NASA veteran to become JPL’s first woman director

A Caltech alumna and NASA veteran will develop into the brand new director of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in La Cañada Flintridge.

Laurie Leshin, the president of Worcester Polytechnic Institute in Massachusetts, will assume the position of director in Could, officers introduced Thursday. She’s going to succeed Michael Watkins, who retired in August, and Lt. Gen. Larry James, who presently serves on the interim director.

Leshin will probably be JPL’s first lady director. She can even develop into a vp of Caltech, which manages the lab for NASA.

Caltech President Thomas Rosenbaum stated Leshin was chosen for her monitor file main advanced organizations, her strategic pondering, her dedication to folks and “her capacity to encourage the subsequent technology of scientists and engineers.”

Leshin stated innovation, know-how and exploration will probably be amongst her high priorities. These embrace the hassle to gather samples of Martian soil and return them to Earth to search for proof of previous life on the purple planet, in addition to a mission to Jupiter’s icy moon Europa to see whether or not it’s appropriate for all times.

The lab can even proceed with its Earth-centric missions supposed to grasp and mitigate the consequences of local weather change.

“L.A. is a land of inspiration, and JPL’s missions encourage folks every single day,” she stated in an interview Friday, noting that Southern California is a cradle of area exploration, rocketry and the aerospace trade. “California is the place to be if you wish to be an area explorer — particularly Southern California.”

This received’t be her first stint with NASA. She beforehand held two senior positions on the area company’s Goddard Area Flight Heart in Greenbelt, Md., the place she labored on greater than 50 initiatives. She additionally frolicked at NASA’s headquarters in Washington, D.C., the place her portfolio included human spaceflight and discovering methods to ship astronauts deeper into the photo voltaic system.

Leshin stated the whole thing of her profession helped put together her to guide JPL, together with her expertise with NASA missions that didn’t succeed, such because the Mars Polar Lander mission in 1999. Then as a cosmochemist at Arizona State College, she was poised to seek for water and ice with a stationary precursor to at the moment’s Mars rovers, however the lander by no means made contact and most probably crashed upon arrival.

“All of these issues have taught me nice classes,” she stated.

Leshin has deep ties to the realm, having earned her grasp’s and doctoral levels in geochemistry from Caltech after which finishing a postdoctoral fellowship at UCLA.

After working at ASU and NASA, she joined Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, N.Y., as dean of the varsity of science in 2011, then turned president at WPI in 2014. She additionally held two White Home appointments.

“Dr. Laurie Leshin has a monitor file of scholarship and management wanted to function director of JPL and cement the middle’s standing as a worldwide chief within the twenty first century,” stated NASA Administrator Invoice Nelson.

For Leshin, the return to JPL — and to Southern California — looks like a homecoming.

A self-described “Rose Parade nerd,” she stated she and her husband, astrophysicist Jon Morse, will possible land in Pasadena with their Corgi and tabby cat. An Arizona native, she stated she appears to be like ahead to buying and selling Massachusetts snow for views of the San Gabriel Mountains.

Being the primary lady to guide the lab “simply makes the glory even better,” she stated, noting that she obtained “many heartfelt reactions” from ladies at JPL after the announcement was made. Some even made her a congratulatory Spotify playlist that includes songs equivalent to Beyonce’s “Run the World (Ladies).”

“Illustration issues,” Leshin stated. “I’m going to do my finest to make JPL a spot the place everybody can thrive. We want all of the brains to resolve the actually onerous challenges of area exploration and get to a spot the place everybody can contribute to that daring mission.”

About 31% of JPL’s staff are ladies, in response to their 2020 annual report.

Leshin listed Sally Journey, the primary American lady to fly in area, as each a buddy and hero, and stated she retains a LEGO model of Journey on her desk.

She additionally recalled attending conferences of the Nationwide Group for Girls together with her mom within the Seventies. On the time, the group was working to go the Equal Rights Modification.

“There have been all these ladies standing on their chairs and making a whole lot of noise about increasing the position of girls in management and in society,” Leshin stated. “On the time, I used to be too small to grasp why these ladies had been doing that. However they had been doing that in order that I might do that. And that connection to the shoulders I stand on is one which I take very significantly.”