Antti Pulkkinen

Antti A. Pulkkinen, Ph.D., is Director of the NASA Office of JPL Management and Oversight (NOJMO). NOJMO is the NASA Headquarters on-site government organization at JPL, responsible for contract management, agency oversight, and ensuring contractor compliance with federal regulations.

He previously served as Director of the Heliophysics Science Division (Code 670) at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, leading a 450-person science and technology organization. In that role, he managed the world’s largest concentration of heliophysicists, supporting flight missions and research programs while building partnerships with industry, academia, and U.S. government agencies including NOAA, DoD, and the intelligence community. Before becoming Division Director, he served as Acting Director and Deputy Director of Code 670, where he advanced hiring strategies, promoted AI/ML-enabled science, coordinated decadal survey preparations, and guided the Science-Enabling Technologies for Heliophysics (SETH) mission concept through Phase A and Step-2 proposal development.

Pulkkinen also directed NASA Goddard’s Space Weather Research Center, which supports robotic and human exploration with space weather forecasting and anomaly analysis. He previously held faculty and leadership positions at The Catholic University of America, where he launched a graduate program in space weather. Earlier in his career, he was a NASA Postdoctoral Fellow, a researcher with UMBC’s Goddard Earth Sciences and Technology Center, and a scientist at the Finnish Meteorological Institute, where he produced seminal work on geomagnetically induced currents and end-to-end geospace modeling.

Pulkkinen is a member of the Finnish Academy of Sciences, holds a U.S. patent on the use of power grids for geophysical imaging, and has received honors including the International Kristian Birkeland Medal and NASA’s Exceptional Achievement Medal. He earned his Ph.D. in theoretical physics from the University of Helsinki.Graduated from Gonzaga Preparatory School in Spokane, Washington, in 1997. Earned a Bachelor of Science in Mechanical/Aeronautical Engineering from the U.S. Military Academy at West Point in 2002. A 2002 Marshall Scholar, earned a Master of Science degree in Aerospace Engineering from the University of Bath in Bath, England in 2004. Earned a Master of Science in International Relations from the University of Bristol in Bristol, England in 2005.