{"id":160089,"date":"2025-07-03T15:05:12","date_gmt":"2025-07-03T19:05:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/webapp2.wright.edu\/web1\/newsroom\/?p=160089"},"modified":"2025-07-03T15:05:12","modified_gmt":"2025-07-03T19:05:12","slug":"wright-state-alum-lindsay-aitchison-fulfills-childhood-space-agency-dream","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/webapp2.wright.edu\/web1\/newsroom\/2025\/07\/03\/wright-state-alum-lindsay-aitchison-fulfills-childhood-space-agency-dream\/","title":{"rendered":"Wright State alum Lindsay Aitchison fulfills childhood space-agency dream"},"content":{"rendered":"

At quite a young age, Lindsay Aitchison had her \u201caha\u201d moment of what she wanted to do.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen I was about 4 years old, my parents took me to the Johnson Space Center in Houston as part of a family vacation,\u201d she recalled. \u201cI decided then and there, I wanted to work at NASA.\u201d<\/p>\n

Today, that\u2019s exactly what Aitchison does, even working for a time in that very center. Now, she\u2019s got her eyes on Mars.<\/p>\n

Aitchison, who earned a master\u2019s degree in industrial and human factors engineering from Wright State University, received the 2025 College of Graduate Programs and Honors Studies Outstanding Alumni Award from the Wright State Alumni Association.<\/p>\n

She is the deputy director of the Mars Campaign Office in the Moon to Mars Program at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration headquarters in Washington, D.C. She oversees advanced systems and technologies that can expand human exploration on the Moon and enable human missions to Mars.<\/p>\n

Her office provided these new technologies to the International Space Station and the Artemis Moon-landing program to test system performance before heading to Mars.<\/p>\n

Her job is to help develop \u201ceverything it might take to get humans all the way to Mars.\u201d<\/p>\n

Aitchison previously was chief of the portfolio intelligence and analysis branch in NASA\u2019s Office of the Chief Financial Officer. She led a team of analysts to evaluate the performance of programs, projects and offices to efficiently manage cost, schedules and risk across the space agency.<\/p>\n

She earned a bachelor\u2019s degree in mechanical engineering from Purdue University. But she wanted to go further, which is when Wright State entered her universe.<\/p>\n

\u201cWright State gave me a lot of different opportunities in terms of coursework,\u201d she said. \u201cI knew I wanted to do human factors engineering. Wright State had a breadth of courses that really opened up a lot of new opportunities.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Wright State engineering alum Lindsay Aitchison, left, with Subhashini Ganapathy, dean of the College of Graduate Programs and Honors Studies.<\/p><\/div>\n

She added, \u201cWright State really gave me some great opportunities to try new things that I could immediately apply to my job.\u201d<\/p>\n

Since transferring to NASA headquarters in 2017, Aitchison held multiple roles in the Exploration Systems Development Mission Directorate, including working on program executive for extra-vehicular activity (EVA) and human surface mobility program and the EVA strategy lead for advanced exploration systems.<\/p>\n

Aitchison also worked at the Johnson Space Center as a leader in the EVA technology development department and manager of the high-performance EVA glove development program.<\/p>\n

Aitchison tells those who are looking to develop a career path, especially young students, \u201cThe biggest part is having a goal in mind but not being so set on the specific path. I wanted to do engineering. What type, I didn\u2019t know. Trying a lot of different things to see what fits got me excited. You want to choose a career that when you get up every day say, \u2018This is a fun job.\u2019 And so having that yes attitude helped me figure out where it is I fit.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Wright State engineering alum Lindsay Aitchison received the 2025 College of Graduate Programs and Honors Studies Outstanding Alumni Award. Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":66,"featured_media":160105,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[722,733,4309,4266,743,2060,725,727,715,720],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-160089","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-academics","category-alumni","category-alumni-association","category-biomedical-industrial-and-human-factors-engineering","category-engineering-computer-science","category-graduate","category-home-news-sidebar","category-homepage-photos-and-video","category-news","category-video"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/webapp2.wright.edu\/web1\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/160089","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/webapp2.wright.edu\/web1\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/webapp2.wright.edu\/web1\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/webapp2.wright.edu\/web1\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/66"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/webapp2.wright.edu\/web1\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=160089"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/webapp2.wright.edu\/web1\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/160089\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":160113,"href":"https:\/\/webapp2.wright.edu\/web1\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/160089\/revisions\/160113"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/webapp2.wright.edu\/web1\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/160105"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/webapp2.wright.edu\/web1\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=160089"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/webapp2.wright.edu\/web1\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=160089"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/webapp2.wright.edu\/web1\/newsroom\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=160089"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}