Nondestructive Evaluation

Eric Burke

Nondestructive Evaluation Program Manager

Eric Burke is a research and development physicist at NASA Langley Research Center where he serves as the deputy Nondestructive Evaluation (NDE) Program manager for NASA’s Office of Safety and Mission Assurance.

With over 10 years of engineering experience within the NASA community, Burke focuses on the development and application of innovative materials and technologies. He is a Subject Matter Expert in the field of in-situ NDE on Additive Manufacturing (AM) parts and leads NDE activities and research on AM across all of the NASA centers.

Burke also leads the Small Business Innovative Research and Development program for technologies that will apply to future inspection of the International Space Station and deep space vehicles. Recent highlights include the delivery of a single side 3D x-ray system that is being used to scan the heat shield of the Orion spacecraft currently located at Kennedy Space Center. This prototype x-ray system is proving to be a critical piece for inspection of Avcoat® joints for the Orion program.

Burke has received national recognition for excellence in the area of NDE and technology development including the NASA Early Career Achievement Medal and Launch Director’s Award. He holds three U.S. patents and has authored or co-authored nearly 20 conference papers.

Prior to joining NASA in 2010, Burke worked as a research and development engineer for United Space Alliance and the University of Dayton.

Burke holds both a Bachelor of Science degree and a Master of Science degree in mechanical engineering, solid mechanics, from the University of Dayton. 

Jeannette Plante

Nondestructive Evaluation Program Executive

Jeannette Plante is the Quality program executive, responsible for NASA’s Quality program policy and requirements, chairing NASA’s Quality Leadership Forum and Joint Audit Planning Committee, and managing the agency’s Supplier Assessment System.

Plante represents NASA in its participation in the Americas Aerospace Quality Group, the International Aerospace Quality Group and the Aerospace Industry Association’s Joint Strategic Quality Council. Prior to her assignment at Headquarters, she was the division chief for Quality, Reliability, Software Assurance and Ground Systems at Goddard Space Flight Center and the delegated program manager for Workmanship quality.

Plante previously worked for 19 years in the area of electronics parts and packaging both in support of Goddard flight projects and new technology development. She has numerous published articles and papers on electronic parts and packaging and Quality Assurance topics. Her most recent publication is "Assurance Equations: A Cost and Criticality Model for Optimizing Quality Assurance Surveillance."

Plante is the recipient of twelve NASA center and agency awards including NASA’s Exceptional Service Medal, Exceptional Achievement Medal and Outstanding Leadership Medal. She received her Bachelor of Electrical Engineering from The Catholic University of America in Washington, DC.

Most NASA centers have a Nondestructive Evaluation Point of Contact (PoC). For more information, contact the PoC at your center.

Ed Generazio

Nondestructive Evaluation Program Manager

Ed Generazio serves as the program manager for the Office of Safety and Mission Assurance’s (OSMA) Nondestructive Evaluation (NDE) Program. The NDE Program addresses mission-critical inspection issues and has an immediate impact for the agency by assuring component integrity for the safety and reliability of NASA’s flight systems. Generazio’s current research focuses on establishing validated probability of detection processes, procedures and NDE standards for establishing the integrity of fracture-critical flight components.

Generazio has developed a new Electric Field Imaging (EFI) inspection technology for exposing hidden objects on personnel and underground and evaluating the integrity of tethers and wire insulation and material variations in structures. He currently is extending EFI work for applications in the medical imaging and organic memory systems fields. Generazio has produced hundreds of publications and has served as a keynote speaker at major professional conferences. He continually mentors junior staff across the agency to develop centers’ NDE leaders, and has received numerous awards, including NASA’s Outstanding Leadership Medal.

When NASA established a Headquarters-based Independent Technical Authority to oversee all of NASA’s programs in January 2005, Generazio was asked to serve as NASA’s technical warrant holder for NDE. As the NDE technical warrant holder, Generazio was the final authority to address issues affecting the safe and reliable operations of NASA’s numerous programs that range from aeronautics, launch vehicles, Space Shuttle, satellite systems and Space Station to deep space probes. With a considerable amount of mission-critical NDE activity in each of these areas, Generazio deputized NDE personnel as trusted agents to serve as his eyes and ears at NASA’s 10 centers. 

After the Columbia accident, Generazio served as the discipline expert for NDE for the NASA Safety and Engineering Center until 2006. As an NDE discipline expert, he guided the activities of 90 experts from industry, universities, other government agencies and NASA centers. These experts operated as an NDE Super Problem Resolution Team (SPRT) that worked in 10 groups on NASA’s unique critical inspection issues that required the attention of the "best of the best" in order to return to flight. For example, the NDE SPRT worked aggressively to develop and certify Nondestructive Inspection technologies for inspecting the integrity of sprayed-on foam insulation used to insulate the Space Transportation System’s external tank. 

Generazio received his doctorate in physics from The Pennsylvania State University in 1983. After graduation, he worked at NASA's Lewis Research Center (now Glenn Research Center) in Cleveland, Ohio, as a senior research scientist in NDE where he expanded his skills to develop a Technology Benefit Estimator that integrated engine and flight cycle simulations with component specific modeling, transonic flow, structural analyses, manufacturing processes and probabilistic analyses to estimate the value of new proposed technologies. After working as a researcher for 10 years, Generazio served as branch head of the NASA Langley Research Center Nondestructive Evaluation Sciences Branch (NESB) in Hampton, Virginia, and the delegated NDE program manager for OSMA. As manager of NESB, he was responsible for the development of advanced NDE and structural health monitoring technologies for the next generation of aerospace systems and aging systems.