Lesa B. Roe served as director of NASA’s Langley Research Center, Hampton, Virginia, from October 2005 to April 28, 2014. She was succeeded by her former deputy director Stephen G. Jurczyk.
NASA Langley, founded in 1917, is the nation’s first civilian aeronautical research facility and NASA’s original field center.
Roe is the senior management official of the laboratory employing approximately 2,100 civil service personnel. She is responsible for the center’s aeronautical and space research programs, as well as facilities, personnel and administration.
Roe served as the Langley Deputy Director from June 2004 until being named Director in October 2005. In this position, she helped plan, organize and direct Center and inter-center activities to advance research significant to national aerospace objectives.
Roe served as Langley associate director for business management from August 2003 until being named deputy director. She has more than 20 years experience in engineering, technical and managerial positions, working for both government and private industry. Her background includes two years in NASA center leadership, four years International Space Station program management, nine years experience in technical management and project engineering and five years experience in radio frequency communications test and payload systems engineering.
Roe started her engineering career performing satellite communications analysis for Hughes Space and Communications in El Segundo, Calif. She began her NASA career at Kennedy Space Center, Fla., in 1987 as a radio frequency communications engineer in the Space Shuttle Engineering Directorate. She also managed the International Space Station Payloads Office at Johnson Space Center in Houston.
She holds a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering from the University of Florida at Gainesville and a master’s degree in electrical engineering from the University of Central Florida in Orlando.