NASA Internal Memo: Senior Managers to Leave NASA for Academia

Laurie Leshin, deputy associate administrator of the Exploration Systems Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters, will leave government service in September to join the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Troy, N.Y., as dean of the School of Science.

Jon Morse, director of the Science Mission Directorate’s Astrophysics Division and Laurie’s husband, also will be leaving government to join RPI as the associate vice president for research.

Laurie has served as the ESMD deputy since 2010. She joined NASA in 2005 as the director of science and exploration at the Goddard Space Flight Center. Prior to joining NASA, Laurie was a scientist and professor at Arizona State University, where her research focused on cosmo-chemistry, including the origin of the solar system, water on Mars, and astrobiology.

Jon has served as Astrophysics Division director since 2007, a position he took after spending a year working in the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy. Jon also came to NASA from Arizona State University, where his research focused on star formation, high-mass stars, supernovae and supernova remnants, and active galaxies. He served for many years as the project scientist for the Cosmic Origins Spectrograph that was installed on the Hubble Space Telescope during the most recent servicing mission.