Ballester Olmos, Vicente-Juan (Spain)

Vicente-Juan Ballester Olmos
Born, Valencia (Spain), December 27, 1948

Educated formally until pre-university, with a further diploma on programming language in 1973, V.J. Ballester Olmos is basically a self-taught student of many scientific disciplines. He has had a professional career in Ford Motor Company from 1976 to 2005. He has elected to early-retire in December 2005. From 1983 he has held the position of Manager, Insurance, Benefits and Pensions. During his career he received many courses, technical training, and professional studies in Spain and England on Finance, Risk Management, and Pensions.

Vicente-Juan Ballester Olmos has been investigating UFO phenomena since 1966, he is an active promoter of scientific-oriented ufology and he is proactively focused to team work. A correspondent, collaborator and personal friend to the most noted figures of the field in the last 35+ years.

Mr Ballester Olmos is the author of over 300 publications, essays, articles, case inquiries, bibliographies, book reviews, technical reports, etc since 1965. His bibliography can be consulted on-line in the following url: http://www.anomalia.org/bibliog1.pdf

Mr Ballester Olmos has given frequent speeches in many UFO congresses held in Spain, France, England, Germany, and the United States of America.

Awards and grants:
1982: Fund for UFO Research (Washington, D.C.) scholarship for the study of UFO close encounter cases reported in Spain and Portugal
1983: Co-awarded with John Schuessler (NASA) the Alvin Lawson Award, “for his advances in the scientific comprehension of the UFO phenomenon”
1998: Nominated to the Isabel L. Davies Memorial Award, MUFON Inc.
1998: Premio Anaparéstesis, Anomaly Foundation

Major duties:
*1968-1973: Founder and President, Círculo de Estudios sobre Objetos No Identificados (CEONI), Valencia, Spain
*1969-1970: Founder of Equipo Nacional de Investigadores (ENI), Spain
*1978-1982: Coordinator of Consejo de Consultores de Stendek, Spain
*1983-1985: Journal editor-in-chief, UPIAR Research in Progress, Milano, Italy
*1992-1999: Director of Investigations, Centro de Estudios Interplanetarios (CEI), Barcelona, Spain
*1997-2004: Cofounder, Vice-president and Research Director, Anomaly Foundation, Santander (Spain)
*2005: member, Steering Committee, Euro UFO Network

Mr Ballester Olmos is a member, representative, adviser, consultant to a number of the most important UFO societies and journals in the world: Mutual UFO Network, Inc. (MUFON), J.A. Hynek Center for UFO Studies (CUFOS), Society for the Scientific Exploration (SSE), National Aviation Reporting Center on Anomalous Phenomena (NARCAP), European Journal of UFO and Abduction Studies, Cuadernos de Ufología, amongst others.

From 1992 to 1999, Vicente-Juan Ballester Olmos played a fundamental role in promoting and supervising the start and development of the process of declassification of UFO archives from the Spanish Air Force, through an active cooperation with the Intelligence Section of the Air Operative Command (now Combat Air Command).

From year 2001, Mr Ballester Olmos is managing the FOTOCAT Project, an in-progress project from the Spanish not-for-profit Anomaly Foundation, aimed to create the largest worldwide catalogue of UFO cases where photographs, films or videos have been achieved. Over 6,000 cases are recorded now.

Books:
OVNIS: El fenómeno aterrizaje, Plaza & Janés (Barcelona), 1978,1979, and1984. Foreword by Dr. Jacques Vallée.
Los OVNIS y la Ciencia (with Miguel Guasp), Plaza & Janés (Barcelona), 1981, and1989. Foreword by Dr. J. Allen Hynek.
Investigación OVNI, Plaza & Janés (Barcelona), 1984. Foreword by Dr. Richard Haines.
Enciclopedia de los encuentros cercanos con OVNIS (with Juan Antonio Fernández), Plaza & Janés (Barcelona), 1987
Expedientes insólitos, Temas de Hoy (Madrid), 1995. Foreword by Javier Sierra. Epilogue by Dr. Jacques Vallée.

Recognitions:
*1998: Biographical quotation in Marquis Who’s Who in the World.
*2001: Unique civil ufologist interviewed by the Revista Española de Defensa (official publication of the Spanish Ministry of Defense): http://www.anomalia.org/redef.htm

Postal address: Apartado de Correos 12140, 46080 Valencia, Spain
Telephone: 00-34-96-361-31-08 (home)
E-mail: ballesterolmos@yahoo.es
Web site: http://fotocat.blogspot.com/

Grassino, Gian Paolo (Italy)

Gian Paolo Grassino was born in Torino, in 1960, where he studied electronic engineering and has been managing his own DTP business since 1988.

A UFO buff since his teen years, with local group CTRU, he had been editor of its newsletter (1978),  later merged into Clypeus journal Ufologia (1979-1984).

A former member of Centro Ufologico Nazionale between 1978 and 1985, he had been national secretary of CUN since 1981.

A founding member of Centro Italiano Studi Ufologici, he has been secretary of CISU (and a member of its council) 1986-2007, President since 2007 and the editor of its journal UFO – Rivista di informazione ufologica since 1986.

Since 1981 until 2005 he has also been editing a bimonthly (later: monthly) UFO newsclipping service (Notiziario Archivio Stampa) and he is coordinator of CISU Press Archives.

He authored an illustrated booklet (Il fenomeno UFO, Upiar, Torino 1990), co-edited CISU anthology Gli UFO – Quarant’anni di ufologia tra fantasia e realtà (Armenia, Milan 1987) and a Guide to Ufology (Ufo e ufologia, Upiar, Torino 2007), besides some hundreds articles and columns in several UFO (mostly Italian) periodicals, in the last 30+ years.

His mailing address is: Casella postale 82, 10100 Torino, Italy; phone: +39-011-8127445; e-mail: gp-ufo@iol.it