Planetary Geologist
Adriana C. Ocampo knew from the time she was a child that the stars and space were in her future. Growing up in Argentina, she would look at the stars and make spacecrafts from pots and pans.
Though she works for NASA and leads programs for the New Frontiers, her biggest accomplishment comes from her research that led to the discovery of the Chicxulub impact crater, caused by a catastrophic meteor strike that likely wiped out the dinosaurs and many other species on Earth.
3 Things We Love About Adriana:
- As a high school junior, she had a summer job at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
- She is dedicated to improving international cooperation in space exploration and narrowing the space science gap between developed and developing nations.
- In 2016, she was named National Hispanic Scientist of the Year.