Matthew Koss
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Matthew B. Koss (born August 12, 1961 in Boston, Massachusetts) is a widely published solid state physicist.
He received his AB degree from Vassar College in 1983 and a Ph.D. in Experimental Condensed Matter Physics from Tufts University in 1989.
From 1990 to 2000 he worked at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute as the Lead Scientist for the Isothermal Dendritic Growth Experiment (IDGE), a basic microgravity research project on dendritic solidification that conducted Space Shuttle flight experiments on STS-62, -75, and -87.
He is currently the Principal Investigator of the Transient Dendritic Solidification Experiment (TDSE) [1], a flight experiment being prepared for operations on the International Space Station in 2006.
In June of 2003, Koss created a controversy by authoring an Op Ed article in the New York Times claiming that scientist bore partial responsibility for the space shuttle Columbia disaster. He argued that most micro-gravity scientific experiments did not require manned space missions, but were used to sell the space program.[citation needed] The article drew widespread attention, and resulted in congressional hearings at which Koss appeared.