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    NASA Appoints First Female Director for Jet Propulsion Laboratory

    For the first time in 85 years, the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory has a female director. Laurie Leshin, a Geochemist and space scientist will serve as acting director for JPL as well as the vice president of the California Institute of Technology. JPL was founded in 1936 by faculty and students from Caltech.

    JPL has managed the laboratory on behalf of NASA since 1958. Leshin has earned her master’s and doctoral degrees in geochemistry and Caltech and served as a member of the Curiosity rover science team that looked at data to find water on the surface of Mars. 

    Leshin has also spent two decades supporting and planning the upcoming Mars Sample Return missions. Martian samples collected by the perseverance rover will be brought back to Earth by the 2030s. Prior to her NASA position, Leshin used to be the president of the Worcester Polytechnic Institute, one of the oldest private STEM universities in the United States.

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