Erica Montbach | Michael Lienhard | Anna Maria Pal | Jeffrey Hall

Erica Montbach

Manager PESTO, Program Officer COLDTech, Technical Interface to SBAG
PESTO’s Manager, Dr. Montbach, crafts the technology investment strategy for future planetary science missions, manages all pre-mission planetary science technology development, coordinates with other technology development programs, and infuses technology into planetary science. She holds a Ph.D. in Chemical Physics from the Liquid Crystal Institute at Kent State University. Her experience has focused on research and development, entrepreneurship, small business innovation, industry trend analysis, public private partnerships, patent portfolio maturation, and grants management. She has leveraged her unique roles as a manager and industrial scientist in government and in advanced manufacturing corporations to foster public-private collaborations with academic colleagues, business executives, student interns, teachers and community leaders to drive dissemination of knowledge gained from research and expand opportunities for everyone, in basic and applied science and technology.

Michael Lienhard

Program Officer, MatISSE, HOTTech, Technical Interface to VEXAG
Dr. Lienhard has been a Program Officer (PO) in the Planetary Exploration Science Technology Office (PESTO) since 2021. His current responsibilities include the HOTTech and MatISSE programs. Previously, Michael served as a research engineer in the Smart Sensing and Electronics System Branch at the NASA Glenn Research Center, focusing on harsh environment nanotechnology. Michael earned his bachelor’s degree in chemistry at the State University of New York at Binghamton and his doctorate at the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.

Anna Maria Pal

Program Officer, DALI, Technical Interface to LEAG
Anna Maria Pal is the Program Officer for PESTO’s Development and Advancement of Lunar Instrumentation (DALI) program.  She joined PESTO in 2023 after over 20 years with the Photovoltaics and Electrochemistry Branch at Glenn Research Center (GRC) as an aerospace technologist working in direct energy conversion.  She developed new photovoltaic cell designs and array technology utilizing two laboratories with organo- metallic vapor phase epitaxy (OMVPE) systems.   During this time, she helped to further the use of solar arrays in extreme environments with her work on the Extreme Environments Solar Power (EESP) project and the Vertical Solar Array Technology (VSAT) for the Lunar Surface project both funded through the Space Technology Mission Directorate’s (STMD) Game Changing Development (GCD) program.  She also served as a Contracting Officer’s Representative and Technical Monitor for projects to develop flight hardware and payloads, such as the solar cell concentrator demonstration unit on the Double Asteroid Redirect (DART) Mission.  She has a B.S. in Physics and Mathematics from Cleveland State University and has completed coursework towards a M.S. in Materials Science and Engineering from Case Western Reserve University.

Jeffrey Hall

Associate Directorate Technologist at JPL, Technical Interface to OPAG
Dr. Hall is the PESTO liaison to the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL). At JPL he serves the dual role of deputy manager of the technology program office and associate directorate technologist, both for the Planetary Science Mission Directorate at the lab. Over the course of his career he has worked on and led many technology projects in such disparate areas as cryogenic engineering, planetary balloons, aerocapture, and robotics for extreme environments. He has served as a line and program manager, and also worked on many proposals and studies for future missions across the solar system. A key role he plays in supporting PESTO is to originate and guide technology assessment studies for future solar system exploration.