THE 2022 HUMANS TO MARS SUMMIT
an Explore Mars Event
May 17-19, 2022
The George Washington University
Washington D.C.
Ezinne Uzo-Okoro leads civil and commercial space policy for the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy as Assistant Director for Space Policy. She was a NASA executive who has built, managed, and reviewed over 60 spaceflight programs in ~17 years representing $9.2 Billion in total program value to NASA.A t NASA Headquarters, Ezinne led a Heliophysics portfolio of spaceflight missions, including the PUNCH, TRACERS, and MAGIC missions, in the Science Mission Directorate. At NASA Ames Research Center, Ezinne led the Small Spacecraft Mission Design Division, Mission Design Center, and teams in developing advanced spacecraft mission concepts as acting chief. In several Chief Engineer roles, she provided oversight for over 20 projects and programs on software systems and mission systems engineering as technical authority. She also led a mission design concept for a constellation of eight small satellites. At NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, in the flight segment, Ezinne contributed significantly in areas of engineering leadership and technical development of spacecraft flight hardware and software on several large spacecraft missions, including TESS (launched 2018), NICER (launched 2017), GPM (launched 2014), Constellation Program - EFT-1 (launched 2014), ELC (launched 2009), and Cassini (inserted into Saturn's Orbit in 2004). In the ground segment, she co-led the $300M Spacecraft Communication and Navigation Integration Project (SNIP) with JPL and Glenn Research Center partners and served as technical authority on over 20 mission operational readiness reviews. In R&D, Ezinne led the development of remote-sensing image registration algorithms, which resulted in NASA-owned registration algorithm patents. Observing how food innovations on earth could serve as inspiration for nutrition solutions on the Moon, she founded Terraformers.com to help people eat nutritious food at low cost through productive and networked backyard gardening.
