(2024) Nagin Cox – Tactical Mission Lead on the Curiosity Rover, as well as the Depuy Team Chief of the
Mars2020 Perseverance Rover Engineering Team
Nagin Cox has been exploring since she decided as a teenager that she wanted to work
at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. She was born in Bangalore, India, and grew up
in Kansas City, Kansas, and Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. Her experiences as a child in
a Muslim household showed her how easily we separate ourselves based on gender, race
or nationality, and it inspired her to do something that brings people together instead
of dividing them. The Space Program helps the world "look up" and remember that we
are one world. Thus, she has known from the time she was 14 years old that she wanted
to work on missions of robotic space exploration.
Cox realized her childhood dream and has been a spacecraft operations engineer at
NASA/JPL for over 20 years. She has held leadership and system engineering positions
on interplanetary robotic missions including the Galileo mission to Jupiter, the Mars
Exploration Rovers, the Kepler exoplanet hunter, InSight and the Mars Curiosity Rover.
In 2015, Cox was honored as the namesake for Asteroid 14061 by its discovers. She
has also received the NASA Exceptional Service Medal and two NASA Exceptional Achievement
Medals. She is a U.S. Department of State STEM Speaker and has spoken to audiences
around the world on the stories of the people behind the missions. She has also served
on Cornell University’s President's Council for Cornell Women. She sits on the Advisory
Committee of the Women's Rights Division of Human Rights Watch.
Before her time at JPL, Cox served for 6 years in the US Air Force including duty
as a Space Operations Officer at NORAD/US Space Command. She holds engineering degrees
from Cornell University and the Air Force Institute of Technology as well as a psychology
degree from Cornell. (Sometimes she is not sure which one she uses more: the engineering
degree or the psychology degree.)
Nagincox Website
