Douglas Trent, Ph.D, Aerospace Flight Systems

Dr. Trent is the acting Space Systems team lead in the Advanced Concepts Office, at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center. His focus areas include space systems architecture design and analysis, technology assessment, advanced design methods, and human landing systems concepts. Current work assignments include entry, descent, landing, and ascent lead for NASA’s human Mars Architecture Team, as well as support for the Human Landing System program. Additional duties include developing a model-based, multi-objective design optimization framework for the synthesis of space systems architectures. Dr. Trent joined NASA/MSFC June 2012 while also working towards his graduate degrees in the Aerospace Systems Design Lab at Georgia Tech. Dr. Trent obtained a Bachelor’s degree in Mechanical Engineering from California State University, Sacramento in 2011, followed by a Master’s and Ph.D. in Aerospace Engineering from the Georgia Institute of Technology in 2014 and 2017, respectively.