Ms. Valerie Casasanto is with the University of Maryland, Baltimore County’s Joint Center for Earth Systems & Technology (JCET) since 2005 and based at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center. Ms. Casasanto is the Education and Public Outreach Lead for the ICESat-2 mission since 2013, and Principal Investigator for the NASA ROSES Education and Public Outreach (E/PO) award, “Beautiful Earth: Experiencing and Learning Science in a New and Engaging Way”engaging students and the general public in NASA Earth Science through music, art, and indigenous perspectives. Ms. Casasanto has more than 20 years of experience in designing, managing and implementing small and large-scale earth and space science educational programs to diverse age groups in multicultural environments. She has successfully managed and integrated student designed and PI science microgravity payloads on 15 space missions (Ms. Casasanto is a graduate and former employee of the International Space University (ISU), where she organized summer programs in a different host country each year. Ms. Casasanto is member of the International Astronautical Federation (IAF) Space Education and Outreach Committee (since 2003), member of GSFC’s Education Implementation Team (since 2006), and member of GSFC’s Native American Advisory Committee (since 2008). Ms. Casasanto holds a Bachelor of Arts degree from the Pennsylvania State University
