March 23, 2022

Lauren Blum, Ph.D. 

Lauren Blum is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Astrophysical and Planetary Sciences at the University of Colorado Boulder. Prior to 2020, she was a research scientist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center. She received her BA in Physics from Dartmouth College and her PhD in Aerospace Engineering Sciences from CU Boulder. Her research interests include energetic particle dynamics throughout the magnetosphere and the heliosphere, and in particular the dynamics of Earth’s radiation belts. Her experience includes analysis of particle and field measurements as well as instrument and small satellite development. She has acted as Project Manager for two past CubeSat missions and PI of the GTOSat mission, currently under development.

Anh N. Nguyen, Ph.D. 

Anh Nguyen is the project manager for NASA’s Payload Accelerator for CubeSat Endeavors (PACE) initiative that is funded by NASA’s Small Spacecraft Technology program within the Space Technology Mission Directorate. She started career as a small spacecraft attitude control systems subject matter expert at NASA’s Ames Research Center’s Mission Design Center as part of an internship. She continued to develop advanced small satellite concepts and executed multiple CubeSat technology demonstrations. She has over 6 years of CubeSat/SmallSat experience as an attitude determination and control systems lead, systems engineering lead, and project management. She has a Ph.D. in Aerospace Engineering from the University of Florida, Gainesville.

Shannon Statham, Ph.D. 

Dr. Shannon Statham is the Supervisor of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory’s Environmental Dynamics Test Group and the System Integration and Test Lead for Lunar Flashlight. Dr. Statham joined JPL in 2011, and she specializes in integration and test for flight programs and implementation of CubeSat and small satellite missions. Past roles include Project Manager for RainCube, AMR-C Instrument Integration and Test Lead for Sentinel-6, System Integration and Test Lead for MarCO, and Project Manager for RACE. Dr. Statham has also served on multiple advisory boards, review boards, and tiger teams for CubeSat and Type II missions at JPL, and she is currently the Technical Affairs Subcommittee Chair for the AIAA Small Satellite Technical Committee. Dr. Statham received her BS in Aerospace Engineering from the University of Central Florida and her PhD in Aerospace Engineering from the Georgia Institute of Technology.