Amy Gresser

Email: Amy.L.Gresser@nasa.gov
Organization: Space Biosciences Division

Amy Gresser is the Space Biology Portfolio Manager at NASA Ames Research Center. She is responsible for managing a portfolio of over 70 active grants focused on development and operations for space biology experiments performed on the International Space Station and other free-flyer platforms or utilizing ground-based analog systems.

Prior to becoming a civil servant in 2022, Amy spent eight years as a contractor at NASA Ames where she supported Space Biology as a mission scientist for invertebrate, microbial, and cell biology payloads. In addition, she served as a science and operations lead for Fruit Fly Lab, payload manager for the Synthetic Biology Project’s BioNutrients-2 experiment, and a department head for the Fully Integrated Lifecycle Mission Support Services contract.

Amy received her B.S. in Biology from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology with minors in Brain and Cognitive Sciences and in Chemistry. She also holds a Ph.D. in Molecular and Cellular Biology from Harvard University where her research focused on neuronal coding in the rodent vomeronasal system. As a post-doctoral fellow at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center, she investigated gene regulation in the fruit fly and its role in neurological development and behavior.