Alina Kiessling

Dr. Alina Kiessling is a Research Scientist at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), affiliated with the Astrophysics & Space Sciences division's Cosmology Group. She leads the NASA OpenUniverse initiative coordinating cosmological simulations for major missions like Roman, Euclid, and Rubin. She serves as Project Manager for the NuSTAR mission and was Deputy Study Scientist for the HabEx exoplanet observatory concept. Her research focuses on weak gravitational lensing, cosmology, and N-body simulations to understand dark matter and dark energy.

• Ph.D. in Astrophysics from the University of Edinburgh (2011)
• B.Sc. (Hons) in Space Science from LaTrobe University (2004)

Her research interests include cosmological parameter estimation using N-body simulations, weak lensing analysis, and mission design for space-based observatories. She contributed to the Euclid and WFIRST mission architectures, and pioneered tools like the SUNGLASS simulations pipeline.

In awards, she received the JPL Outstanding Postdoc Award (2012) and NASA ATP grant (2014-2017). Her work integrates large-scale simulations with observational data to address fundamental questions in cosmology and exoplanet science.

• Led teams on Habitable Worlds Observatory and Airships for stratospheric science
• Member of the Dark Energy Science Collaboration for the Rubin Observatory

Her current projects include advancing the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope's science capabilities and coordinating multi-mission cosmological simulation efforts.