Dr. Colleen N. Hartman joined the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine in 2018, as both Director for the Space Studies Board and for the Aeronautics and Space Engineering Board.
After beginning her government career as a presidential management intern, Dr. Hartman worked on Capitol Hill, as a senior engineer at NASA Goddard, as a senior policy analyst at the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, and as deputy division director for technology at NASA headquarters in Washington DC.
Dr. Hartman has built and launched scientific balloon payloads, worked on robotic vision, overseen the development of the command and data handling systems for a variety of Earth-observing spacecraft, and served as NASA program manager for dozens of missions, the most successful of which was the Cosmic Background Explorer. Data from the COBE spacecraft gained two NASA-sponsored scientists the Nobel Prize in physics in 2006.
Dr. Hartman has served as Deputy Associate Administrator and Acting Associate Administrator at NASA’s Science Mission Directorate, as Deputy Assistant Administrator at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), and most recently as Deputy Center Director and Director of Sciences and Exploration at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center.
Dr. Hartman earned a bachelor’s degree in zoology from Pomona College in Claremont, Calif., a master’s in public administration from the University of Southern California, and a doctorate in physics from the Catholic University of America. She has received numerous awards, including two prestigious Presidential Rank Awards, the NASA Outstanding Performance Award, and the Claire Booth Luce Fellowship in Science and Engineering.
Dr Hartman currently serves on the AAELF Advisory Board.
