Juniper Jairala – NESC Academy Biography

Juniper Jairala was born in Chicago, Illinois and was raised there, in San Diego, California, and in Quito, Ecuador. After receiving a bachelor of science in mechanical engineering from Cornell University in 1997, Jairala worked as a ride-and-show engineer building Universal Studios and Warner Brothers theme parks in Los Angeles, Japan, and Spain until 2001. Afterward, she worked at NASA Dryden in Flight Operations before earning a master of science in aerospace engineering sciences, with an emphasis in bioastronautics, at the University of Colorado Boulder in 2004. From 2005 to 2008, Jairala worked as a NASA graduate cooperative education student at JSC, continued graduate education with an emphasis in integrated physiology at UCLA, and worked as an employee of several commercial spaceflight companies (Blue Origin, X Prize, SpaceX, Andrews Space, and Zero Gravity Corporation). In 2008, she returned to JSC with Jacobs Technology, working for the CTSD as a project and test engineer on the EVA Development and Verification Test Team, where she continues to work today.