Leshin to step down as JPL director

WASHINGTON — The director of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory is leaving after three years on the job and will be replaced by a longtime lab official.

JPL announced May 7 that Laurie Leshin would depart as director of JPL, effective June 1. The announcement cited only “personal reasons” for the decision, as did a memo to JPL staff from Thomas Rosenbaum, president of the California Institute of Technology, which runs JPL on the behalf of NASA.

“While we respect Laurie’s decision to step away from her leadership position at JPL, we will miss her drive, compassion and dedication,” Rosenbaum said in a statement.

“Though not an easy decision, I strongly believe it is the right one for me, my family and the Lab,” Leshin said in a social media post.

“Laurie Leshin’s leadership at JPL has been nothing short of extraordinary,” Janet Petro, NASA’s acting administrator, said in an agency statement. “She brought a sharp scientific mind, a strong sense purpose and a clear vision that helped propel the lab forward during a pivotal time.”

Caltech selected as her replacement David Gallagher, who has been at JPL for 36 years as an engineer and manager, most recently as associate director for strategic integration. Gallagher had reportedly been planning to retire from the lab before being named director.

“I’m grateful to Laurie Leshin for her inspiring leadership, which has energized and focused the Lab as we’ve navigated significant challenges in recent years,” he said in a social media post. “I look forward to helping guide us into a new era, with extraordinary opportunities ahead.”

“He brings decades of experience, a steady hand and a deep understanding of what makes JPL unique,” Petro stated.

Leshin became director of JPL in May 2022 after previously serving as president of the Worcester Polytechnic Institute. She was the first woman to lead the lab, which was established by Caltech in 1936.

Months after becoming director, an independent review of delays in the Psyche asteroid mission, whose development JPL was leading, uncovered institutional issues at the lab that NASA concluded contributed to the delays. Those issues, which predated Leshin’s arrival, included a strained workforce and poor communication between engineers and managers exacerbated by remote work during and after the pandemic.

The same independent board that uncovered the problems later praised Leshin and JPL for taking steps to address them through new hybrid work policies and efforts to hire and retain technical staff. Tom Young, the retired aerospace industry executive who chaired the independent review, said at a June 2023 briefing his panel believed “the response to our Psyche project and JPL institution findings and recommendations to be excellent.”

JPL, though, faced new challenges with cost and schedule overruns in Mars Sample Return (MSR) and uncertainty about the budget for that program, which JPL was leading. The lab laid off 100 contractors in January 2024, followed a month later by layoffs of 530 employees, about 8% of its workforce at the time. JPL laid off another 325 employees in November to fit within the funding it expected to receive in fiscal year 2025.

The lab faced a different kind of threat in January from the Eaton Fire, a wildfire that burned much of the city of Altadena, adjacent to JPL. While the lab itself was not damaged, it was evacuated for several days. Hundreds of employees either lost their homes or suffered damage from the fire, among them Leshin.

While Leshin is stepping down as director, she will remain at Caltech as a professor of geochemistry and planetary science. “I will focus on re-starting my research program and helping my family recover from the Eaton fire,” she wrote on social media.

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