Lisa Pratt
Lisa Pratt is a professor emerita in the IU College of Arts and Sciences’ Department of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences. She served as NASA’s planetary protection officer from 2017 to 2021 with an emphasis on understanding life’s adaptations to extreme environments on Earth and working with engineers to solve robotic challenges associated with the search for evidence of past or present life on Mars and the icy moons of Jupiter and Saturn.
From 2003 to 2008, Pratt served as a team director for the NASA Astrobiology Institute and, from 2013 to 2016, as chair of NASA’s Mars Exploration Program Analysis Group. She is currently co-chair of NASA’s 2022 Senior Mission Review for Planetary Science, evaluating scientific strengths and weaknesses of eight spacecraft currently in extended operation at the Moon, Mars, and the Kuiper Belt in the outer solar system. She holds a Ph.D. in geology from Princeton University.