We are pleased to announce that Dr. Lori Magruder has been appointed as the Director of the Center for Space Research (CSR) effective 1 January 2024.
Dr. Lori Magruder is an Associate Professor in the Aerospace Engineering Department at The University of Texas at Austin and holds the Myron L. Begeman Fellowship in Engineering. Dr. Magruder is a subject matter expert in remote sensing remote sensing instrumentation, implementation, validation, and 3D geospatial data exploitation.
Dr. Magruder received her bachelor’s degree from The University of Southern California in Aerospace Engineering and her master’s degree from Princeton University in Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering. She earned her Ph.D. at The University of Texas at Austin with a focus on ground-based validation studies for NASA’s ICESat mission.
Prior to returning to UT Austin, she held positions at Jet Propulsion Laboratory and the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory. In addition to her NASA leadership responsibilities within the ICESat-2 Science Team, she will be providing scientific research in bathymetric science discovery and continuing her efforts for data product validation. Dr. Magruder leads many other NASA and the Department of Defense remote sensing programs with her expertise in geospatial topics and applications.
Previous to becoming the Director of CSR, an organized research unit within the Cockrell School of Engineering, she was the Associate Director of Research and Communications between 2020 – 2022 and served as the interim Director throughout 2023.