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NASA scientist From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Zainab Nagin Cox (born 1965) is a spacecraft operations engineer at Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Asteroid 14061 was named "Nagincox" after her in 2015. She has received the NASA Exceptional Service Medal.
Nagin Cox | |
|---|---|
Cox in 2018 | |
| Born | 1965 |
| Alma mater | Cornell University |
| Scientific career | |
| Institutions | Jet Propulsion Laboratory North American Aerospace Defense Command |
Cox was born in Bangalore.[1] She grew up in Kuala Lumpur and Kansas City, Kansas.[1] She went to school at Shawnee Mission East High School.[2] At school she was interested in Star Trek and Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey.[3] She studied engineering and psychology at Cornell University, graduating in 1986.[4] She earned a master's degree in space operations systems engineering from Air Force Institute of Technology in 1990.[5]
After graduating, Cox worked for the United States Air Force as a space operations officer. She worked in F-16 aircrew training.[6] She worked as an orbital analyst at North American Aerospace Defense Command.[5] Cox has worked as a spacecraft operations engineer at Jet Propulsion Laboratory since 1993.[5] She has been involved with several interplanetary robotic missions, including Galileo, InSight, Kepler, and the Mars Curiosity rover.[7] She is a tactical mission lead, in charge of the uplink, downlink and advance planning teams.[8] Asteroid 14061 Nagincox, discovered in 1996, was named after her in 2015.[9] She won the NASA Exceptional Service Medal, the Bruce Murray award in 2014 and has won the NASA Exceptional Achievement Medal twice.[10][11][12]
Cox is passionate about increasing diversity within sciences, engineering and NASA.[13][14][15][16][17] She served on the board of directors at Griffith Observatory.[18] She serves on the President's Council for Cornell Women Alumni.[19] She is an invited speaker for the United States Department of State, travelling the world talking about her career and NASA's robotic space exploration program.[20] In 2014 she visited Pakistan, Rio de Janeiro and Bahia, inspiring young women from unprivileged communities to study sciences and engineering.[21] She was a keynote speaker at SIGGRAPH 2016.[22][23] She visited Bosnia and Herzegovina in 2016, touring the country with the United States Department of State.[24][25] She gave a TEDx talk at Beacon Street in 2017, which was later chosen by Wired as one of the best science talks.[26][27] "What time is it on Mars?" has been viewed almost two million times.[28] She visited Kuwait in 2018, discussing their 2021 Mars mission.[29][30]
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