Dr. Martin Herman, Director for Safety and Mission Success

Dr. Martin (Marty) Herman is the Director for the Office of Safety and Mission Success at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. He was appointed to this position in July 2022. Prior to this, he served as the Division Manager for Instruments. Prior to that, he served as the Division Manager for the Mission Assurance Office.

In addition to his management experience, Marty was the flight Telecommunication lead for Deep Space 1 from mission concept to initial operations and the flight lead for the NASA contribution to the Herschel Space Observatory Spectrometer Photometer Imaging Receiver (SPIRE) instrument.

His specialty is in high frequency electromagnetic scattering and RF solid state devices. He has been the Principal Investigator for multiple advanced concept technology developments at the Laboratory which culminated with him being selected as the first Section Manager of the newly created Instrument Electronics and Sensors Section whose focus ranged from basic R&D to instrument flight deliveries.

Marty is a Principal at JPL, where he was awarded the NASA Exceptional Achievement Medal and multiple NASA Group Achievement Awards. He is a senior member of the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers (IEEE), and was the L.A. Chair of the IEEE Microwave Theory & Techniques Society. He earned his B.S. from Drexel University and was a Howard Hughes Doctoral Fellow while obtaining his M.S.E. and Ph.D. from The University of Michigan (all degrees are in electrical engineering).