Nagin Cox

Zainab Nagin Cox (born 1965) is a spacecraft operations engineer at Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Asteroid 14061 was named "Nagincox" after her in 2015. She has received the NASA Exceptional Service Medal.

Nagin Cox
Cox in 2018
Born1965
Bangalore
Alma materCornell University
Scientific career
InstitutionsJet Propulsion Laboratory
North American Aerospace Defense Command

Early life and education

Cox was born in Bangalore.[1] She grew up in Kuala Lumpur and Kansas City, Kansas.[1] She went to school at Shawnee Mission East High School.[2] At school she was interested in Star Trek and Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey.[3] She studied engineering and psychology at Cornell University, graduating in 1986.[4] She earned a master's degree in space operations systems engineering from Air Force Institute of Technology in 1990.[5]

Career
Cox in 2018, wearing her mission lanyards collected from more than two decades at JPL.

After graduating, Cox worked for the United States Air Force as a space operations officer. She worked in F-16 aircrew training.[6] She worked as an orbital analyst at North American Aerospace Defense Command.[5] Cox has worked as a spacecraft operations engineer at Jet Propulsion Laboratory since 1993.[5] She has been involved with several interplanetary robotic missions, including Galileo, InSight, Kepler, and Mars Curiosity.[7] She is a tactical mission lead, in charge of the uplink, downlink and advance planning teams.[8] Asteroid 14061 Nagincox, discovered in 1996, was named after her in 2015.[9] She won the NASA Exceptional Service Medal, the Bruce Murray award in 2014 and has won the NASA Exceptional Achievement Medal twice.[10][11][12]

Public engagement and diversity

Cox is passionate about increasing diversity within sciences, engineering and NASA.[13][14][15][16][17] She served on the board of directors at Griffith Observatory.[18] She serves on the President's Council for Cornell Women Alumni.[19] She is an invited speaker for the United States Department of State, travelling the world talking about her career and NASA's robotic space exploration program.[20] In 2014 she visited Pakistan, Rio de Janeiro and Bahia, inspiring young women from unprivileged communities to study sciences and engineering.[21] She was a keynote speaker at SIGGRAPH 2016.[22][23] She visited Bosnia and Herzegovina in 2016, touring the country with the United States Department of State.[24][25] She gave a TEDx talk at Beacon Street in 2017, which was later chosen by Wired as one of the best science talks.[26][27] "What time is it on Mars?" has been viewed almost two million times.[28] She visited Kuwait in 2018, discussing their 2021 Mars mission.[29][30]

References
  1. Cox, Nagin. "Nagin Cox | Speaker | TED". Retrieved 19 June 2018.
  2. "Z. Nagin Cox's Martian Profile". mars.nasa.gov. Archived from the original on 27 March 2015. Retrieved 19 June 2018.
  3. "Meet SIGGRAPH 2016 Keynote Speaker: Z. Nagin Cox - ACM SIGGRAPH Blog". ACM SIGGRAPH Blog. 13 July 2016. Retrieved 19 June 2018.
  4. "Nagin Cox's Martian Profile". mars.nasa.gov. Archived from the original on 28 March 2015. Retrieved 19 June 2018.
  5. "Office of Alumni Affairs / Ms. Zainab "Nagin" Cox". www.afit.edu. Retrieved 19 June 2018.
  6. "Mission System Engineer" (PDF). Casablanca American School. Retrieved 18 June 2018.
  7. "Nagin Cox | Cassidy & Fishman Inc". Cassidy & Fishman Inc. Retrieved 19 June 2018.
  8. TEDxBeaconStreet (4 January 2017). "The Martians Are Here!". Ideas In Action. Retrieved 19 June 2018.
  9. Chamberlin, Alan. "JPL Small-Body Database Browser". ssd.jpl.nasa.gov. Retrieved 19 June 2018.
  10. "Nagin Cox". Nagin Cox. Retrieved 19 June 2018.
  11. "Judges - Directing Change". Directing Change. Retrieved 19 June 2018.
  12. "JPL: Universe" (PDF). JPL. 2014. Retrieved 18 June 2018.
  13. "Nagin Cox: "Dare to do mighty things"". IT Girls. 13 June 2016. Retrieved 19 June 2018.
  14. "Nagin Cox, Engineer, NASA's Galileo Mission to Jupiter". Challenger Center. Retrieved 19 June 2018.
  15. "NASA Engineer Nagin Cox Helps Build Robots That Explore Mars". Rewire. 11 July 2017. Retrieved 19 June 2018.
  16. l'espace, Cité de. "Odysseus : des élèves rencontrent Nagin Cox de la NASA - Cité de l'Espace". Cité de l'Espace (in French). Retrieved 19 June 2018.
  17. "NASA scientist Nagin Cox to speak at GUST event". Arab Times. 4 March 2018. Retrieved 19 June 2018 – via PressReader.
  18. "JPL: Universe" (PDF). www.jpl.nasa.gov. 2011. Retrieved 18 June 2018.
  19. "President's Council of Cornell Women" (PDF). Cornell. Retrieved 18 June 2018.
  20. "NASA's Global Reach: Pakistan". www.planetary.org. Retrieved 19 June 2018.
  21. "NASA Engineer Nagin Cox Inspires Technical Audiences and Empowers Young People in Rio de Janeiro and Bahia | U.S. Embassy & Consulates in Brazil". U.S. Embassy & Consulates in Brazil. 14 October 2014. Retrieved 19 June 2018.
  22. ACMSIGGRAPH (11 August 2016), SIGGRAPH 2016 – NASA's Z. Nagin Cox, Keynote Speaker, retrieved 19 June 2018
  23. "Cemetech | News | STEM and Exploring Mars: A Chat with Z. Nagin Cox of NASA". www.cemetech.net. Retrieved 19 June 2018.
  24. "Expert of NASA Nagin Cox to arrive in BiH - Sarajevo Times". Sarajevo Times. 9 April 2016. Retrieved 19 June 2018.
  25. Mićević, Nemanja. "Lecture Eng. Nagin Cox, NASA__14th of April 2016". msurs.net. Retrieved 19 June 2018.
  26. "Living On Two Planets: A TEDx Talk by Nagin Cox". Journalists For Space. 9 January 2017. Retrieved 19 June 2018.
  27. Plummer, Libby. "From Stephen Hawking to AI: nine of the best science talks". Retrieved 19 June 2018.
  28. Cox, Nagin (3 February 2017), What time is it on Mars?, retrieved 19 June 2018
  29. "Kuwaitis are keen on space know-how, says NASA expert". Arab Times. 9 March 2018. Retrieved 19 June 2018 – via PressReader.
  30. Hasan, Shazia (28 May 2014). "Nasa engineer recounts stories of robotic missions to Mars". DAWN.COM. Retrieved 19 June 2018.
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