Andrea Razzaghi

Andrea Razzaghi was named the director of the NASA Office of JPL Management Oversight (NOJMO) at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in January 2022. In this role, Razzaghi oversees contract management at JPL, NASA’s only federally funded research and development center, ensuring statutory, regulatory, and fiduciary compliance requirements are met. She stepped into this position after serving as the deputy director since September 2019, and a one-year detail as the associate director.

From 2012 to 2018 Razzaghi served as NASA’s deputy director of Astrophysics where she provided executive leadership, strategic direction, and overall management of the agency’s astrophysics programs and projects. She oversaw the agency’s research programs and missions necessary to discover how the Universe works, explore how the Universe began and developed into its present form, and search for Earth-size planets outside of our solar system. Razzaghi managed a portfolio up to $1.5 billion per year, with over 20 NASA missions and international partnerships, including NASA’s first Exoplanet mission, Kepler, and the nation’s Great Observatories in space: Hubble, Chandra, and Spitzer.  Important Mission milestones accomplished under her leadership include: successful development and launches of the Neutron Star Interior Composition Explorer and Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite missions, delivery of NASA’s contributions to JAXA’s Hitomi and ESA’s Laser Interferometer Space Antenna Pathfinder missions; completion of development and transition to the science operations for the Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy (SOFIA) mission; and the official start and formulation of the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope.

Razzaghi joined NASA Headquarters in 2010 to serve as the assistant director for Planetary Science, where she oversaw and played a significant role in many exciting mission milestones, including two comet encounters, planetary launches for Juno to Jupiter, GRAIL to the moon, and the Mars Science Laboratory. She also oversaw the start of science operations of several missions; MESSENGER at Mercury, Dawn at the asteroid Vesta, and the Curiosity rover on the surface of Mars, following a historic landing. 

Razzaghi started her NASA career following work in private industry as a Navy contractor. She began her NASA career as a mechanical engineer at Goddard Space Flight Center, where she contributed to many successful missions, including the Cosmic Background Explorer, which provided evidence to support the big-bang theory and led to a Nobel Prize for its principal investigators; and Cassini, which conducted a spectacular 13-year exploration of the Saturn system. Razzaghi advanced at Goddard to hold several key project management positions, including mission manager for the Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer and the Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope Array, observatory manager for Earth Observing System Aura, and instrument manager on the Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission. 

In the mid-1990s, Razzaghi served as a senior policy analyst in the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy. There, she coordinated the activities of the National Science and Technology Council and the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology. She has won many awards for her service to NASA and the nation, and was the 2014 recipient of the Brown University Engineering Alumni Medal and 2020 Catholic University of America Engineering Distinguished Alumni Award.

Razzaghi earned a bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering from Brown University and a master’s degree in mechanical engineering design from The Catholic University of America.