NASA Names Nelson Keeler Independent Verification and Validation Facility Director

Nelson H. Keeler has been selected as the new director for
NASA’s Independent Verification and Validation (IV&V) Facility
located in Fairmont, West Virginia. His appointment is effective
as of June 18, 2001.

In his new assignment, Keeler will be responsible for the
overall management of the facility that was established in 1993
as part of an agency-wide strategy to provide the highest
achievable levels of safety and cost-effectiveness for mission
critical software.

Keeler is a native of Connecticut. He graduated with a
bachelor’s degree in Engineering from the United States Coast
Guard Academy (USCG) and was commissioned as an officer in 1963.
He received his aviator’s wings in 1965 and amassed over 6,000
pilot hours during his career, principally flying search and
rescue, and law enforcement missions. In 1970, Keeler received
his master’s degree in Electrical Engineering from the U.S. Air
Force Institute of Technology.

When not in a flying assignment, Keeler served as an avionics
engineer, radio navigation researcher, information resource
management systems engineer and program manager. He was a
commander of a USCG Air Station and the service’s only Research
and Development Center. His work at the center resulted in the
award of a Legion of Merit medal and recognition both nationally
and internationally.

At the conclusion of his Coast Guard career, Keeler joined NASA,
first serving in the Space Station Freedom program and then in
the Office of Space Flight’s Advanced Launch Technology and
Advanced Flight Systems programs.

Keeler then left NASA for private industry, first working for
Stanford Telecommunications as its Navigation Department
Manager, and then to GTECH Corporation as Projects Director,
before returning to NASA in his new assignment as IV&V director.