Liz Matson (she/her) became the manager of NASA Goddard’s Integrated Design Center (IDC) in December 2022. A long-time engineer on rotation in IDC labs, Liz was previously on a 6-month detail in the Mission Design Lab (MDL) as a Mission Systems Engineer in 2018 and has supported a number of studies in the IDC’s Instrument Design Lab (IDL) over the past 10 years as an Instrument Systems Engineer, Mechanical Systems Engineer, and Structural Analyst. A graduate of the Systems Engineering Educational Development (SEED) program, Liz served as the Deputy Instrument Systems Engineer for the L’Ralph instrument on the Lucy mission, responsible for requirement verification activities and planning of the Instrument Comprehensive Performance Test (CPT). She then re-joined the MDL full time as Lead Mission Systems Engineer in 2021.

From 2008 to 2017, Liz served as the Lead Structural Analyst for a number of instruments, including Thermal Infrared Sensor (TIRS) on Landsat-8, Gravity and Extreme Magnetism Small Explorer X-Ray Polarimeter Instrument (GEMS XPI), OSIRIS-REx Visible and Infrared Spectrometer (OVIRS), and the Ocean Color Instrument (OCI) on the Plankton, Aerosols, Clouds and ocean Ecosystem (PACE) mission. In these roles, Liz was responsible for performing and directing a broad range of analysis tasks in all phases of the project from conceptual design through environmental testing and delivery to the spacecraft.

Liz began her career at GSFC in 2001 as an intern with the Mechanical Engineering Branch and then as a co-op student in the Mechanical Analysis and Simulation Branch. As a structural analyst in Code 542, Liz performed thermal distortion analysis of the Integrated Science Instrument Module (ISIM) on the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) and the Lunar Orbiter Laser Altimeter (LOLA) on the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO), in addition to stress analysis and vibration testing support for a variety of other missions. Liz earned a Bachelor’s Degree in Mechanical Engineering from Case Western Reserve University and a Master’s Degree in Aerospace Engineering from the University of Maryland College Park.