Julie Wertz Chen is an American

aerospace engineer Aerospace engineering is the primary field of engineering concerned with the development of aircraft and spacecraft. It has two major and overlapping branches: aeronautical engineering and astronautical engineering. Avionics engineering is s ...

. She has been a systems engineer for the

Soil Moisture Active Passive Soil Moisture Active Passive (SMAP) is a NASA environmental monitoring satellite that measures soil moisture across the planet. It is designed to collect a global 'snapshot' of soil moisture every 2 to 3 days. With this frequency, changes from sp ...

(SMAP), Cassini, and

InSight Insight is the understanding of a specific causality, cause and effect within a particular context. The term insight can have several related meanings: *a piece of information *the act or result of understanding the inner nature of things or of se ...

Mars missions. She is currently working on the

Surface Water and Ocean Topography The Surface Water and Ocean Topography (SWOT) mission is a satellite altimeter jointly developed and operated by NASA and CNES, the French space agency, in partnership with the Canadian Space Agency (CSA) and UK Space Agency (UKSA). The objecti ...

(SWOT) mission.

Education

Massachusetts Institute of Technology The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a Private university, private research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States. Established in 1861, MIT has played a significant role in the development of many areas of moder ...

, Wertz Chen was on a coxswain on the varsity

rowing Rowing is the act of propelling a human-powered watercraft using the sweeping motions of oars to displace water and generate reactional propulsion. Rowing is functionally similar to paddling, but rowing requires oars to be mechanically a ...

team. She was involved in Sigma Gamma Tau and

Tau Beta Pi The Tau Beta Pi Association (commonly Tau Beta Pi, , or TBP) is the oldest engineering honor society and the second oldest collegiate honor society in the United States. It honors engineering students in American universities who have shown a ...

. As a senior, she worked on the Synchronized Position Hold Engage and Reorient Experimental Satellite (SPHERES) project for the "Conceive, Design, Implement and Operate" Capstone course. In graduate school, she was in the Space Systems Laboratory (MIT) with Professor Dave Miller. She researched design consideration of the probability of failure in the design of spacecraft for her doctoral thesis.

Work at NASA

Wertz Chen has worked at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California for her entire career. She has been the Fault Protection Verification and Validation lead for the SMAP mission, as well as a fault protection engineer on both the SMAP and Cassini missions. She was the team's systems engineer as well as the project

verification and validation Verification and validation (also abbreviated as V&V) are independent procedures that are used together for checking that a product, service, or system meets requirements and specification (technical standard), specifications and that it fulf ...

(V&V) lead engineer on the

NASA The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA ) is an independent agencies of the United States government, independent agency of the federal government of the United States, US federal government responsible for the United States ...

mission. She is currently on the Project Systems Engineering Team for the SWOT project.

Personal life

Wertz Chen is married to NASA JPL systems engineer Al Chen. They met at MIT and were both in the

SPHERES The Synchronized Position Hold Engage and Reorient Experimental Satellite (SPHERES) are a series of miniaturized satellites developed by MIT's Space Systems Laboratory for NASA and US Military, to be used as a low-risk, extensible test bed for t ...

Capstone class. Al Chen was on the

Mars Science Laboratory Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) is a robotic spacecraft, robotic space probe mission to Mars launched by NASA on November 26, 2011, which successfully landed ''Curiosity (rover), Curiosity'', a Mars rover, in Gale (crater), Gale Crater on Augus ...

landing team and sat in the same front row seat that she did for InSight landing team.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Wertz Chen, Julie 21st-century American engineers 21st-century American women scientists American aerospace engineers American women engineers Living people Massachusetts Institute of Technology alumni NASA people Year of birth missing (living people)