Firouz Michael Naderi is an Iranian-American scientist and currently the Director for Solar System Exploration at National Aeronautics and Space Administration"s Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
Education
He attended Andisheh high school (Don Bosco Boarding School) in Tehran before attending college in the United States. He received his Master of Surgery and Doctor of Philosophy in electrical engineering from University of Southern California (writing his dissertation in the area of digital image processing) and his Bachelor of Surgery from Iowa State University.
Career
In this role Naderi oversees Jet Propulsion Laboratory"s robotic solar system missions in planning (such as a mission to the Jupiter"s moon Europa) or, in development (InSight lander on Mars) and operating missions, including the Cassini orbiter at Saturn, the Dawn spacecraft at the giant asteroid Vesta, JUNO on its way to Jupiter. Prior to this new position, he was the Associate Director of Jet Propulsion Laboratory responsible for Project Formulation and Strategy, serving as the Laboratory"s senior official providing oversight of Jet Propulsion Laboratory new business acquisition and was the key strategic planning officer of Jet Propulsion Laboratory. He joined Jet Propulsion Laboratory in September 1979. His career at Jet Propulsion Laboratory has spanned system engineering, technology development, and program and project management for satellite communications systems, Earth remote sensing observatories, astrophysical observatories and planetary systems
He was named head of the Mars Exploration Program at Jet Propulsion Laboratory in 2000 after the Program had suffered two consecutive failures.
In the summer of 2000 he helped re-plan the Program as a chain of scientifically, technologically and operationally interrelated missions with a spacecraft launch to Mars every two years. He led the Program for the next five years, a span of time that included the successful landing of the Mars Exploration Rovers, Spirit and Opportunity.
Before Mars, he managed the Origins program, National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s ambitious technology-rich plan, to search for Earth-like planets in other planetary systems His early work at Jet Propulsion Laboratory was on system design of large satellite-based systems for nationwide cellular phone coverage.
He went to National Aeronautics and Space Administration Headquarters for two years in the mid-1980s to serve as the program manager for the Advanced Communications Technology Satellite (Acts of the Apostles), the front-runner of today’s multi-beam, space-switching commercial satellites.
Upon his return to Jet Propulsion Laboratory, he became the project manager for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration Scatterometer (NSCAT) Project aimed at space-based measurement of winds over the global oceans with application to weather forecasting. Naderi is active in the Iranian-American community.