MIT’s only four-time Academic All-America honoree

Louise Jandura ’84, SM ’86, was successful both academically and athletically at MIT. She played softball (shortstop), basketball (forward), and field hockey (sweeper/defense)—ultimately becoming captain for softball and field hockey and eventually also serving as a field hockey coach. She even became MIT’s only four-time Academic All-America honoree and was inducted into the Academic All-America Hall of Fame in 2019. Meanwhile, she has been hitting it out of the park at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) for the past 35 years. 

Jandura earned her bachelor’s and master’s degrees in mechanical engineering when women made up only about 25% of the MIT student body. But playing three sports a year gave her a wonderful community. 

Striving in the classroom and on the field or court also energized her, revealing a special ability to focus strictly on the task at hand. On game days, she was invested in her sport and didn’t worry about her academics. When it came time to study, she could put everything else out of her mind—a superpower that proved invaluable. 

COURTESY OF LOUISE JANDURA

The ability to compartmentalize has come in handy throughout her career at JPL. She worked her way through the ranks, doing deep dives on specific aspects of missions—like developing payload canister mechanisms for the Genesis mission to collect solar wind samples and designing part of the lander for the Mars exploration rovers of the early 2000s—until she became the chief engineer for the sampling and caching system on the Mars 2020 mission. She led a team of 160 people and collaborated with other departments to create the Perseverance rover and ready it for its mission on the surface of Mars.

“There’s obviously a difference between leading 11 people on a field through a season versus the scale of leading 160 people in a multiyear, complicated technical challenge,” says Jandura, who believes her coaching helped prepare her for leadership at work. 

She has since become chief engineer of JPL’s Mechanical Systems Engineering, Fabrication, and Test Division, a position that allows her to consult on various mechanical projects. 

Despite her growing responsibilities, Jandura can still activate her superpower and disconnect from work. These days, she has even added a few new activities—including mentoring high school robotics clubs, gardening, and mastering complicated quilt patterns. 

“I say quilting is not so much different than engineering,” Jandura jokes. “There are just better color choices.”