Dr. Pamela Norris is the founder and director of the University of Virginia's Microscale Heat Transfer Laboratory and the Aerogel Research Laboratory. A native Virginian, she received her Ph.D. from Georgia Institute of Technology in 1992. She then served as a Visiting Scholar and a Visiting Lecturer at the University of California at Berkeley from 1993-1994, where she developed her interests in microscale heat transfer and aerogels while working in the laboratory of Chang-Lin Tien. In 1994 Pam joined the Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering Department at UVA where she received an National Science Foundation CAREER award in 1995 and was promoted to Professor in 2004. She now serves as the Graduate Director for the department and chairs the Education Committee of the ASME Nanotechnology Institute. Her current research includes: micro-scale heat transfer, optical temperature measurement techniques, thermal design of jet blast deflectors, and integration of sol-gel materials into microanalytical devices.