mineralogy and various environmental issues including nuclear waste and mine land remediation as well as, of course, problems dealing with caves and karst. Cave and karst research includes both field and laboratory investigations with field work mostly in the Appalachians and the Mammoth Cave area. Will has published more than 400 papers in the technical journals and is author or coauthor of ten books. He is a fellow of the AAAS, the Mineralogical Society of America and the NSS. Will spent 40 years on the Penn State faculty (1962-2002) and has been emeritus professor since his retirement.