Dr. Nina Lanza is the Team Lead for Space and Planetary Exploration in Space and Remote Sensing (ISR- 2) at Los Alamos National Laboratory. She is on the science teams for the ChemCam instrument onboard the NASA Curiosity rover and the SuperCam instrument onboard the Perseverance rover. Her current research focuses on understanding the origin and nature of manganese minerals on Mars and how they may serve as potential biosignatures. In addition to her research on Mars, Dr. Lanza spent the 2015- 2016 austral summer in Antarctica recovering meteorites with the Antarctic Search for Meteorites project. She is also a regular contributor on the television series How the Universe Works (The Science Channel).

She is thrilled to be living her childhood dream of working on a spaceship.