Dr Leah-Nani Alconcel PhD, MRAeS, FHEA

• PhD – University of California, San Diego
• MSc – University of California, San Diego
• BSc – University of Southern California
• Member of the Royal Aeronautical Society
• Fellow of Advance HE

Dr Alconcel has over 14 years of experience working as an engineer and manager on planetary exploration missions throughout the solar system including the Cassini mission to Saturn, JUICE mission to the Jovian system, and the Cluster multi-spacecraft mission investigating the Earth’s magnetosphere. She has worked on the full life cycle of space missions, from concept and design through to build, launch, operations and end-of-life.

Dr Alconcel has long-standing interests in both photography and public engagement in science. She has developed and delivered outreach activities for the Royal Society Summer Science Exhibition, Imperial College London, and many other schools events and festivals. She is passionate about inclusivity in STEMM teaching, and particularly in aerospace and space engineering. She actively strives to recruit and retain a diverse student cohort to the School’s courses.

Dr Alconcel teaches space-focused material on the Aerospace Engineering course.

Modules include:

• Space Mission Analysis and Design (module lead)
• Spacecraft Systems Engineering and Design
• Aerospace Power Systems

She also supervises individual and group research projects.

• Space-based dataset management and archiving
• Long-term trends in and stability of calibration parameters of payload instruments

• I’m an Engineer, Get Me Out Of Here 2018 
• Royal Society Summer Science Exhibition 2016: A Comet Revealed