"Being selected as an Outstanding Aerospace Engineer is a huge honor, especially coming from Purdue. Looking at past recipients and my colleagues today, they all have made meaningful contributions to the field of aerospace engineering. This award caused me to reflect and see an accumulation of wonderful experiences that quite honestly would not have happened had I not started at Purdue.”
Christie Iacomini is Vice President of Engineering & Partner at Prime Movers Lab, a venture capital firm that invests in breakthrough scientific startups. She started her career as a co-op at NASA Johnson Space Center while earning a BS in Aeronautical and Astronautical Engineering at Purdue.
Iacomini went on to earn a MS in Aerospace Engineering at The University of Texas at Austin and was the first to determine the Space Shuttle’s orbital state and relative position with respect to another orbiting object using GPS. Joining NASA full-time, Iacomini served as X-38 Parafoil Principle Investigator, Lead Parafoil Pilot and a mission commander for X-38 drop testing. She left NASA to earn her PhD in Aerospace Engineering at the University of Arizona. With a focus in thermal science, she studied solid oxide electrolysis applied to Martian resource utilization.
Afterward Iacomini moved to commercial space, helping grow a small business, Paragon Space Development Corporation. Iacomini served many roles, including Director of R&D, leading technology development efforts in the areas of life support, thermal control, spacesuit systems, in situ resource utilization and fuel cells. She earned a patent, wrote nearly 50 peer-reviewed publications, led the development of the spacesuit that protected Alan Eustace on his world-record space dive from the stratosphere and led the development and delivery of Boeing’s Starliner humidity control system.
Iacomini joined Blue Origin in 2016, grew the fluids engineering organization and oversaw their contributions to develop and operate the New Shepard suborbital system. She then led the development of the Blue Moon lunar lander from concept through preliminary design for NASA’s Artemis Program.