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Nina Lanza

Dr. Nina Lanza is the Team Lead for the Moon to Mars Team in Space Science and Applications (ISR-1) at Los Alamos National Laboratory in Los Alamos, New Mexico (USA). She is the Principal Investigator of the ChemCam instrument onboard the Mars Science Laboratory rover and a Co-Investigator for the SuperCam instrument onboard the Mars 2020 rover. Her research focuses on understanding the origin and nature of manganese minerals on Mars and how they may serve as potential biosignatures. She is also studying rock coatings, which provide a record of rocks’ interaction with atmosphere, water, soil, and potentially life. She was recently part of the JETT5 team that developed and tested the Artemis III Science Evaluation Room architecture, which included a simulation of four human extravehicular activities on the Moon. Dr. Lanza has done geologic fieldwork across the word including the Miller Range, Antarctica; Devon and Axel Heiberg islands, Canadian Arctic; and the Atacama Desert, Chile. She was a field team member for the Antarctic Search for Meteorites (ANSMET) project in 2015 – 2016. She is a sought-after science communicator who has contributed to programming on numerous platforms including the Science Channel, National Geographic, BBC, and Curiosity Stream. Dr. Lanza was educated at Smith College (AB), Wesleyan University (MA), and the University of New Mexico (PhD). She is thrilled to be living her childhood dream of working on a spaceship.

 

Vasiliki Rahimzadeh

Vasiliki Rahimzadeh, PhD is an assistant professor of medical ethics and health policy at Baylor College of Medicine. Her National Institutes of Health-funded research program aims to explore the ethical, legal and social issues (ELSI) of sharing genomic and related health data across emerging computing platforms. She also leads the Mission to Enhance Ethics Education, Outreach and Research in Space (METEORS) program, in which she contributes to standards setting of human research protections in the commercial spaceflight industry and supports space medicine investigators navigate ELSI in their work. She is also a standing member of the Bioethics Panel for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. Dr. Rahimzadeh has a BS in microbial biology from the University of California Berkeley and earned a PhD with specialization in biomedical ethics from McGill University before completing a postdoctoral fellowship at Stanford University.

 

Karina Sapelnikova

Karina received her BSc in Mechanical Engineering from the ß÷ßäÉçÇø, joining her first rocketry team in the summer of 2018. Her MSc in Aerospace Engineering at ISAE-Supaero in Toulouse, France positioned her at the heart of the European aerospace industry. In 2018 she became one of the founding members of Launch Canada, a Canadian rocketry competition for students. Her professional experience in aerospace started at Rocket Factory Augsburg where she worked over the last five years as a propulsion development and test engineer on rocket engines. In May 2025 she started a new position in Switzerland working as a lead propulsion engineer on a large orbital transfer vehicle.