Staff Biographies | MPVS

Ryan Wyatt assumed his role as Senior Director of Morrison Planetarium and Science Visualization at the California Academy of Sciences in April 2007. He has written and directed the Academy’s eight award-winning fulldome video planetarium programs, all of which are science documentaries that rely on visualization to tell their stories, but topics range from astronomy to geology, ecosystem science, and conservation.

Trained as an astronomer, Wyatt has worked in the planetarium field since 1991; prior to arriving in San Francisco, he worked for six years as Science Visualizer at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City. Wyatt is cofounder and vice president of Immersive Media Entertainment, Research, Science, and Art (IMERSA), a professional organization dedicated to advancing the art and technology of immersive digital experiences. He served as co-chair of the 2017 and 2019 Gordon Research Conferences on Visualization in Science and Education (GRC/VSE).

Molly Michelson is Senior Media Producer at the California Academy of Sciences. She has over two decades of production experience, including previous work for the Food Network and HGTV. In her role at the Academy, she has produced, written, and directed several hundred short videos, including those that feature our researchers, online educational videos, videos for various exhibits, the annual Big Bang Gala fundraising video, and more!

Jeroen Lapré is an Industrial Light & Magic veteran who worked on a range of films, including The Perfect Storm, the original Iron Man, and Star Wars I and II.

Jeroen led the research into, and adoption of, Houdini as a core tool for the Visualization Studio. On Expedition Reef, Jeroen worked on the powers-of-ten dive into a coral—showing the community of polyps at the microscopic level, the coral bleaching, and coral spawning sequences. He also used Houdini to create the aquarium rippling water surface, boat wake, and falling tetrapod simulations. Jeroen took the lead on the visual development of Living Worlds, and he developed an extended sequence in the show that takes audiences underneath the icy crust of Saturn’s moon Enceladus to view hypothetical thermal vents and to visit a proposed mission to explore the moon.

Jeroen is also producing his own digital film based on Arthur C. Clarke’s short story, “Maelstrom II.”

Ken Ackerman is an animator and motion graphics designer. At the Academy, Ken has rigged and animated dozens of creatures including sea otters, birds, fish, skeletons, microscopic plankton and mammals of land and sea. He has also helped develop the look and feel of the motion graphics you see in the Academy's planetarium shows. He would love to chat with you about Houdini, animation, or just about anything else.

Bing F. Quock joined Morrison Planetarium in 1973. He produced a children's book that he wrote and illustrated called "What's a Planetarium?," published by the Academy in 1974. Joining the planetarium lecturer team in 1975, he presented live shows using the classic Academy-made star projector, and began contributing to planetarium show production in various capacities, including scripting, artwork, and audio production. From 1982-2003, he was Assistant Chairman and Show Producer, writing and producing approximately 100 planetarium shows for public, school, and special event audiences. During the 1980s, he wrote the "Skywatcher's Guide" that appeared regularly in the Academy's quarterly magazine and which continues on the museum's website, created the "Pocket Almanac," and since then has written daily skywatching snippets under the planetarium's byline for syndication to about 30 newspapers around the country. In 2004, he served as Acting Director of Morrison Planetarium when the Academy temporarily relocated to downtown San Francisco while the Golden Gate Park building was reconstructed. Since 2007, he has held the position of Planetarium Assistant Director and continues concentrating on outreach, partnerships, and astronomy communication to the media.