Jason Kalirai, Mission Area Executive for Space Formulation at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory will serve as the next chair of EP’s Applied Physics program.
As the Civil Space Mission Area Executive from 2018 to 2023, he led the implementation of innovative and cost-effective solutions to critical civil space challenges—including the recent DART mission where NASA tested its ability to deflect an asteroid by changing its motion in space through kinetic impact—giving the world its first planetary defense mission. He now leads the Space Formulation Mission Area where his team is focused on dreaming up bold new space missions that maximize game-changing impacts and tackle some of the hardest questions in space science today.
In his 10 years at the Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI) at Johns Hopkins University, he led NASA mission development and operations including work on the Hubble Telescope and NASA’s flagship James Webb Space Telescope, which has allowed humanity to look at the universe as it has never done before.
At EP, he developed a new course in the Space Systems Engineering program called, “The Bold Science Motivating and Enabled by Space Engineering.” The course focuses on the link between space engineering and the science it enables, as applied to today’s leading topics in astrophysics, planetary science, and heliophysics.
Looking forward, he envisions strengthening the impact of the program and its collaboration across EP, being an advocate for course instructors, and growing commercial industry partnerships to add new material to the program that is strongly aligned with leading topics taught by industry experts.