Jessica Watkins, Ph.D. '15

Jessica Watkins, Ph.D. '15, will make history as the first Black woman to live and work on the International Space Station, starting in April next year. She is scheduled to spend six months on the ISS as a mission specialist.

Watkins was one of 12 selected by NASA to join the 2017 astronaut candidate class out of more than 18,300 people who applied.

Watkins earned her doctorate in geology. For her Ph.D. research, she studied the “emplacement mechanisms of large landslides on Mars and Earth” through orbital data analysis and field research. While at UCLA, Watkins was a teaching assistant and won the UCLA Chancellor’s Prize and her academic department’s Harold and Mayla Sullwold Scholarship for Academic Excellence and Outstanding Original Research.

Her many other awards and honors include a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship in Geosciences and Stanford University Dean’s Award for Academic Excellence. At Stanford, she was a member of the women’s rugby team, as well as the USA Rugby Women’s Sevens National Team.